by F X Holden
AJ must have looked a bit nonplussed because he quickly said, “I’d recommend you focus on two or three sights. I set aside six hours - then dinner if you like? Or I can leave you somewhere and we can arrange for the car to pick you up anytime for the drone port. It’s up to you – I’ve sent you my comms ID, in case.”
“Thanks, that’s awesome. I’m just thinking, it’s your Sunday…”
“Aren’t you nice? It’s my job. It’s 24/7 with Congressman Winter, he’s one of the guys on the Hill works the hardest, and so we do too. But he’s a nice guy with it. I get Thursdays off.” He looked down the corridor, “Look, I’ve got a couple things to finish before I head home and you need the bathroom, so…” he tapped the space between his eyebrows again. “I’m guessing you don’t need me to guide you back out of here?”
“That way?” AJ said, pointing the other way. “Right, left, right, lift three floors down, right and left to the doors.”
“Amazing,” William said, “You could give tours. See you tomorrow?”
“Looking forward to it.”
AJ went into the bathroom. Inside the stall he called Leon, “Hi Ma, it’s me. On my way out now.”
“Sounds like you in a men’s room or something?”
“Yeah.”
“You usually call your Ma from the john?”
“No.”
“Then don’t call me from the john either.” Leon hung up on him.
AJ had been drifting while he was on the john, trying to call up any public information he could find about the Congressman and his river adventure. There was nothing in any of the usual news archives. Which was strange, if there had been a police search, and the student, Farley’s parents, had made a fuss about it. He washed his hands and then stepped out into the corridor again to find it was empty. And unfamiliar.
Of course. He’d walked out the wrong door. He walked back in and chose what should be the right door. Wrong again. Seriously? That’s what happened when he relied on his bio-brain. But he’d already drifted twice since getting here, eating into his daily earnings. Dammit, ordinary citizens found their way around this stupid building without pulling schematics from the Core, he should be able to as well.
But William was right, the place was a maze, and cyber or not, without a starting reference he got just as easily lost as anyone else. In the end he found himself on the ground floor facing a fire exit and decided he’d had enough of the place. He pushed the door open, not caring if it set off an alarm, and walked into a narrow alleyway. He looked up at the city dome high above, and the Skycap beyond it, getting dark with rainclouds now. It was coming in cooler, but not too cold.
He hefted his pack over his shoulder, a little less bulky now without the document roll inside it. He checked his tourist map to get his bearings and point himself at the hotel, and started walking. As he was walking, he felt his comms buzzing in his ear and keyed the mike.
“Hi Ma.”
“OK, I got eyes on the front door and there are some very conspicuously inconspicuous citizens hanging around out here. You can bet they’ll be tailing your ass away from here. When you come out …”
“I’m already out,” he said.
“You what?”
“I got a bit turned around, went out a fire exit. I’m halfway to the hotel now.”
Leon took a moment to catch on. “OK, this is good. You say a hotel, you mean the hotel they booked for you?”
“Yeah, three blocks from here. Capitol Hill.” AJ was walking faster now, and realized his shoulders were hunched at the idea someone might be following him. He wanted to turn around and look, but knew he shouldn’t.
“OK. Look AJ, I don’t like how it seems they’ve got a team out here waiting for you… Yeah, they getting all agitated now, since you didn’t come out like they planned you would. They probably got someone at that hotel waiting too, just in case you gave them the slip, like you did. Can you find somewhere to grab a juice or a coffee or something? I just need a minute or two to think about this, move some things around.”
AJ looked up and down the street, saw a place where he could stop a while, “Yeah, alright.”
“OK, you got that? Just a coffee or glass of water, say ten minutes. Then I’ll get you back on the street.” AJ thought he was going to click off, then he said urgently, “And AJ, how long can you go, before you have to auto-drift?”
AJ checked his status, “Drifted back inside that building. Just made an auto-drift. So another twenty minutes, why?”
“I’m betting they’re lazy. They don’t need drones all over you if they got a tag on your drift status. Soon as you drift, it pings them your location anyway. So don’t, until you have to, alright?”
“OK, we going to meet for dinner?”
“No we aint going to meet for dinner AJ. I’m not your date.” He hung up.
AJ wondered if bringing Leon was such a good idea now. Would something like this tip him into a relapse or whatever? It couldn’t be good if you suffer from anxiety attacks and sleeplessness, creeping around the Capitol, following a guy to see if he was being followed, trying to keep him safe. But it was happening now, and the meeting with Winter seemed to have gone well, so he would just roll with it.
He went into the nearest café. It was the automated kind, you just ordered at your table and stuff was delivered through a slot in the wall. It probably only got cleaned once a day, judging by the number of cups still sitting around, but there was a discount if you put away your own tray and crockery and utensils, which it seemed most people did. The Capitol was colder, like they said. He sat warming his hands on his cup and reviewing the conversation with the Congressman.
