by F X Holden
“So I can tell Warnecke I need Winter’s private ID, if I’m going to go to him direct.”
“Yeah, tell him you don’t want to take this up the line the normal way, you want to take it direct to Winter.”
AJ thought about it. “That feeds his fantasy. That’s like playing along with the idea I am what he said I am, put here to spy on him.”
Leon shrugged, “You got some other way to get a Congressman’s private comms ID, I’m waiting to hear it.”
Warnecke didn’t even blink when AJ asked for Winter’s contact details. He was pissed though, that AJ was still sitting on the paper, that he hadn’t already taken it to Winter. He looked up the ID via his earbud and read it out to AJ.
“Delete that from your cache when you’re done. Now do your damn job,” he said to AJ. “He’s paying you to protect him isn’t he? So protect him.”
It was a Remote Destruct ID. The privilege of only the rich and powerful, it meant the owner could send a signal back down a comms connection to autodelete all the data in a caller’s device and brick it, if they felt like it. It was meant as a defense against unauthorized callers, stalking or harassment, but the Remote Destruct ID prefix was also a potent deterrent against any unsolicited call.
AJ set his comms earpiece to broadcast over the workshop sound system, and felt like he was about to start the timer on a bomb. Leon nodded, and he eye-tapped the ID in and hit connect. He expected it to be answered by some aide or A.I., so when it picked up and he recognized the voice as the one belonging to the man who’d called on Warnecke at Sol Vista a week ago, he kind of froze up.
“Hello, who is this?” The guy took it on audio only, so maybe he was in a private meeting.
AJ suddenly forgot what he was going to say. Except, of course he didn’t – a cyber didn’t freeze – but the range of options backed up behind his speech restraint like logs jammed on a river and he couldn’t pick one out before the Congressman was speaking again.
“Look, I don’t usually take calls from IDs I don’t recognize, so you better speak up unless you want your device bricked,” Winter said.
“Uh, hello Congressman Winter,” AJ said. “You don’t know me but I…”
“Well, we already established that, son,” Winter said, being patient with it. “But someone gave you this ID. And you had the balls to call it. So you got five seconds to get to how I can help you.”
“Ok, sorry. I’m calling from the Sol Vista Community for the Memory Impaired,” AJ said.
“Sol Vista… has something happened to Dave?” Winter asked. He didn’t sound scared or worried, but he did sound curious. AJ figured he might have a million reasons to be.
“No, he’s … the same,” AJ said. “This is more of a personal call. I’m just the maintenance tech at Sol Vista.”
“OK,” Winter said, and AJ could hear muffled talk in the background, like someone else was talking to Winter at the same time.
“We met, actually, when you were down last week visiting, my name is AJ.”
“The cyber right? Of course, I remember. Look AJ, does Dave need anything? I mean, I’m not family, but if I can do anything, you just let me know.” He sounded like he was in a hurry.
“I think he plans to kill himself,” AJ said. He and Leon had agreed this was the best angle, play it like AJ was worried about Warnecke, that’s all. Let the business with the doomsday page come up later.
“My God,” Winter said. “Shut the hell up will you?”
“Sorry?” AJ said.
“No, not you son,” Winter said. “I’m in a car with some people, I just asked them to pipe down. He’s threatened to kill himself you say?”
“Yes sir,” AJ said. “He has a gun, he’s told me he’ll use it.”
There was silence at the other end, then Winter asked, “Have you gone to the police with this?”
“No sir, he asked me to contact you, so I called you straight away.”
“Good, good. You did the right thing. And his family?”
“Not yet,” AJ said. “He didn’t ask me to contact them.”
“He wouldn’t,” Winter said, sounding bitter. “Look, let’s keep them out of it. Police too. This isn’t the first time he’s been like this.”
“No? OK.” That news didn’t surprise AJ.
“What about your management there, have you reported this officially?”
“I thought I’d call you first sir,” AJ lied again. “It seemed kind of personal.”
