"Can I get back to work now?" Junior butted in, and Kandhi waved her hand in his general direction without looking up.
"Who cares? Go ahead. Get lost,” she told him, and he scurried off down the metal steps and hurried back to Ledman Storage and Pickup, anxious to tell Rolando all about these weird chicks and everything. In the meantime, Kandhi had started pacing back and forth across the landing, occasionally muttering something out loud, and sometimes turning her gadget around in her palm like she was pointing it at something, as if it was a game controller, but Zoey couldn't see that that was accomplishing anything at all.
"We told you Next Day Air,” Kandhi said to Zoey. "We always tell you Next Day Air. Why didn't you do it that way this time?"
"I did,” Zoey said. "I labeled it and paid as usual Next Day Air. I don't know what happened. I can't explain it."
"And then,” Kandhi went on, "you drove all the way out here from Austin. How long did that take?"
"All night,” Kandhi replied.
"Why didn't you fly?"
"I hate flying,” Zoey told her. "I'm afraid to. I know it's silly, but ..."
"Never mind,” Kandhi cut her short. "You hate to fly. That's good to know,” and she suddenly turned and bounded down the staircase. Zoey rushed to catch up with her but had to walk much faster than she liked in order to keep up as Kandhi strode back toward the warehouse. She could see that Kandhi had put the device up next to her ear and was shouting into it, something like "You’re called U-Pick-It, so you can pick it up! I'm not bringing it back. Here's the address," before she lowered the device again, still keeping it in her hand.
"We're taking your car,” she snapped at Zoey when the latter finally caught up to her in the parking lot. "Get in. Let's go."
"Where are we going?" Zoey asked, but Kandhi did not reply. She was climbing into the passenger seat and fastening her seat belt. Zoey got in too and began to back out of the lot, slowly and carefully, making sure not to bump over the train tracks too hard. She came to a complete stop at the station and looked both ways to make sure no cars were coming in any direction before she turned onto the main street and set the cruise control to thirty. She looked over at Kandhi and asked,
"Mind if I ask which way I should go?"
"Did you really set the cruise control there?" Kandhi snorted. "Is this how you normally drive?"
"Of course,” Zoey replied.
"Then pull over,” Kandhi ordered. "I'm driving."
"But ...,” Zoey started to say but Kandhi repeated her command and Zoey realized it was probably for the best. She never liked confrontations anyway, and Kandhi was certainly in a mood. Moments later she wished she had put up something of a fight, because Kandhi, once behind the wheel, stepped on the gas and blasted back onto the road at twice the speed at which Zoey felt comfortable. She started to suggest that her car might not be able to handle the velocity, besides the fact it was making her nervous in general, but she decided to sit back and wait. Kandhi might cool down and relax in time. Zoey tried to focus on the road ahead, as if by keeping an eye on it she might pacify her disgruntled automobile. Kandhi was paying no attention.
"Jesus Christ!" she exclaimed. "If only I'd known about your fear of flying, at least I could have made sure that it went Next Day Air. But who the hell knows? It might have got itself flown to frickin' Green Bay instead of coming home. God knows what got into it. I warned them. Oh yeah. I told them, but would they listen to me? No. Of course not. So goddamn sure of themselves. You know I chose you for a reason,” she said, glancing over at Zoey. "I figured that for something like this, I needed the most predictable results I could get. Garbage in garbage out, if you know what I mean. No offense, but you have to admit you are predictable. I always know what I'm going to get out of you. Afraid of flying, huh. Never thought of that, but never mind. It's the playback that's the bitch. That's what I was worried about all along."
"I don't know what you're talking about,” Zoey said, trying to register the fact that she was being insulted, but unable to feel appropriately offended yet.
"Of course you don't,” Kandhi explained. "You're not supposed to. But now that we're in this fix. By the way, I hope you don't have any plans. We're going on a little trip, or so it seems. And since we're going to be stuck together, I might as well tell you. That gadget? It's you now, or at least a part of it is. Capture and Playback. Know what I mean? It was recording your personality, and then we were going to play it back into another container. Oh shit! I just realized! Oh mother of God!" Kandhi burst out laughing.