He felt the meeting had gone OK. Winter had said he would find a way to keep AJ right out of it, so AJ had got what he wanted, right? That McMaster guy looked more like personal security than an ‘executive assistant’ but he was right about Warnecke, if the guy was going around threatening to kill himself, then he probably needed to be somewhere a bit more secure than Sol Vista. Somewhere he couldn’t hurt himself, or anyone else. And it would suit AJ just fine, if Winter’s people could talk to Warnecke’s family, get him moved somewhere else. Sol Vista would be Sol Vista again.
The FO Exploit? Use the Core to attack the Core … yeah, no. Like Winter said, crazy ideas, coincidences and speculations cooked into a conspiracy stew.
And Winter’s version of the rafting story. That kind of made sense. Probably him and Warnecke did have a fight about whether to stay by the river or keep going and maybe Warnecke wanted to stay longer, and Winter wanted to go, and Warnecke felt bad about how they left that guy Farley alone and went downriver and he blamed himself for it, blamed Winter for it too. It sure would have sucked, if Warnecke was right. If that kid Farley had tried to walk out, got lost, made it back to the river hoping his buddies would still be there, and they were gone. He hasn’t eaten for days, he’s hungry and wet and all alone on the shore there in the middle of the Inland Territory, no one in sight. What’s he going to do? Stay put and starve on the river bank, or try to look for shelter? AJ ran some scenarios on the options, decided what he would have done. He’d be looking for food. Maybe a fish if you had a way to trap one, maybe dig down under the snow and ice, find some edible lichens. AJ was no survivalist, and out on the ice like that, there’d be no easy way to drift, but he’d seen the nature shows. There were ice beavers on that river. If you watched them, they’d lead you to fish. But it took five days for Warnecke and Winter to get downriver and another day for the search to start. By then, Farley was nearly a week without food – anything could have happened to him. Fallen in the river and drowned, fell down a crevasse in the ice, got taken by a grizzly.
And if that was AJ’s buddy, his college friend, and he let that happen when he could have done something different, yeah, that would eat away at his conscience too. He totally got Warnecke’s side of it, but Winter was more pragmatic, he was like, yeah, we could have stayed, but we didn’t. We don’t know if
that would have made any difference and we can’t change it, so what’s the point in beating yourself up about it. AJ wouldn’t have made that call, but he totally got that perspective too.
AJ could see how if you let that eat away at you for forty years, you could really build up a head of steam about it, maybe even let it unbalance you. Warnecke gave off that vibe, like he was obsessed about this thing, writing conspiracy theories supposedly pulled from the Deep Core by his dead friend’s code, threatening to go public.
He looked at his watch. He’d been in the café nearly fifteen minutes now. He had to drift within the next five or it would happen automatically anyway. He picked up his pack, pulled it over his shoulder and let himself out of the café. He went outside and stood outside under a big silver awning, looking left and right up the street both ways. No Leon. He got on his comms and called him.
“Hey,” he said, remembered Leon told him not to keep saying ‘Ma’ every time.
“Hey,” Leon replied. “I was just about to call. I got an option for you. Had it already set up, just needed to move the timetable forward,” Leon said.
“What option?” AJ asked.
“An option,” Leon said. “Just listen to me like we agreed. What’s your location?”
AJ told him. “What now?”
“OK, turn to your left and start walking. You hit Penn Avenue, take a right and keep walking.”
AJ pulled his pack tighter and began walking. Confused.
“Why aren’t I going to my hotel?” he asked. “Won’t that just make them suspicious? And won’t they just find me as soon as I drift anyway?”
“How was your meeting AJ?”
“Uh, it was good. They’re going to take care of Warnecke.”
“I bet they are.”
“No, I mean, in the right way. Get him help, keep me out of it.”
“So you feeling pretty good right now? Got a warm fuzzy vibe going, everything going to be cruisy now.”
“Pretty much.”
“That’s how they want you to feel mano. Because when you feel safe and warm and cozy, that’s when you most vulnerable. Leon going to get you safe.”
“Come on Leon, you’re making this … right on Penn?”
“Yeah, turn right there. I’m getting myself behind you, I’m maybe about half a block away. You’re going to walk about another two blocks. The Capitol Diner on your right, I’ll tell you when you’re close.”
“OK … I appreciate you got my back, alright? But I really think this is going to be OK now.” As he spoke, he saw a drift notification on his cortex. If Leon was right, Winter and his people now knew where he was.
“Uh huh. You just do what Leon says, and it will be. Like we agreed.”
“OK.”
“Call you when you’re close to the diner.”
Was he right? Leon had AJ looking around him again now at the faces on the street, people standing in doorways, people like him, mostly people out meeting friends or hurrying through the cold, looking for somewhere to eat. He went through a square, walked a couple of blocks more. The buildings changed from offices to big solid brown-stone apartments, glowing solar chargers in different colors along the avenue, re-radiating stored light. After three blocks his comms buzzed. “OK, you got the diner coming up on your right. Cross the road now.”
“Now?”
“Now man.”
AJ stopped, waited for traffic, hustled across the broad avenue. It was Sunday night, traffic was pretty light.
“Why did I cross the road if the diner is back on the side I came from?”
“I want to see something. OK, when you get opposite the diner, look over, cross back and go up to the window. Stop outside, look in the window, then go in. But keep your comms open now alright, I want you to see something.”
