"We're doing a disrupt late tonight," she said.
"That's not smart." He pictured Katie tripping a service-bot in a noisy restaurant. Or toppling a monitor on the street. She and her friends targeted easy marks. As disruptors, they never went after security robots or anything formidable -- or too heavy to trip or push over. So far, Jamerson demurred whenever she invited him to a disruption event.
"You get caught," he said, "and you'll lose your cushy apartment in the building."
Katie shrugged. "We wear cheek-tats and polarized glasses. Nobody knows who we are. No scanners can pick us up." She tilted her head to one side. "And we run when the cops show up."
So far as Jamerson knew, only private security ever responded to a disruption event, and those police were more interested in getting through their work hours than apprehending playful criminals disrupting the smooth operations of robot-based restaurants, theatres, shops and other targets. On the news, he often saw groups of "ruptors" knocking over service-bots, shining lights into their sensors, shaking noisemakers to upset their balance of ambient noise to voice commands, and then fleeing the scene when mall security or some other low-level police arrive in force.
From the lack of concern he sensed where he worked, no one in authority deemed disruption events as more than harmless pranks. No service-bots were ever damaged. People near the events enjoyed watching what unfolded. Nobody got hurt and even the newscasters treated the pranksters as overzealous kids intent on making some kind of point about society and its reliance on service-bots of various ilk.
All that could change, Jamerson feared. Somebody might decide to catch a gang disrupting a restaurant and press charges. Some new municipal law could be put in effect, worded with such convolutions that disruptors like Katie wouldn't even know what it meant, nor would their lawyers, and then she and her friends, once caught, could be summarily exiled.
"I don't want to lose the best girlfriend I ever had," Jamerson said, and patted Katie's round face..
"You really need to get in that shower." She pushed his hand away. A mechanical voice announced the start of another gerry-can game and two new teams skated into the play area.
"See you tonight then," Jamerson said.
Katie blew him a kiss, and then hurried to the exit at the top of the bleachers. Jamerson watched, his mind wandering to that one time they'd showered together and made love with expensive hot water beating their backs.
Chapter Eight
"I thought you didn't work on Fridays," Katie said, a hurt look spreading across her face. Jamerson didn't know if that was fake or not. So often, he couldn't read her facial expressions properly.
"Not usually," he said. "I don't usual work on -- "
"I arranged my schedule so we could spend the day together."
"Sorry. Guess I'm going to be as erratic as you for the next few weeks."
Katie rolled away from him in bed, pulled the sheet over her rounded shoulders, and drew her knees to her stomach. He ran a hand across the shape of her body, thinking he had time to enjoy her this morning, time to make her happy in the moment.
"Okay," Katie said, and jumped out of bed, throwing the sheet into Jamerson's face. "I may as well get together with my friends." She bumped into a chair, made an exaggeration expression of pain with twisted lips and squeezed-shut eyes, and then slipped into the bathroom.
Jamerson sat up, pressed his head into the backboard. Katie's apartment didn't speak to luxury. Two rooms, both tiny compared to his accommodations. Typical quarters in a gated community for the hired help. Functional, with a bedroom for sleeping and a combination living room-kitchen for everything else, the apartment lay in the basement of Lakeshore Tower Two, one of a pair of high rise buildings rising along the lake front. The address gave Katie a small amount of cache when she shopped, but her actual living space was no better than what Jamerson had in one of the redbrick apartment buildings in the city-proper.
They didn't usually stay at her place. He liked to bring her to his twelfth floor suite, where his veranda looked out on the glistening lake and the bedroom was large enough that they could actually chase after one another. They made one of their rare exceptions to the usual choice because they drank too much after Katie made him supper and then they fell asleep nesting on the living room carpet.
"What kind of special project?" Katie asked as she exited the bathroom. Red spots dotted her cheeks. She pat her shut eyes with a soft white towel. A fluffy robe covered her completely, from wide neck to narrow ankles.
"Just something I got put on," Jamerson said, and hoped he didn't sound like a liar. As Oliver Griffin had suggested nearly a month earlier, he volunteered for the army liaison job after three weeks of running simulations, generating reports, and sitting in on meetings.
"Can't you tell me?" Katie said.
"Actually, no. I can't. It's under wraps."
"What good does it do me to have a boyfriend in high places if I can't get inside information?" Katie laughed and bounded knees-first onto the bed, her robe flying open at the chest.
"I've a couple of hours before I need to be in," Jamerson said.
"Maybe I can wheedle it out of you."
Jamerson refused to tell her about the project. They made love, getting sweaty from the effort, but he didn't reveal anything he'd been told couldn't be public. When he left her apartment, she threw playful curses and hisses at his back, and made him promise to message her as soon as he got off work.
"Could be tomorrow," he warned.
"Can't wait," she replied, sitting naked on the bed, legs folded beneath her.
Later, on the maglev into the city, Jamerson continued to enjoy the sight of Katie saying goodbye that morning. Mentally, he replaced her dark pixie-cut hair with a flowing mane of silky black curls that fell to her waist and spread out behind her. If he could find a wig like that, would she wear it?
He stretched his legs, the heels of his black boots on the padded foot rest, the cuffs of his bell-bottom jeans falling from his ankles to the floor, nearly touching. Red and white and blue lights flashed by on his left. He wished the underground train offered a better view. Something manufactured or perhaps based on what this part of Chicago looked like before the walls were built, when the lake front community boasted expensive apartment towers, huge entertain complexes, and a vibrant social life. When trains ran outside the tunnel. When people walked through the park to get from the beach to the city streets.
The wall to his left continued to flash until the tunnel reached the city-proper and the two-car maglev train spilled into New Union Station. Pairs of police boarded and Jamerson sat up, annoyed but intrigued by this incursion. Border cops, he realized, judging from their knee-length brown coats and black caps. One of them had sergeant stripes on the peaked brim that shielded his eyes.