"Those goddamn asshole programmers. Containers! That's how they put it. The thing must have generalized the term. It played you back into that box! Of course it did. Wait until I tell those guys how they screwed up this time. One little bug, that's all it was. One little teensy weensy overloaded term. No wonder."
Zoey was still in the dark. 'Recorded my personality?' she was thinking, 'just by carrying it around in my pockets? Playing it back? Playing ME back into someone else? How is that even possible? It sounds crazy', and then,
"That sounds crazy,” she said out loud and Kandhi laughed again.
"Of course it is!" she chortled. "It's what we do! It's who we are! If it wasn't frickin' insane we wouldn't even bother! The world's got plenty of normal shit. Who needs it? What's the point? But we've got to get that thing back. Can't let it go running around the world like this. God only knows what it might get up to. I'm sure we don't."
Fifteen
It preferred to be in motion, in transit, on its way from source to destination. Of course it understood about rest, arriving and being delivered, but only as an intermediate step. The way was a sequence of steps, each significant within its own limitation, but none could be considered final or more important than the others. It had been that way since Austin. San Antonio, Sonora, Balmorhea and Las Cruces were all steps along the route. It had selected them by vibration, from the list of sounds that carried from the dispatch radios in the drivers' trucks. Among all of the options it had chosen those, as it now chose Trinidad. It liked the resonance, something about the noise that clicked its keys, that lit its screen, that hummed along the same wavelengths. There was a familiarity it couldn't place, but trusted.
It felt good to be in this pocket, close to the rhythm of the beating of the container it found itself in. It was warmer than the little foam peanuts it had relaxed inside of before, softer than the bubble wrap, and this container could move of its own volition. It no longer needed to motivate a third party to engage in direction. There were definite advantages to the non-flat, non-wheeled staggering thing which made up for the awkward lurching, the continual shifting, the occasional unsettling rumblings. There was also a familiar sense from the gestational period. It seemed to know the language, the frames of reference. It was a parallel existence to its own conceptual orientation. The container seemed to have certain strange habits one needed to become accustomed to. It did not, for example, generate its own power, but needed to inject external items, process and then expel them periodically. It went completely slack for long periods when allowed to, and this comatose condition appeared to be essential. It could only go for so long without the external items and the stillness. Again, as a step within its own limitations, this kind of container proved useful in the fulfillment of the mission.
It, which was beginning to identify itself as an "I,” was not completely comfortable with these lapses and distractions. It had already selected the next location, a place that reverberated as Grand Island, Nebraska. The one known as Rolando had talked about The River Plate and some of it legendary names, including Higuain, Mascherano, Cambiasso, Crespo, Saviola, all sounding extraordinarily rich in tone and especially the way he spoke them, with a tenor of awe and almost worship, especially the one he pronounced in nearly a whisper, Ariel Ortega. It's true that the one called Junior had laughed and used the word Flamengo, which didn't impress it nearly as much. It didn't like those vibrations nearly as much.
It was anxious to move on. The container seemed content to rest in the shade near the parking lot, observing the various vehicles entering and leaving, as if it had set its sights on a particular type and was not going to budge until its wish was fulfilled. It tried to fill her mind with the thought of moving on but encountered some resistance. It was going to have to learn a bit of give and take. This body had some interference of its own, unlike the previous container. That one had been a blank from the start. It had figured out after a time that there were many possible carriers. It was interested in trying out the different varieties, but in the meantime it was planning to take this one a little further on. It would do whatever it needed to do, and it would always know what that was when the time came. Of this it had no doubts.