Winter laughed a dry laugh, “Personal. You could say. Look you did the right thing. Can we keep this between us for now? Let me think how to handle it. I think I need to talk to him.”
“Yes sir,” AJ said, getting his next words lined up. “But before you call him…”
“Yes, I’ll call him, but first I’ll see if we can’t get the guy some extra help organized. No offense to whatever A.I. capacity you have there at Sunny Vales. Then I’ll call him…”
AJ interrupted, “No sir. Before you call him. The reason I think this is something personal between you and him…”
There was a stiff silence at the other end of the comms.
“… he gave me this printed document, or an extract from it. It’s some kind of conspiracy theory. He said to tell you he’s kept multiple copies off-Core and he wants that I should deliver it to you. In person. He doesn’t want it on-Core.”
“This document, you’ve read it?” Winter asked.
“Yes sir. It’s something about a cover-up from 70 years ago, and it claims he pulled it from the Deep Core – but that’s impossible isn’t it?”
“Son, the Core protects its data as fiercely as a mother protects her children,” Winter said. “It updates its defenses hundreds of times a second, disperses the data across billions of data sets and encrypts each with discrete, randomly mutating quantum keys. Even if a hacker managed a Deep Core dive, there would be no way to reassemble the data they found into anything like its coherent form. In two hundred years it has never been hacked, not once. If it could be, our entire civilization would be at risk, so yes, it’s impossible.”
AJ sighed with relief, “That’s what I thought. So Citizen Warnecke is just delusional?”
“That would be my layman diagnosis. Hold there will you?” Winter asked. There was some muffled discussion, then he came back, “AJ was it? How close are you to a drone port AJ?” His voice was cool, but he kept it polite. AJ didn’t always get that from citizens. Maybe politicians were different somehow – he’d never interacted with one.
“I have South Coast City Transcontinental about thirty minutes away,” AJ told him.
“And how soon could you get on a drone to the Capitol?”
“Well, it’s the weekend tomorrow, so I guess I could take off work on Monday…”
“You got some religious thing, you can’t fly on Saturdays?” Winter asked.
“No sir.”
“Good. AJ, I’d consider it a great personal favor if you would come over here tomorrow with that document. I’ll fix the flight for you and send the details to your earbud. Would you do that for me?”
AJ looked at Leon, who was listening in. Leon wrote on a note: See how bad he wants you there.
AJ stalled, “I don’t know sir, it’s kind of inconvenient…”
“A big personal favor, AJ. I am a man who remembers such things,” Winter said. “So I’ll send you details of the flight, you just have to get yourself to that drone port. I’ll organize a car and a return flight for you here, have you home again sometime Saturday night AJ, how’s that?”
Leon gave him a thumbs up. “That would be OK, I guess,” AJ said, thinking what? What am I doing?
“Or hey, where are my manners?” Winter said, suddenly laying it on. “You ever been here before AJ?”
“Never been to the Capitol sir,” AJ said, truthfully.
“Then how about this, I’ll see you Saturday when you get in. We can meet at my office and then I’ll get one of my people to show you a f
ew of the sights. Put you up at a nice hotel here, you can have a night in the Capitol, go back home Sunday. Give me time to work out what we’re going do about Dave that way too.”
AJ looked at Leon, who was nodding. “That sounds cool, sir,” he said.
“You call me Kevin,” Winter said. “Let’s keep things personal. I look forward to seeing you here tomorrow AJ.” And he cut the line.
7. BETTER THE LEON YOU KNOW
AJ sat just looking at Leon.
“Damn. This is some heavy duty guano, mano,” Leon said.
“I told you,” AJ said.
“Serious, military-grade messed up - did you hear the guy?”
“I know.”
“You mention that document, he just about pops a cog, wants you on the first drone to the Capitol.”
“I know.”
“Oh, but he’s going to give you a personal tour guide, show you around.”
“I’m not going.”
“Nice little intern maybe, take you to dinner, you play it right, lay on that surfer boy charm, maybe she get you naked, rub some oil into your tanned South Coast City ass…” Leon said, warming up, then realized what AJ had said. “What you talking about?”
