IGMS Issue 9

by IGMS

  It was well after eleven by the time Miguel found the old square which held the bakery. Miguel knew in his gut that Sandro had already come and gone, and sure enough, no one was in the cramped bakery when he arrived except a hunched old Mexican woman who eyed him suspiciously from the far side of the counter. Over her shoulder, a squeaky air conditioner fought vainly against the oppressive heat. It was hot, but Miguel liked the ancient and fragrant smell of the bakery.

  Miguel took out a hundred-peso note and laid it on the counter. "Café y dos churros, por favor."

  Miguel took his coffee and churros and sat down to regroup. A few minutes later, while Miguel was nursing his hangover with the scent of the coffee, Sandro entered the bakery. He used his cane -- more heavily than usual -- to make his way between the tables and sit across from Miguel.

  Miguel snapped a photo immediately.

  Sandro's cane leans against a nearby chair as he wipes the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his faded denim jacket. His disheveled gray hair, his baggy eyes, his listless face -- all telltale signs of a man who hadn't slept in days.

  "You look like hell," Miguel said.

  "Back atcha," Sandro replied.

  They both managed a weak smile.

  An uncomfortable silence passed between them before Sandro reached into his jacket, pulled out a beaten manila envelope, and set it on the table next to the plateof churro crumbs. His hand rested a moment over it. Then he tapped it once and folded his hands in his lap. "The way I figure, you have a right to see that."

  Miguel left it there. "I don't care what happened anymore. I just want to take you home."

  After a moment's pause, Sandro nodded seriously to the envelope.

  Miguel removed the contents. The top page was crisp and white. It was a letter, handwritten by Anthony Bayless. Miguel read it, and looked up at Sandro.

  "An apology?"

  Sandro nodded. "Keep going."

  Miguel flipped the letter over and found a yellowed x-ray. It was a sagittal x-ray of the head. It seemed normal except for the bright white outline of a device near the base of the brain, where the spinal cord entered the cranial cavity. It was eerily similar to Miguel's own CT scan taken only hours after his camera interface had been installed.

  The next photograph was of a boy lying in a hospital bed. Miguel had seen a number of pictures of Sandro as an older teen, and though the top of this boy's head was wrapped tight in white bandages and his face was slack as he stared upward, Miguel knew it was Sandro. Miguel assumed it was taken after the surgery for the implant he'd seen in the x-ray.

  Miguel couldn't help but judge the photograph with an artist's eye. It seemed bad at first -- the balance was all wrong, and the lighting seemed to suck the life right out of the subject -- but then again, there was clear synchronicity between the lighting and Sandro's blank expression. What had the person behind the camera been thinking as he took this photo of Sandro? Probably nothing. Probably it had been the doctor who'd performed the surgery, or a member of the medical team who'd taken it. Doctor or photographer, he'd probably become numb to his patient's feelings long ago, much like Miguel had become numb to the suffering around him.

  Miguel flipped through the rest of the documentation: doctor's notes, medical tests, psychological workups. He saw the phrases "tuberculosis in check" and "poor reception of implant" and "response times decreased" in the monthly summary pages from March and April of 2041. By the Lord above, Sandro had only been thirteen. Were they even allowed to do something like that to a boy so young? He flipped a few more pages and found a note from August of the same year that said "implant removed successfully" and "recovery slow but consistent."

  The year, 2041, was notable in that it was the same year of the tuberculosis epidemic in Nogales, the same year Congress approved the expansion and strengthening of the border wall. Sandro's parents had emigrated at that time, but they'd died in the outbreak. Sandro nearly had, too, but he recovered when the bacteriophage for the superbug had been developed.

  But what did the implants have to do with it?

  "Do you remember any of this?" Miguel asked.

  Sandro shook his head. "Nothing."

  "I don't understand. A doctor was using the tuberculosis patients?"

  "Several of them, yes. To test their company's prototype HMI implant." Sandro touched his right eye with one finger. "The grandfather of your interface."