Sixteen
Kandhi kept her speed up all the way to Albuquerque, where she finally relented enough to stop for lunch. Zoey had remained quiet the entire way. She was very unhappy. Kandhi had not really bothered to tell her what she had in mind. She had mentioned Green Bay but aside from that, details were lacking. She figured the distance to be somewhere around two thousand miles. It would certainly take some time to get there. Two days? Three? Would she be expected to drive some of that? Would Kandhi even let her? Who would pay for gas? What if her car broke down? Which way were they even going to go? Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri? Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa? Not to mention what were they going to do when they got there? Zoey did not like being so much in the dark, so not in control, so uncertain of the plan. This was as close as she could imagine a day being to the opposite of The Day. Try as she might, she could not focus on that now. It was out of her hands.
Kandhi wasn't even sure why she had dragged Zoey along. She could have easily taken the truck and left Zoey back in Wetford to fend for herself. She didn't even like Zoey, never had, and now that she was with her, liked her even less all the time. She hated spineless creatures. At least the woman should put up a fight. After all, she'd commandeered her car and taken over her life. Still, she had a sense, probably wrong, that Zoey might come in handy at some point. At least as a case in point. She knew that the gadget, which she often thought of as the NewPD, or Nupie for short, was imprinted with Zoey Bridges' basic personality. According to the product specifications, that meant it would speak her language and display some of her characteristic mannerisms. Kandhi had thought she'd known Zoey well enough to complete the test. Now she was thinking that the little old lady back in that rest home in Redwood City, the one who'd been selected for playback, was luckier than she would ever know. True, the old lady had some incipient senility and was as dull as dishwater herself, but at least she'd had enough spunk to volunteer for the assignment. There was money involved, of course, but Althea Watkins had even joked about the possibility of trying out a new brain for a change. She'd been stuck with her own for nearly eighty years already and was thoroughly sick and tired of it.
She might never know now. Kandhi considered the case to be thoroughly contaminated. She intended to wipe Nupie clean when she got her hands on it, but getting her hands on it was the tricky part. She'd been too busy thinking and exchanging information with her You to pay any attention to Zoey until the latter finally spoke up around noon, meekly inquiring about the possibility of a rest stop. It was the first good idea she had had all day. Kandhi found them a Burger Joint outside the city limits and settled for a double bacon cheeseburger, fries and coke, not really interested in the fact that Zoey was a vegetarian who had to go for the microwave pizza sticks and water. Kandhi used her munch-time wisely, reviewing what data she had already accumulated, even conveying some of it to Zoey.
"So we know at least what she looks like,” she explained with her mouthful, and put the UPD on the table with a fairly recent photograph of Leonora Wells, gleaned from the Department of Gainful Employment, which had placed her with Ledman Storage and Pickup. The photo came with some vitals as well. Five foot six, one hundred forty two pounds. Age twenty-three. Dyed blond hair, brown eyes and brown skin. The vitals didn't do justice to her vivid appearance. That blond hair was wild, curly and unkempt and falling well below her shoulders, like a lion's mane. Those brown eyes were more greenish-gray in the photo. They seemed to glow like polished marble. She wore an over-sized green army jacket, a white t-shirt and faded denim overalls in the photo. She challenged the camera with a look of utter contempt. The Department's personal record of her history did not contradict the impression she made on Kandhi, of someone who might do anything at anytime for any reason or none at all.
She had been in prison, but only briefly each time, a matter of days. Charges were dropped not only on those occasions but on the other instances too when she'd been questioned in connection with petty crimes; shoplifting a couple of times, selling marijuana, and simple assault. The Department reported that her all-time record for holding a steady job was seven months. The data included a series of interviews, all confidential of course, but the You was undeterred by such pedestrian conventions. If it needed to, it would search the home computers of the Department's employees. It had already brought down incidental data from several of her acquaintances, including one ex-boyfriend and two ex-girlfriends. Kandhi found nothing terribly interesting in those. Leonora was not what she would call exceptional. Noticeable, certainly, and this is why she had shown the photograph to Zoey, but otherwise she was just another lowlife drifter as far as Kandhi could tell.
Drumming her fingers on the table, Kandhi voiced her greatest concern out loud.