“I had in my head that he would come here,” AJ said. “He and Warnecke would have a meet, sort out their business. Nothing to do with me.”
“But he aint coming here is he?” Leon told him. “And he doesn’t want you to send him that document over the Core either, which is interesting. I’m guessing he wants to look you in the eye, wants you on his turf where he can work this the way he wants it, not the way our man Warnecke wants it.”
“Cool. But I am not getting on a drone to the Capitol on my own tomorrow.”
Leon narrowed his eyes, “Oh, that’s it.”
“What?”
“You’re afraid of getting in the big metal flying machine?”
“No.”
“You’re afraid of flying alone? Need Leon with you maybe, to hold your hand.”
“No, forget that. But me going across the icecap to the Capitol to meet up with a Congressman about the conspiracy theories of some crazy guy with a gun, that isn’t happening.”
“Oh yeah. You are worried about it. And you should be.” Leon says, leaning forward. “We don’t know how messed up this all is. You heard that guy? 'Give me time to work out what we’re going to do about Dave?' He’s considering his options, that Congressman, and you can bet it isn’t Warnecke’s health and welfare is going to be driving his decisions.”
“I got that feeling too.”
“And right now, you are nothing to this guy. You’re prey, running from a sudden noise, but you’re probably running straight toward a hunter hiding in a blind.”
AJ looked at him, “Thanks for that Leon.”
“But mano, you aint alone, I keep telling you that, but you keep not hearing it.”
“Thanks Leon, but I don’t see how that helps right now.”
“OK, well. You’ll see tomorrow, when you see my fat ass sitting up back in the same drone as you, making out I don’t know you.”
Later that evening, AJ got a message telling him there would be a ticket waiting for him at the Intercontinental Drones ticket office for an 0800 flight to the Capitol, and a return booked for the following evening that would get him back to South Coast City before midnight. A concierge would meet him at arrivals and get him transport to the Congressman’s office. He should pack a heavy-duty thermal; the Capitol was colder this time of year than South Coast City, even inside its dome. He sent the flight details on to Leon.
“Wow, when you move on something, you move,” Cassie said when AJ called her, whistling. “You just called up the Congressman, got yourself a flight to The Capitol. Just like that?”
“Not quite how it went, but yeah.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“I go over there, give him the document from Warnecke and ask him to keep me right out of it. I come back home, I tell Warnecke I did what he asked, tell him I’m not working for Winter anymore and I expect him to leave me alone too. Make some deal with Cyan that Leon can cover any jobs Warnecke needs done, so I hardly need to see him ever. The fact he complained about me, that should be a good enough reason for Cyan.”
“I get the idea you want to be left alone,” Cassie said playfully.
“Yeah, not by everyone. Just by them,” AJ replied.
Cassie told him she had used her media archive access at the broadcast station to look up the names in Warnecke’s document. The scientists whose flight to Orkutsk had supposedly been sabotaged.
“It’s real,” she said. “I found a news report from 73 years ago. The ship was called The Reliant, and it detonated on impact with space debris between Tatsensui and Orkutsk. Two hundred twenty lives lost, including our scientists.”
“So, he used a random event to make his conspiracy look legitimate,” AJ said.
“They were all medical researchers,” she pointed out. “Radiologists. Just like he said.”
“He built the story to fit the facts,” AJ insisted. “Making it plausible.”
“I tried to find their earlier research,” she said. “Publications, academic transcripts. There’s basically nothing in the archives for the two years leading up to the crash.”
AJ wasn’t giving up, “Glitch. Or coincidence.”
“Uh huh,” she said, clearly not convinced. “I also wanted to see how Congressman Kevin Winter was linked to Citizen Dave Warnecke. Luckily the Congressman’s employment and educational history is public information.
“Both studied at College together. Winter did a bachelor in theoretical quantum mechanics and then a PhD in quantum programming. I looked up Warnecke’s school record too. He was studying quantum programming with Winter, but changed track to become an engineer instead.”
