Dreams Unleashed

by Linda Hawley

“Stay safe.”

  Chapter 26

  BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON

  The Year 2015

  I drove to Marine Park at the edge of Fairhaven. Marine Park was located right on Bellingham’s bay, and I liked to sit in my car and watch the water. The sea always relaxed me, and I thought it was a peaceful and secluded place to remote view.

  Pushing back my seat, I put the clipboard and pencil in my lap and felt the Herkimer that was suspended from my neck. I looked at the coordinates on the paper in front of me, studying the information until I had it memorized. I took a deep breath and began to visualize what I was going to do.

  Ann, it’s just like when you try to remember where you might have left your car keys. It’s that easy, I coached myself.

  With a clean sheet on the clipboard in front, I began my TM ritual. I then followed it with the remote viewing.

  I could see a four-lane highway dead-end into a mountainside cave. Catty-corner was an enormous paved parking lot; it was at least two acres in size. The parking lot was a staging area for building materials. Obviously, something was being built inside the cave. There was also a helipad painted on the lot off to one side. At the cave’s entrance, there was a huge arched tunnel with massive stone and steel doors. The doors were closed.

  Inside was a self-contained government facility, equipped with its own geothermal power generator. There were bunking rooms, food storage, and an indoor greenhouse to grow food. Clearly, the facility was intended to remain running 24/7 and was protected from outside harm.

  Inside the gigantic cave, there were two digital media rooms, where the RFID storage array networks were housed. One storage array was for live data, and the other was a mirror of the original database. The second was an emergency machine, used to restore the original data if something corrupted it. The network arrays were nearly perfect; they were isolated from the main database, and information would flow at the speed of light from the data center to this media room.

  I began to look inside the RFID array to find a root directory. After finding the root directory, I saw the sub-directory named privacy.

  Only since the computer revolution had mankind been able to store so much information and make it instantly retrievable. It was a plague that would continue to hinder personal freedom for years to come.

  The privacy folder listed a multitude of indexes and folders that stored all the RFID and personal tracking data the government had collected; it was all there. I saw the privacy folder, then I visualized each record as it was stored on the underlying disk drives, as digital zeros and ones. I had captured the actual storage ability in my mind. Each 0 and 1 represented information stored on the physical location of a magnetic drive that could be turned off, which was represented by a 0, or turned on, which was represented by a 1.

  I started with the indexes, visualizing compressing the 0’s and 1’s together, until I saw them burst together in a brilliant flash of light. I imagined the light creating its own magnetic field that would jumble up each bit of information with random data. Doing this would not do any physical harm to the disk array; but as far as the actual information went, it would be utterly catastrophic and completely unrecoverable.

  This first step destroyed the indexes. I did the same for all the data files in the subdirectories. I followed that action with a cataclysmic destruction of the disk file control block. This was the gem that held the file permissions for the disk drive. I changed all permissions on the disk to read-only, which allowed me to erase the backup nodes before the database automatically tried to restore the corrupt data.

  I then moved into the second room, which held the backup storage array. This room, like the one before it, was small and enclosed in concrete, which made it fireproof and also protected it from most disasters. It reminded me of the catacombs under the thirteenth-century monasteries and how monks would keep their manuscripts safe there.

  I refocused. The data architect would have an exact copy of the RFID data on the storage array in this room. This redundant system gave the government 99.99 percent reliability that the RFID data would always be available. This was an online backup. I destroyed it just as I had the primary data system.

  Done.

  This left one last place to go–the Canadian National Archives. They would have the tape copies there for off-site storage of all digital records for Canada.

  I visualized the directories saved on tape and, with a flash in my mind, jumbled all the data on the tapes. They were now useless. I couldn’t help but smile.

  Coming out of the remote viewing, I immediately made the connection between the data bursting in flashes of magnetic light to watching the Fourth of July fireworks as a kid. I remembered all of us with our ooohs and ahhhs each time they burst.

  This was my own Canadian Independence Day. I hoped it worked.

  Chapter 27

  BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON

  The Year 2015

  I awoke in a daze. It was Monday morning.

  “Sinéad, give me the CNN news.”

  “Yesterday, President Obama gave a speech at the University of Washington about a new energy bill that he will present to Congress to greatly reduce our reliance on foreign oil…”

  Didn’t he say that in 2011? I thought, blinking myself awake.

  “…He also agreed to temporarily increase the quota for…”

  “Stop. Sinéad, give me the news for Canada.”

  “The new prime minister of Canada has announced that he will back a Family Care Plan to bring Canadians back to its liberal ideals. There is some breaking news also from British Columbia, but sources have yet to confirm it…”

  “Stop. Sinéad, tell me everything about the breaking news.”

  “The driver’s licensing offices have all closed their doors in B.C., giving the cause as a power disruption, but it’s all driver’s licensing offices across the Province. Also, the Passport Canada offices closed their doors today, giving a power outage as the cause…”

  “Stop.”

  I bolted upright in my bed.

  “That’s for you, Shorty.”

  Pulling the covers aside, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, stepping down onto the floor.