  "But tuberculosis patients?"

  "That's how they got access to me and over forty other people. They thought we were all going to die, and they weren't far wrong. Twelve of the patients did die, and probably not from the tuberculosis."

  "Who got access, Grandpa? How who got access?"

  "The company Bayless was working for. InterGenome Sciences."

  Miguel reeled. IGS was the same company that had developed dozens of different brain-enhancement implants. It had started with the military in 2047 -- human-machine interfaces to enhance reaction time and replacement eyes that could display messages and provide overlay information like the head-up display in a fighter pilot's visor. But military spending had become anemic, forcing IGS to leverage their technology into the private sector. They added memory banks to store simple data like phone numbers, addresses, account locations and passwords and PINs. Cameras and photo storage came quickly after, and Miguel had been one of the early adopters of the technology.

  It had all been a chain of cause and effect that had started with IGS's experiments on Sandro and the others, and suddenly Miguel felt like he had profited from his grandfather's pain. He blew air through his pursed lips. "I know this must be a shock, Grandpa --"

  "You have no idea what it must be."

  Miguel realized that Sandro's depression these last few months must have started with some initial contact from Bayless's lawyers, perhaps a letter telling him about the experiments and the inheritance Bayless had left him. Why hadn't he told Miguel about it?

  But as Miguel sat there, looking at Sandro, he realized why. Miguel had been trying to cut Sandro out of his life for years. Yes, he went to visit Sandro -- they played chess and talked a few times per month -- but Miguel had always been looking for a way to get out of Vero Beach for good. And Sandro knew it. He'd been trying to spare Miguel the pain he was bearing.

  "Tell me about it," Miguel said softly. "I want to understand it."

  Sandro stared at Miguel, his face expressionless, but then he softened and leaned back in his chair, scraping it noisily against the white tiles. He jutted his chin toward the far wall, northward. "When I decided to come here I thought I was like this city, that I was split in two, one piece damaged and rotten, the other healthy but not whole." Sandro paused, frowned. "I felt . . . incomplete. Broken.

  "I couldn't stop thinking about what was gone." He glanced out the window to the littered street outside of the bakery. "Maybe the parts that were damaged didn't mean anything. Maybe I turned out exactly the way I would have without the surgery. But maybe not. Maybe I only achieved half of what I might have, understood a tenth of what I could have. I felt like a ghost of a man, like seventy years of my life had been going in the wrong direction. You can't know what that's like as young as you are."

  Sandro picked up the picture -- a boy on a table, a broken implant destroying something vital. He'd never seen his grandfather look so sad.

  Miguel took the picture from him and laid it face-down on the pile. "You don't have to throw your life away just because something was taken from you so many years ago."

  Sandro nodded seriously. "No, you're right. That's why I came -- to prove that my life wasn't worthless -- but when I got here, I realized it was all bullshit. Good part . . . Bad part . . . It doesn't matter. What matters is doing something in your life that you can be proud of."

  "You've done a lot," Miguel said. "You served your country."

  "That was sixty years ago," Sandro said. "I've done nothing but stew and live off my bum knee and my family since, and it's high time I did somet
hing about it. I want you to come back with me, Miguel. Take the stories of the others: El Movimiento para las Fronteras Abiertas. I want you to spread their stories, just as you hear them, just as you see them."

  "There are reporters all over both sides of the wall."

  "Come on," Sandro said. "When's the last time you saw anything about a Mexican family, one that doesn't show them as illiterate beggars? I need you to tell their stories, Miguel. That's the only way I'll know it'll be told fairly."

  The door of the bakery tinkled opened. A middle-aged woman came in and stepped up to the counter as the air conditioner continued to squeal. As she chatted with the owner, Miguel tried to sort his feelings. Part of him felt proud to be Sandro's grandson -- he was taking a stand; he was trying to do something he felt was right -- but another part of him saw a wizened old man with a bad knee and a guilty conscience.

  "You don't owe anyone anything."

