Like Mind

by James T Wood

  He took it well with a knee, kicked it and then flipped it up to his head with his toe. From the stall he rolled it down his neck, stalled it again on his back and then popped it up with his butt to kick, scorpion style, back to me. I copied him exactly. The crowd of hippie-watchers gasped loudly. I saw him get an angry look on his face as he went into an even more convoluted series of moves. I could almost hear “Dueling Banjos” start to play. He kicked the sack back to me and I copied him again.

  I noticed Anka starting to circulate through the peanut gallery. She held out some cash in one hand and people were waving hands at her. Too late I noticed the sack coming back my way. Damn, I’d been watching Anka and not the sack routine. I went back in my memory to one of his previous tricks. It was less impressive, but it kept the game going. The crowd seemed disappointed and the Lord of the Hippies looked smug as the hacky sack traveled back to him.

  The next set of moves was insane. He kicked the sack high into the air and simultaneously fell forward with stiff legs. Just before he hit the ground, he caught himself with his hands and it was just in time to stall the sack at the base of his neck. From there he pushed up with his arms and pulled his legs under like he was about to do a squat-thrust. He snapped his body into a standing position and the sack jumped off his neck. He spun around to kick the sack behind him and launched it in a high arc over his head. As he continued spinning his smell of body odor assaulted my nose. When he came around to face me again, the sack landed on his foot. He flipped it up again, pivoted and caught it on the other side. Then, with is back to me, he kicked the sack at me. Hard.

  A little bit, I felt bad for him as I went into the routine I’d just seen. But when I went to start spinning after the faux-fall I found that my rubber-soled shoes didn’t move the same on the paving bricks. I made it around on the first spin, but the squeaking complaint of my Chuck Taylors made me think I wouldn’t get the next one. Quickly I groped for another way out. I thought of tricks that he’d done before that I could use. At the last second before the sack landed on my foot I remembered one of the MMA videos. Desperately I hoped it would work.

  I kicked the sack into the air in front of me. I launched into the air and kneed even higher, as it went up I elbowed it, sending it rocketing into the air. When I landed I had to step back a pace to get ready, then, when it was almost to the ground I launched in to my Chuck Norris roundhouse and kicked the sack straight at the Hippie-saurus. It smacked into his chest loudly and just dropped to the ground. Everyone stared at me silently and we all just stood there for an awkward moment.

  Behind the arch-hippie, Anka was quickly walking toward me. As she stepped past the Hippie Pope, she reached down, grabbed the hacky sack, handed it to him and said, “I think you dropped this.”

  Without breaking stride she grabbed my arm and led me away from the crowd that had gathered around the hacky sack circle.

  “I don’t know what you were doing at the end there, but that was perfect.”

  “So we got enough money?”

  “More than enough. That time you messed up was great, too. I had to pay out on some of those bets, so when I offered more, they were eager. It was beautiful.”

  “How much did we make?”

  “About a thousand.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Yeah, like I said, you did well. Let’s go. There’s a mall over here, we should be able to get some phones there.”

  So we headed into the Pioneer Place mall while I considered a career in hacky sack.

  Infiltration

  Rarely have I had the means to walk into any store and just buy whatever I want. It’s a giddy feeling. We descended to the basement of the vertical mall downtown and found the kiosk hawking mobile devices. Anka walked up, circled the display case. Gave a dissatisfied sigh and started to walk away. I didn’t know if I should follow her so I turned, to go just in time for her to spin around suddenly and walk up to the salesperson. That made me stumble a bit as I halted and turned again to follow her. I was getting a little bit dizzy.

  “Do you have fast data?” Anka asked.

  “Um…yeah.” The polo-shirt-wearing twenty-something did not seem prepared for Anka’s intensity. He put down his sandwich and brushed the crumbs from the front of his Dockers as he stood up from the stool that was his only respite. Polo shirts rarely flatter, on this poor soul it only served to highlight his love handles and man-boobs.

  “Good. Do you have prepaid phones?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent. Do you have smart phones that take video well?”

  “Yeah, see right—”

  “Fantastic. I would like two of your best smart phones, with unlimited data.”

  “Okay…do you want—”

  “Them now? Yes.”

  “Um…”

  “Now’s the part where you move. You could also tell me how much I owe you.”

  “I…”

  At this point I stepped in, “Excuse me, I speak nerd.”

  Anka just stared at me with the same glare that polo-McMoobs had been enduring. I rolled my eyes and sighed in a mockery of her mannerism.

  “Hey,” I leaned forward to read his name tag, “Daryl, we’re not trying to be difficult. We just need some phones that do video. We went on one of those jet-boat rides in the Willamette and both of our phones got soaked. We’re just finishing up our vacation here and we want to be able to take some video to send back home. My new wife over there is upset that we’re missing out on precious time that we could be using to do something else. You know how it is, they always want to do stuff, they’re never content to just relax. Am I right?”

  I pulled up Anka’s flirting smile that she used on me at Powell’s. It felt a little weird on my face, but it worked on Daryl. He visibly relaxed and started moving toward the locked cupboard behind his stool.