  “Woohoo!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

  Lulu charged in the bedroom, barking.

  “Woohoo, woohoo, woohoo!” I shouted. “Baby, you would have been proud of me,” I said aloud to Armond.

  Lulu barked some more.

  I was filled with unbridled elation. It was a victory for GOG, Shorty, and all Canadian citizens.

  Dashing into the kitchen, I grabbed some beef from the freezer, defrosted it in the microwave, and cooked it up for Lulu as a special treat. I made myself buttermilk waffles. We sat on the floor and had a party, celebrating my victory, basking in the joy of not only what I had done, but also what I was now capable of. Maybe I wasn’t just a weapon to the U.S. government; maybe I was a weapon for the good of mankind, to help bring personal liberty back. Maybe I could be a force for good.

  “Ann, it’s eight forty-five,” Sinéad warned me.

  “Oh man–I gotta get ready for work,” I exclaimed, shooting up from the floor.

  At ten was an all-hands meeting with Bennett and department heads. After quickly showering, I headed to my closet to throw some clothes on.

  Delight enveloped me on my drive to work, as I thought about my accomplishment.

  By nine-thirty, I was at my desk–only a half-hour late. Bennett agreed to my working flextime, so the time I arrived didn’t really matter. When I came down The 1910’s stairs, I noticed that Paul was not at his desk, nor was Edwin. Edwin had never been late (that I knew of) in the three years he’d worked at AlterHydro, so that was odd.

  After checking my voicemail and email, I grabbed a pen and paper and headed up to the meeting. Lulu stayed in her bed. As I came in the door, both Edwin and Paul followed me in, having just arrived.

  Remembering our closeness at my house, I couldn’t help bu
t be happy. That combined with my remote viewing achievement…it was almost hard for me to think straight. I sat down at the conference table, and Paul sat down next to me. I said hello to him, trying my best to keep our co-worker boundary.

  The conference room contained an oblong table surrounded by ten chairs. The head of the table was open, and there was a laptop set up. Someone would be presenting. I said hello to all the department heads and others there. Raymond sat on the other side of me, and I chitchatted with him about his family.

  Suddenly Bennett and his brother came into the room together. Bennett greeted everyone and gave me a nod.

  He definitely has a thing for me.

  I wanted to laugh out loud and say, “Not a chance,” but I just smiled back at him. His brother didn’t say a thing, except to nod at Paul, then greet the person next to him.

  “Thanks everyone for being here on time,” Bennett started.

  As I prepared myself for an hour of boredom, Paul pressed his knee to mine under the table. I took my foot and slowly smashed it against his foot as hard as I could, intending to send him a message to knock it off at work. From the corner of my eye, I saw him wince, then smile. He got the message.

  Even though I had the live wire next to me, I was able to focus on Bennett’s presentation, answering questions that Bennett had about the technical manual and Brock’s confrontational questions about the manual’s completion schedule.

  My mind kept drifting back to the Canadian RFID destruction. It still blew my mind that I could remote view, changing reality. I was pondering this when Bennett asked a question. I realized everyone was looking at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  I then turned my head toward my boss.

  “You must not have heard me, Ann.”

  “I’m sorry, Bennett, I was working through something in the manual in my head.”

  Brock snickered.

  Jerk.

  “I asked whether the specs for the testing were back from China.”

  “Oh, yes, I just got them in email late last week. After I correct the English, it’ll be ready for Edwin.”

  “When will that be?”

  “I can move that project up and have it ready for him by tomorrow, if that’ll work.”

  “Great,” Bennett responded with a smile.

  I nodded.

  The meeting continued, and we finished up at eleven-thirty, when Bennett said that he was treating us to pizza at La Fiamma.

  Mmm. I love their pizza with smoked salmon and roasted garlic.

  Bennett advised everyone to meet there at noon.

  Chapter 28

  BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON

  The Year 2015

  The doorbell rang at exactly seven PM.

  I opened the door, and immediately a hand holding a bouquet of wildflowers slid through.

  “I’m sorry for…I’m sorry for the public affection,” Paul grinned, a little sheepishly.

  I had to laugh. “You’re forgiven,” I responded.

  He gave me a big smile.

  “You’re easy,” he gushed, happy about my forgiveness.

  “I wasn’t really mad. I just wanted to let you know that when we’re at work, I need to focus on work, not you.”

  “My foot still hurts,” he said, feigning a limp.

  I smacked him playfully on the shoulder.

  “I gotta tell you, Paul, I really like it that you’re on time.”

  “Thank you. Did you love that pizza today, or what?” he asked, stepping inside.

  “Yes. I’m salivating right now, thinking of it.”

  “So, what are we eating tonight?” Paul asked.

  “Pizza.”

  “Pizza?” he asked.

  I tried not to laugh at his disappointed expression. “Just kidding…I was thinking about cooking up some steaks and asparagus on the grill, and I was going to make some sea scallops for appetizers. I thought we’d have a tossed salad with the steaks. How does that sound?”

  “Now I’m salivating,” he responded cheerfully. “What can I help you with?”

  “Are you a guy who grills?”