“See what?”
“Tell you when you get there. Just keep the line open but say nothing. You can cross back over the street any time now.”
“OK.”
He saw lights ahead, garish and flashing, like a liquor store. “Is that it coming up now?”
“Past the convenience store, one door,” Leon said. “Just hang by the window a minute. Like you’re thinking OK, maybe this place, maybe not. It’s got table service, probably a bit pricy.”
“OK.”
He went back across the avenue, got to the diner. It looked pretty ordinary, a few people inside, red booths, black stools up by the counter. Chicken, burger and beer kind of place, he guessed. But yeah, the owner was in attendance, sitting on her stool behind a counter. There was a menu in the window, so he made out he was reading.
“OK,” Leon said in his ear. “You’re going to go inside, sit down so you can see the door. And this is what is going to happen. About two minutes after you do, this nice couple, mid-thirties, they’re going to walk in behind you and take a seat where they can see you.”
“OK, are they with you? This sounds like overkill Leon.”
“Just go in, sit where you can see the door. Listen, and don’t talk.”
AJ went to the door and pushed on it. It rang a little bell as he went in, and he said hi to the owner as he stepped inside. She looked up as he came in, “With you in a second hon,” she called. “Sit anywhere. Order on the table. My chocolate chili is a taste-bomb.” She looked a bit like his Ma, when she was fifty. He liked places where the owners were there, being social, changing the menu up with their own recipes. They were worth the higher prices.
He threw his pack into the corner of a booth and slid his ass onto the seat so he was facing the door.
“OK they coming in, they coming … should be, anytime,” Leon said. “Pull up a menu or something.”
AJ saw a couple of shapes through the frosted glass of the door and studied the menu displayed on the tabletop between condiment bottles and napkins. Over the top of them he saw the door open and the little bell ring. A smiling, chatting couple came in. They were mid-30s, she had on a light wind jacket, had soft brown hair, slim fitting trousers, looked like she was dark skinned under all her clothes; he was dressed in a puffy jacket, fur collar, light trousers with multiple pockets and blew on his hands as he walked in, like he was cold. They were talking as they walked past AJ; he heard something about school. Maybe talking about their kids? He heard them settle into a booth about two back behind him.
Leon’s voice in his ear, “So now you’re thinking to yourself, OK, are they Leon’s people? But they aint. They look like nice normal people though don’t they, so what’s the big deal Leon? You trying to scare me? But you’re asking yourself the wrong questions. The question you should be asking is, hey, how did Leon know those two random people were going to come into this diner. Two random people walking along Penn Avenue, how did Leon know they would go right into the same diner as AJ?”
AJ did want to know. He wanted to ask, but he kept quiet, just looking at his menu, not seeing the words. The owner came over and he said loudly, so Leon could hear, “Hi, can I get the pancakes with chicken bacon instead of syrup? And some juice?”
“Sure hon,” she said. “You look cold. You want coffee with that? On the house?”
“That’d be nice, thanks.”
Leon heard him talking and spoke again, “Good, you just eat while I talk you through it. See, because that nice couple, they were outside the Congressman’s office, trying to look like they was sightseeing. You didn’t come out, suddenly they’re approached by two other folks. That don’t mean anything, it’s a nice clear night, people going out to eat maybe. But then they jump in a car and they’re driving around and around and suddenly, ping. I’m guessing you drifted. Their car makes a beeline for this street and these two jump out about two hundred yards behind you. Coincidence? Maybe. That’s why I got you to cross the road. See their reaction. Do they keep walking and talking and having a nice time? You run across the road there, and what do they do? They stop up. One of them is looking at you, the other one is making like he’s looking at his comms, maybe checki
ng a map, but he’s watching you. Now they got to decide, do they follow you across the road? They walk to the curb, but then you come back over again. OK, cool, you were just a bit lost maybe, they just fall in behind you. So now they’re three blocks from where they left their car and there is no reason in this freezing cold world you would leave a nice warm car then walk three blocks in this sketchy part of town. It aint that nice a night for walking. Then my pal AJ goes into the diner and that was the real test, are they going to follow him in? Apparently they are.” He paused, “You getting my meaning here AJ?”
“I guess.”
“OK mano. They got a watch on your drift status, they probably got your personal comms tapped which won’t do them much good, seeing as you aint using that. If they just want to see if you’re meeting up with someone else, a drone could do it. Why would they need a team of at least four citizens running around behind you, AJ?”
“Physical intervention,” AJ said. “I think you called it.”
“Exactly. Otherwise known to the layman as kidnapping, assault, or just plain assassination.” Then he apparently realized how that might spook AJ and he continued. “Doesn’t mean they’re actively planning it already, but they’ve got the option in play, probably waiting on the word from your new friend Winter.”
“So what do we do?”
“As long as we stay in this town, we’re playing by their rules,” he said. “So, we need to change the rules. Now eat your pancakes until your next drift. Which is when?”
AJ checked his status again, “Five minutes, or the one after that, 25.”
“We’ll go for 25. And when I say move, you move. We can’t lose them now, but we can confuse them, long enough to get you safe.”