  "I do!" Sandro gave Miguel such an intense gaze then, a gaze filled with more purpose than he'd ever seen in the eyes of his grandfather. "I owe me. I owe you. I owe those that came before me. I owe those that come after. Don't you believe that, Miguel? Don't you want to leave the world a better place then when you came into it?"

  "Yes, but --"

  "There are no buts! My time has come, simple as that."

  Miguel realized that this had become just another chess match, though the stakes were unbelievably high. Sandro had convinced himself there was no other way than the one he'd chosen, and he wasn't going to back down.

  Miguel had to accede. He would hear their stories, take their pictures. He'd even see about publishing them. And once Sandro had some time to calm down . . . then he would see reason. Then he would come home.

  As soon as they left the panadería, Miguel was blindfolded and shoved into a car. He'd been blindfolded twice before, once in Riyadh and another in Pyongyang -- they had been the two times he'd most feared for his life -- but in that car, on the mercilessly rough ride to the MFA hideout, he feared not only for his life but Sandro's as well.

  They took him to what Miguel assumed was a butcher shop -- even through the musty blindfold, the smell of meat and blood was strong. Everything seemed oppressive in that dark, dank basement. But the woman Miguel met with first -- a thick woman, a skilled cheese maker -- began to ease Miguel's mood. There was an earthiness to her that Miguel had never felt in his life. He'd been so wrapped up in school and travel and technology and his career that he rarely noticed such things. But while he was talking with her so intimately, asking about her dreams and reasons for joining the movement, he couldn't help but notice it. She was a decent and honest woman. She wanted a fair shake in life, as simple as that.

  And so it went. He interviewed eighteen more members, and took a dozen pictures of each. He tried not to draw any conclusions while interviewing them. He tried to follow Sandro's wishes and merely let them tell their story. The important thing was to get to the human side of the conflict, the one that was getting lost beneath the politics of walls and spyders.

  When it was done, Miguel was driven back to the panaderia with Sandro. Sandro walked Miguel over from the ancient Ford Torino to his pristine blue rental car and held the door open for him.

  "Come back with me, Grandpa. Let them fight this war."

  Sandro shook his head sadly. "I'm in it for good, Miguel." He smiled, like he used to when Miguel had won a tight chess match, the smile that said he was proud of his grandson.

  "We still need to talk about the money," Sandro said softly.

  "I know," Miguel replied. He'd been thinking about it on the ride back, unsure how he was going to break it to Sandro. "I can't give it to you."

  Sandro straightened his back, and his aged face looked more hurt than Miguel could ever remember. "It's not for me. It's for them. There are dozens coming back every night with spyders buried in their chests. The doctors work for free, but the equipment and supplies are expensive."

  Miguel shook his head. "I'm sorry, but I can't support this. There are better ways, legal ways, to solve this crisis."

  Sandro spit into the street. "Where were your legal ways when they were cutting a hole in my skull? Where were they eight years ago when the drought struck Baja and Sonora, when seventy thousand people died? Where are they now, while innocent Sonorans are getting killed because they stepped over some imaginary line?"

  "I'm only one man, Grandpa."

  "You still don't get it, do you? You can be greater than one man."

  "How much time would my money buy them? A week? Two weeks? I agreed to tell their story, and I will, but that's as far as I'll go. It'll have to be enough."

  They stared at one another for a long time, the hot desert wind blowing through the square and kicking up dust. Then Sandro coughed, and the spell was broken. "You want to tell stories? Fine. Then tell one more. The MFA is going to issue a statement the day after tomorrow, seven miles west of the crossing. Go there and take pictures. Tell everyone what you see. Tell it honestly."

  "What are you going to do?"

  Sandro stepped in and hugged Miguel. "You'd better go," he said.

  "Grandpa, what are you going to do?"

  Sandro turned and walked away. As the Torino carried him off into the Sonora streets, Miguel's gut twisted. It felt like the last time he'd ever see Sandro.

  In the years to come, he would wish many times that it had been.