  “Which phones do you want? Do you like Apple, Android or Windows?”

  “Daryl, I want whatever you think is best. You’re the professional. I trust you to not steer us wrong.”

  I saw his back stiffen a bit with the compliment. He rummaged through the cupboard for a moment before producing two boxes.

  “Here you go. These are the latest and greatest, but what’s really good for you is the screen is huge. Your videos will look great and the camera does 1080p so everyone else will love the stuff you post. It’s on the new, high-speed data network with unlimited usage. No caps or throttling. You’ll love it.”

  “Thanks Daryl, you just saved my honeymoon.”

  He smiled, activated the phones and gave the total.

  “You heard the man darling,” I turned to Anka with bravado, “pay him.”

  Her face had a look of shock mixed with annoyance, wonder and something like amusement. Anka paid for the phones and collected the bag from Daryl as we walked away.

  “Thanks man,” I threw back over my shoulder, “have a good one.” Then to Anka I said, “We should head over to the food court and find an outlet where we can charge the phones up. Plus I want a pretzel.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “I know, but they’re hard to resist when you smell them baking. It’s pretty good marketing on their part. It makes me wonder why they don’t have a microwave popcorn kiosk in the mall. I can’t smell that stuff without wanting a whole bag.”

  She sighed again. I thought I was past this. I didn’t know how many more man-points I could lose before she would just put me in a stroller and give me a blankie.

  “No, not the pretzel, the phones. Charging the phones is a good idea.”

  “Oh, thanks. So you don’t want a pretzel?”

  Anka started to sigh again, but as she drew in the breath necessary to exhale away my manliness, she paused. She turned to me with the dimples showing and a mischievous look in her eyes.

  “I’d love a pretzel. Cinnamon-sugar.”

  She walked away from me with her proud, hypnotic strut. I had to tear my eyes away from the back of her pants to locat
e the source of the wafting smell of baked prayer-bread. With my bready treats in hand I joined her at the table farthest from anyone else. She already had the phones out and charging as I sat down.

  “So, how did you learn to negotiate like that?” Anka asked me.

  “What do you mean negotiate? I was just nice to the guy.”

  “You stepped in when it was obvious that my tactics weren’t working. You closed the deal when I was failing. How did you learn to do that? I was trained in this.”

  “They trained you to do that?”

  “What? What’s wrong with what I was doing?”

  “Nothing, I guess, if you’re trying to get the codes to the spy satellite from ‘zee Germans.’ But you don’t really need to bust out the thumb-screws and waterboarding for a couple of phones.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “Anka, poor Daryl back there was about to wet his pants. You’re intimidating when you put your mind to it.”

  For some reason she blushed at that.

  “I’m not all that intimidating, am I?”

  “Well, not right now, but when you get all up in Daryl’s face it’s kind of scary. It’s like you flip a switch and go into attack mode or something. You did it when the Cubano twins were chasing us and you did it again when you were kicking my ass.”

  “Oh.”

  For some reason she looked sad, like a puppy who’s lost his favorite chew toy and just gave up looking.

  “It’s not a bad thing, not all the time. We really needed Robo-Anka when people were chasing us and shooting at us. But we don’t need that all the time. I just talked to Daryl the way I like to be talked to: like a human being. Have you never worked in a service job?”

  “No, I was recruited from college by my boss. I went straight from graduation into training.”

  “Ah, that explains it. You should be a barista for a while. It’ll give you a whole new insight into how humans work. I think that everyone in the world should be required to work in either customer service or food service at least once in their lives. The world would be a better place for it.”

  With no warning or explanation, she leaned across the table and kissed me on the cheek. Then she picked up her pretzel and started eating it, and completely ignoring me as I tried to figure out what just happened.

  After staring at her eating her pretzel for a few minutes, I gave up and started eating mine. We sat silently watching the people in the mall. I wondered what they were up to. Here we were, sitting silently and preparing to infiltrate a secret research facility by using my special powers. Were there any other spy-super-power plotters in the mall today?

  Anka finished her pretzel, meticulously wiped her fingers and checked the phone batteries.

  “They’re only at about fifty percent. We should let them get a full charge before we head off to OHSU.”

  “We also need to set them up first.”

  “What? Can’t we just, you know, use them?”

  “Haven’t you ever had a smart phone before?”

  “Only the one my boss gave me, and it was set up before they handed it to me.”

  “What was it?”

  “A phone. What do you mean?”

  “You know, was it an iPhone, an Android…?”

  “I don’t know, it just had icons for the stuff I needed to do.”

  “Wow, for a super-secret spy you’re hopeless with technology.”

  “Well, sorry for not living up to your expectations of what a super-secret spy should be.”

  I was losing a battle here that I didn’t even know existed until I started losing it. I decided to try a smile and a subject change.

  “So how are we going to gather the information from the lab?”

  “Good question. We can’t take anything with us. My boss will be going through things as soon as he hears that we’re dead. We have to leave it all where it is. I suppose we could take pictures with these phones. They’ll do that much won’t they?”