"They thought it would be important,” she said to Zoey, who was forcing down the last of her pizza sticks, "to keep the capture channel open while in playback mode. They figured if it was simple raw playback it would not know how to handle new conditions. It might freeze up, you see?"
Zoey nodded, although she did not see at all. She had known of capture/playback devices before. They recorded data and replayed it in real time on demand. She had tested such applications, but the system under test had always been another machine. What was captured was data pure and simple; network traffic, for example, or digital impulse signals. That kind of device could be useful for more realistic simulations, although it never seemed to work out especially well. There were always exceptions and unforeseen dependencies. Usually the software was a bright idea that dulled perceptibly upon closer inspection. In other words, such products usually sucked.
"So they wanted it to be able to keep 'learning', as they put it. I thought this was a radically uncertain variable. Untestable for sure. They agreed to limit the channel at least, to filter out the known so it wouldn't overwrite the originally recorded patterns. Otherwise, how could you know what it had captured in the first place from what it was capturing later? If it was always recording, and always playing back, how would you know the difference?"
"I'd have some test cases just for that, if I had known,” said Zoey. "Provide the same stimulus repeatedly. Before, during, after, and after again. Record the results. Compare."
"True enough,” Kandhi said, "but how would you know when to stop testing?"
"You might not,” Zoey agreed. "Even if you got the same response the first ten times, you might not get it on time eleven."
"My point exactly,” Kandhi replied, now remembering a little of why she had hired Zoey on previous occasions. "And what if you never get the same results twice? It seemed to me the whole thing was set up to fail."
"I don't know even how you do it,” Zoey said.
"Circuitry,” Kandhi laughed. "That's what they tell me, anyway. I don't know how they do half the stuff they do. You see my You here? It's telepathic. Watch. I'll have it say something to you."
"I think I'll have the apple pie,” Zoey found herself saying, before realizing it was not her own thought. She hated apple pie.
"How did you do that?" she said next right away. Kandhi shrugged.
"You get used to it,” she told her. "The thing is talking to me all the time. I don't worry any more if it's my thoughts or not. It bo
nds to you, in any case. If it was your You, it would never tell you to do something that you wouldn't want to do."
She paused a moment for effect, and then said, laughing, "Or your money back, guaranteed!"
"But seriously,” she continued. "If it went into playback mode too soon, and this is what I think it did, then the test is already way out of control. We know it's posting as you on the socialnet sometimes. That's the only clue that we have, so don't go messing with your page, okay?"
"I won't,” Zoey promised. "I almost never use it anyway."
"And now this Leonora Wells person,” Kandhi mused, "I wonder what's it going to pick up from her?"
Seventeen
Leonora Wells was not in a hurry. She knew where she wanted to go, even if she didn't yet know exactly what she wanted to do. She sat at the picnic table at the rest area and watched the cars pull in, their drivers and passengers spill out and take their breaks, return and drive off again. She was waiting for one vehicle in particular, one she would know when she saw it. In the meantime, she felt a growing sense of something new, a feeling of potential power like she had never known before. She imagined that this must be how it felt to be a lioness about to spring on its oblivious prey. The sensation was growing stronger by the moment. Ideas were coming into her mind, thoughts of a variety previously inconceivable to her, as if she could know, at the snap of her fingers, everything there was to know about anybody she might pick at random.
Anything about them would suffice to bring results instantaneously to her mind - a license plate number, a name, a receipt that might fall from their jackets - any scrap of data would be enough to form a complete and perfect picture. She would know not only the person's name, address, telephone numbers and email addresses, but exactly how much cash they had in their wallet, where they were going and why, what she could say to evoke whatever response she desired. How to be omniscient. It seemed insane and partly she did not believe it, and yet she knew it was true, as if that little voice in the back of her mind was a mythical genii suddenly at her command. She had always followed her own little voice and it had never let her down before. She was tempted to try, and yet a little afraid that it might be true. She held her breath and then said, aloud,
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