  Miguel made it back to the hotel late that evening, and found himself unable to sleep. He stayed up the entire night, worrying about what the MFA was going to do, and wondering if Sandro was going to be directly involved or not.

  The MFA was going to "issue a statement." It made political sense; Miguel hadn't realized it at the time, but the decision to widen the system to three more cities had been made the morning he'd gone to see Sandro. Surely Sandro had known, and surely they'd chosen their timing to coincide with the dog and pony show at IGS's tracking facility. The governor of Arizona and over a dozen congressman were going to be there.

  By the time lunch had come and passed, Miguel's stomach felt as twisted as a wrung-out wash rag. Why had Sandro refused to tell him what they were going to do? What would the message be? Even though Sandro claimed the MFA was for a peaceable resolution to the conflict, the fact remained: men had died on both sides. Just because Sandro wanted peace did not mean that all of them did, or that the Border Patrol or the National Guard did. Tempers flared all too easily at times like this.

  That evening, Miguel couldn't take it anymore. He called the Border Patrol and told them of Sandro's plans. The captain running the anti-insurgent team asked Miguel to stay at the hotel. Miguel refused. They couldn't prevent him from being close since it was a section of the wall near a suburban neighborhood. But Miguel did promise to stay a few miles away when the captain authorized a tunnel into his embedded police transceiver. He would use it, he said, to update Miguel every half-hour, and Miguel could contact him should the need arise.

  Miguel parked his rental car beneath a huge, curbside oak tree as the sun rose over a row of tan condos. It was 7:00 a.m.

  He thought back to Sandro's face as he'd told him about the planned crossing, how he'd asked Miguel to take pictures of all of it. His face had been so serious, but Miguel hadn't been able to read anything beyond that. Just like when they played chess.

  Miguel's veins went ice cold.

  Just like when they played chess.

  Dear God.

  No, no, no.

  This was all a feint.

  "Captain!" Miguel called over his temp channel. "Captain!"

  "Mr. de la Cueva, not now. It's already begun."

  "No, that's not the real one."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "That's a decoy."

  "No, Mr. de la Cueva. This is deadly serious. I'll update you when I can."

  "Captain!"

  He didn't answer.

  Miguel started the car and punched the accelerator. The car surged forward, a
nd he screeched onto the street ahead, narrowly missing a white sedan. He wove through traffic, heading for downtown, seven miles away.

  Where would Sandro strike? What would he do?

  He had no idea.

  He blew through a red light. The traffic lamp blared a warning as he sped past, a signal that the police had been alerted, a request to pull over and wait.

  He drove faster.

  As he reached the edge of old town, it hit him. The tour of the tracking facility. The politicians. It was the only thing with enough heft to it, the only thing that would draw enough attention.

  Why hadn't he seen it before?

  He knew from the newsfeeds the facilities were just north of the downtown area, only a few miles away.

  Halfway there, a black-and-white pulled onto the street a quarter mile behind him. It gained quickly on his sickly little rental.

  He was so close . . .

  He screeched into the parking lot a few minutes later, the cop nipping at his heels. The fifteen-story glass-and-steel building lay just ahead. Seven or eight news trucks surrounded a huge water fountain. He drove past the fountain and onto the lawn, braking too late to avoid slamming into one of the squat cement vehicle barriers lined up in front of the building.

  Seven men in black suits and three guards were lined up on the far side of the lawn, near the street. Their pistols were drawn, and they were pointing them at the twenty Mexican men and women dressed in orange prison uniforms. Sandro was standing near the center. Each of them held a butane lighter in one hand, unlit, held near the center of their chest.

  Closer to the building, three cameramen were snapping pictures with traditional cameras.

  "Lie down!" one of the men in suits was screaming.

  "No viviremos como presos!" they shouted as one. We will not live as prisoners!

  Miguel sprinted as the police car ground to a halt behind him. Miguel was confused by the lighters, but then he smelled the gasoline, and realized their orange uniforms were damp. "Grandfather, no!"