“Quantum programming to mechanical engineer. From coding AIs to racing planers, that’s quite a career change.”
“Dropped out right before his doctoral defense,” she said. “Do all that work and then walk away from it? I’d like to know why.”
AJ wasn’t sure he wanted to show that much interest in Warnecke. “His claim about Blue not working in everyone? Any link to Winter in there? Like he was a Health Secretary or something before he took over National Security?”
“Zero, that I could see. He was on a few finance committees, Secretary for Inland Territory Relations, Secretary for Commonwealth Relations, and now National Security. If there’s a link to this alleged cover-up, I can’t see it. So maybe it’s nothing and your friend Warnecke is just a paranoid old man all het up about nothing.”
“Or Winter has his secrets buried where your press credentials don’t reach.”
“My credentials go deep baby,” she bragged. “But it’s possible. So when are you back?”
“Sunday, midnight?”
“Want to meet up?”
“Midnight Sunday?” he asked. “You serious? Don’t you ever sleep?”
“I’ll pick you up at the drone port,” she said. “You can tell me everything. You’ll still get your beauty sleep, I promise.”
He smiled, “You’ll pick me up. You bringing a car out or we going to skate home?”
“So funny.”
Leon had never told AJ what he did in the military, and AJ had never asked. He figured the guy’s service was his private business and if he didn’t want to talk about it, well, that made perfect sense to AJ, considering what AJ had heard about the war on New Syberia. Guy had issues from his service in the NS war, that was a fact. The problem he shared most with AJ was he couldn’t sleep, that was the worst. Whole nights he’d go without an hour of sleep, just lying there thinking, worrying. Only way to break the cycle was to take mega tranqs to knock himself out, but he didn’t like doing that too often because you could get tolerant and eventually couldn’t sleep at all, even if you used them. It would be OK if he could catch up on the sleep, like sneak a few hours during the day, but it didn’t
work that way. He just couldn’t sleep, finito. He’d made a deal with Cyan and his rehab officer that he’d get some help from a psych A.I., and meanwhile, Sol Vista would only pay him for the hours he actually worked. So AJ covered for him, including the times he was at work, but not really capable.
But the way Leon talked as they planned the Capitol trip, AJ got the idea Leon had been some kind of spook, or he’d worked with them.
“I’m just going to be your shadow,” Leon said. “Way it works, you don’t know me, you don’t recognize me, don’t even look at me, OK? But I’ll be there for you wherever you go, so you can feel safe.”
“I’m just going there to talk, Leon,” AJ said.
“That’s what you think you’re doing,” Leon told him. “But you don’t know what they’re thinking. I’m going to paint a scenario for you OK, and I don’t want you to freak out.”
“OK.”
“Surfer dude, you so laid back, you thinking this is all going to work out and yeah, probably it will. But there’s a scenario goes like this: this Congressman is sitting there in the Capitol right now, wetting his blue suit pants. What’s in that document, and he doesn’t know yet exactly what’s in there, but say it’s bad. It could kill his career, wreck his life. You? You are nobody. Nobody, mano, you got to understand that. You are a zero to him. Right now, he’s got someone running your background. You told him all he needs to know - your name is AJ, you’re a cyber, you work at Sol Vista. He’s got people can run your ID, get your financial records, credit history, comms data, they see your whole life story inside an hour. What’s he going to see?”
“I don’t know. Nothing.”
“Exactly. No offense my man, but you really are nobody. You been living the happy, carefree life until now. Normal high school, good college grades, no problems, no serious connections either. Surfing, working. No partner, no dependents. You still got family?”
“Yeah, my Ma is about seventy,” AJ said. “No brothers or sisters.”
“So she’s an old lady, probably also a nobody. Yeah, don’t look so angry, I said it. She somebody to you, but to them she is nothing. They look at you, they see a guy could disappear tomorrow and all his friends be like, couple weeks from now, ‘Hey, anyone seen AJ lately? Can you believe the guy just left town without saying goodbye?’ You know anyone else would call the police, make a fuss about you?”