  “Yeah, that’ll work fine. Then how do we get out? Do we just walk away?”

  “That’s the plan. No one should suspect that we’re in there, so it should work out fine.”

  “Just like everything else has?”

  “Hey, it’s not my fault that people have been trying to kill us. I’m the one that’s trying to keep you alive.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Damn right I’m right.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, which earned me a glare at first, but then Anka broke down and laughed with me.

  “So, are there any videos I should be watching to get ready for all this? I’ve done a lot of the MMA stuff. Anything else that you can think of?”

  “Well, we want to get in there and get out as quietly as possible. You could look up some stealth stuff. Maybe some running or jumping stuff too, in case we need to make a quick exit.”

  “I thought you said we’d just walk out.”

  “I said that’s the plan, not necessarily that things would go according to plan. You always need to have a plan ‘B,’ just in case.”

  “Right.”

  “Oh, you should also look up some basic firearm training. If the shit hits the fan I want you to be able to take care of yourself.”

  “Do you even have a gun?”

  “I’ve got two on me right now.”

  “Where?”

  She just smiled at me and raised her eyebrows.

  “Also, look up some Krav Maga, that stuff can save your ass in a fight.”

  “What’s Krav Maga?”

  “It’s the Israeli martial art. They don’t have belts or competitions or points you can score. You just survive or you don’t. They train for hand combat against attackers with knives and guns. You’re more likely to face something like that than pure hand-to-hand combat.”

  “Crap, this is going to be rough.”

  “Don’t worry too much. I’ve got all of this training. You’ll just be my backup. If anything goes down I’ll take care of you.”

  I grabbed my phone and started to look up videos, but I was marveling at how Anka could be both attractive and emasculating at the same time. After about an hour of me watching videos, Anka tapped my hand.

  “You about ready?”

  “Uh…yeah.”

  I’d been lost in learning. I couldn’t get enough of it. If she hadn’t distracted me I probably would have kept watching videos all day. Johnny Number Five suddenly felt like a compatriot.

  “Great, we can hit up the guards right after lunch when they’ll be sleepy. It’ll let us catch them unaware.”

  We got up and headed out of the mall. The trek up to OHSU was steep and Anka refused to let us take the tram citing closed in spaces and no contingency plans. I was just mad at the climb. Part way up I got bored and decided to try out some of my newly acquired Parkour skills. I ran sideways across a short wall, leapfrogged over a fence and then flipped back onto the sidewalk.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Sorry, I just wanted to try some stuff out.”

  “Well don’t. We can’t draw attention to ourselves. Especially not this close to the hospital. There are sure to be people watching the lab, so our only chance is to look like we belong here. Otherwise my boss might send another quad-drone to take us out.”

  “Oh, I didn’t think of that.”

  “It’s alright, just don’t do it again.”

  We trudged the rest of the way to OHSU in silence. When we finally got to the entrance, Anka instructed me on how to proceed.

  “Don’t say anything to the guards. Let me talk. You just listen and pick up their names. You’ll need to be able to repeat their names in their voices for this to work.”

  “Don’t I just need to do one guard?”

  “You could, but the voice ID system only allows the person in or out. So if we pick up both of the guards names and then I go in with one and you go in with the other, the real guards will be locked out. If they suspect anythi
ng it could buy us some time.”

  “Wow. You know, you’re really good at your job.”

  “Thanks…”

  “No, I’m serious. I’m glad you’re here with me. If you weren’t I’d probably be dead already. Thank you.”

  “Oh. Well. You’re welcome.”

  She blushed a bit before turning and walking into the lobby. I saw the moment when she turned on her sexy walk. She waited until just as the security guards at the information desk looked up at her and then everything changed. She was walking briskly with her arms swinging purposefully at her sides and her hips barely moving. Then she switched to a slower saunter. Her arms swung more smoothly and her hips took on life, tracing a wide ‘S’ in the air with each step. I had to remind myself to follow and not just stare. The guards had no compunction against ogling.

  I followed as if I was doing my own thing and just needed to talk to the guards after this seductress was done with her question. She walked right up to the desk and leaned over on it, giving the guards a view down the v-neck of her sweater. They seemed to appreciate her consideration.

  “Hi, you might remember me. I work upstairs.”

  They nodded in unison.

  “Good. You see, my boss was giving me a hard time about not knowing you guys. He can be such a jerk sometimes.”

  The guards kept nodding, obviously approving of everything that Anka said.

  “I’m sorry that I haven’t had a chance to meet you yet. I really wanted to, but my boss kept me so busy. You understand.”

  I was worried about their ongoing neck-health and the risk of whiplash.

  “So, let’s correct that mistake. My name’s Anka, Anka Fedora. What’s your name?”

  She pointed to the closest guard to cure his muteness.

  “Hi. I’m Gary Chang.”

  “Hi Gary, it’s a pleasure to meet you. And you are?”

  “Um…I’m Bill Lewis.”

  “Hi Bill, it’s nice to meet you too. See, I don’t know what stopped me before, you are such nice guys. Hey, what time are your shifts over? Maybe we could grab a beer or something?”