  “I was made to grill.”

  I laughed. I gave him the marinated steaks, tongs, and asparagus, and sent him to the back patio.

  “Sinéad, play a U2 mix.”

  “Isn’t Sinéad gonna be jealous you’re not playing her music?” he asked, calling over his shoulder.

  I chuckled. I never thought of that.

  Paul finished grilling, and I had the scallops and salad ready. We sat at the kitchen island to eat.

  “Ann, you must have heard about the chaos at the Canadian driver’s licensing offices.”

  “I did. When I picked up the dinner ingredients at the Co-Op, my friend was telling me all about it. You must be thrilled about the news,” I said, prodding.

  “I am. For such a thing to happen is a…gift,” he stated sincerely.

  A gift.

  “Hmmm. I think you’re right.”

  Paul turned to me and looked directly into my eyes. “They want to meet you in Portland tomorrow morning at one in the afternoon,” he blurted out.

  I just looked back at him.

  Does he mean…

  My heart started to race. “Who wants to meet me?”

  “The parents.”

  “What? Who?” I asked, panicked that Paul wasn’t who I thought he was.

  Previously, I had always been contacted directly by GOG. They would usually leave a note for me in my house with a call-in number, or left me a note in some other way.

  Is Paul government?

  “I know they don’t usually contact you like this. But this is an unusual event, as you know. Ann…I’ve known for a very long time.”

  “Known what?”

  “I saw you, three years ago, at the Gaslight Brasserie. I know about the meeting.”

  I could actually feel the heavy beating of my heart and wondered if Paul could hear it.

  “Who are you?” I said, moving slightly away from him.

  “It was my job that day…outer electronic security. I was parked outside the back of the restaurant with electronic equipment, jamming any possible peekers. I am part of the organization.”

  “Tulips,” I said, challenging him with the codeword, looking directly at him.

  I needed to know that he was really GOG.

  “Skagit,” he replied, confirming the codeword calmly. “Now are you satisfied?” he asked me, moving closer to me.

  “I am,” I said, embarrassed that I had doubted him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I asked quietly, the tension between us palpable.

  “You already know the answer to that,” he said, moving away to his chair.

  In the organization, we were not supposed to voluntarily share our membership status with anyone, no matter how close they were. The only real way to know other members was to work on an assignment together. Then it was possible to get to know other members of the underground. That was the only way it was supposed to happen. Such cautions enhanced the likelihood that the organization would remain secret from the government, and it made penetration of GOG very difficult for outsiders.

  “So you’ve known for three years?” I asked, peering into his eyes.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why you were at the Pan Pacific that weekend.”

  “Yes. I had a very slight feeling that you could be part of the organization. I mean what’s the chance that we would both be a few blocks from the Gaslight Brasserie on the day of the job? When we passed the restaurant during our walk, you looked at it as we passed, and I had a strong suspicion that you were there for the same reason I was.”

  I realized suddenly what this meant. No longer did I have to keep so many things about my life a secret. I could be who I was without being so guarded. Well, at least in my safe house with Paul. What a relief. I could finally trust another person.

  “Would you like me to go with you to Portland? I’m as
suming you’re going to take a personal day. I can do the same,” he eagerly asked.

  “That would be wonderful,” I said with a smile.

  “Your flight is already booked to Portland. You’re leaving on the nine-ten AM flight from Bellingham, Alaska Air. Let me see if I can grab a seat on that flight.”

  “What time does the flight land in Oregon?”

  “Eleven-fifty. It connects in Seattle.”

  “Sinéad, does the nine-ten AM flight departing from Bellingham to Portland have one more seat?”

  “Yes. There are nine seats open on the Bellingham flight, and three open seats on the Seattle to Portland flight.”

  “Let me book it,” Paul interrupted as he pulled out his iPhone, looked up the flight, and booked the ticket as I watched his face. He was all business.

  “All booked,” he announced with a smile.

  “Do you think anyone will suspect anything, with both of us gone on the same day?”

  “If you’re taking a personal day, I’ll call in sick. That way no one will suspect anything.”

  “That’s a good plan. You’d better start coughing.”

  “I’ll call in the morning–I’ll have worked up a sore throat by then. If I stay here till three AM, I won’t need to work up a frog in my throat; I’ll have one from lack of sleep,” he joked, giving me a wink.

  As I watched his mouth move in that delicious way, with his eyes sparkling playfully, I felt my body respond.

  “What?” he asked, with a curious expression.

  “You’re really something,” I said, smiling.

  He moved closer to me, until he was a couple of inches from my face. “You’re pretty terrific yourself,” he quietly responded. He looked into my eyes, then planted a juicy, lingering kiss on my lips.

  Chemistry, I thought, as I enjoyed his mouth on mine, with the taste of lemonade–sweet and tart like that first kiss–enduring.

  He backed away slowly, opening his eyes to look at me again. “Wow. If that’s any indication of what’s to come, then…” he said, smiling wide.

  “What?” I asked, returning his smile.

  “Oh…nothing,” he said, adjusting himself in his seat. “There is something I want to know, Ann.”