Two pairs, under the watchful gaze of the sergeant, interrogated each passenger, shutting down any complaints, threatening one elderly man with a trip to the station house for in-depth questioning.
Jamerson handed over his All-Pod when asked. He submitted to the iris scan, a check of his wristband badge. He gave his tower address and apartment number. He didn't ask what prompted this security check. He'd find out later. His department would be rife with rumors, some of which would be true, and he'd have messages and emails to sift through later.
"How come you're in the city on a Friday?" the cop asked.
"Special assignment," Jamerson said.
"Not shown in your schedule." The cop held Jamerson's All-Pod at face level, the screen turned so Jamerson could see the display. Young, Jamerson thought, and stared into the cold hazel eyes of a kid most likely pumped up with visions of glory. Border patrol equated drudgery. Constant drills for simulated emergency response, and short duty tours along the walls and fences -- both of which Jamerson endorsed in an old analysis he'd run as a junior member of the department -- kept these police units in shape and, hopefully, away from the corruption that infected so many. On the border, m
oney could be made smuggling people and contraband into Chicago-proper.
The sergeant approached. He took the All-Pod, glanced at it and gave it back to Jamerson. "What's so special?"
The car had emptied by now. The police squad gathered at the exit doors. A few stepped onto the platform and spoke with their peers, who'd been in the other car.
"I'm meeting Commander Trapp," Jamerson said.
"Don't mean nothing to me," the sergeant said. Like the pair of lower level cops, this man was also young, with a hardened look that probably came from victory in too many simulations. Border patrol in New Union Station didn't require battle-tested veterans, as though border cops ever did more battle than chase after families trying to get through security. Once or twice in a career they might exchange rail gun fire with some criminal gang, but Jamerson knew that to be a rarity.
These cops weren't armed, except with an extendible baton fitted into a leather holster under their long coats.
"Call Commander Trapp. Do you know him?"
"You don't," the sergeant said, already consulting his own All-Pod. "Trapp's a she. Why didn't you know that?" He showed Jamerson the picture of a woman with a crooked nose, fleshy lips, shoulder length brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, and widely spaced dark eyes.
"I didn't know," Jamerson mumbled. "I never met her. I just got this assignment."
The sergeant continued to tap his All-Pod, swipe at some piece of information on the screen, and then looked up and said, "You're lucky. She put you on her schedule. Good thinking on her part, ain't it?"
"Yes," Jamerson said.
"You people in those fancy departments at headquarters..." The sergeant shook his head. He signaled and the remaining police followed him out of the train car. Jamerson scurried to follow, before the doors closed and the train looped around and went dark waiting for the next scheduled run to Lakeshore Towers.
Smiling, because he now found it humorous, he wondered why the police didn't question his casual dress, the bell bottoms and the clingy striped shirt he didn't tuck in, its collar raised to frame his neck. He'd purposely wore something he wouldn't normally be seen in at his office. Friday was a day off. So far as he was concerned, meeting Commander Trapp was a courtesy visit on his part. He hadn't expected the municipal police to be involved with this project.
#
Trapp stood with her wide back to the window, which looked out on a patchwork of open plazas, adjacent office buildings, and squat apartment houses, many of them built with colored brick, each color -- red, gray, yellow, white. Jamerson often passed these same buildings, but never had this color scheme struck him as important. Now, looking past Commander Trapp, he realized something new about how the city was organized. The colors denoted something about the occupants: their profession or economic level or place in the city's multi-level hierarchy.
Beyond the housing blocks, tree-lined residential neighborhoods with houses boasting front and back yards, dotted the cityscape. There, the size of the houses, the yards, the location -- corner lot or middle-of-the-block -- reflected the importance of the occupants.
"High up," he said. One hundred floors up. The tallest tower in Municipal Plaza One.
Trapp swung her hands behind her back and Jamerson imagined her standing at rest on the parade grounds. Her rugged features -- full lips and high cheek bones unadorned in any way -- spoke to her military bearing, as did the upturned collar of her close-fit short jacket with its bar-and-star emblems of rank on each shoulder epaulet.
"Why didn't you register this meeting in your schedule?" she said.
Jamerson wondered how she knew, but then he realized that the border cops had reported the maglev car incident. He didn't think it should be important. Evidently, Trapp did. He wondered where she fit in the security scheme that dominated the upper levels of this building. As a commander, she ranked high enough to lead a strike battalion or run a department. How often did she leave her comfortable office with its oversized windows, long white sofa and pale wood end tables. Her desk lacked clutter. Just a clear plastic tabletop and four plain steel legs. Her chair looked uncomfortable. Not a padded leather swivel type, but rather a high-backed wooden chair without cushions and soft arms.
"I don't work on Fridays," Jamerson said. "I thought this was more ... social?"
Trapp pointed to the sofa, nodded in that direction. Jamerson sat, settling into one corner of the long comfortable piece of furniture. He expected Trapp would sit in the other corner or pace the carpeted floor. Instead, she nudged the chrome-edged glass coffee table to one side and sat on it, her bulk making Jamerson wince in sympathy with the strain on the structure.
"Nothing is ever social when you come this high up in this particular building," Trapp said. "Do you know why you were told to see me?"
Jamerson knew. He nodded.
"If we're to work together on this project," Trapp continued, "then every day is a work day. Seven days a week. Twenty-four hours a day. This is Strike Force." She tapped the insignia above her left breast: a thin arrow with triangular head lying across an oval shield. Of the many departments within the municipal police, Strike Force was the most military-like, all of its members veterans of federal service, mostly army and marine. Men and women like Trapp fought the last of the battles with California Free State, the ongoing feuds in the southwestern states where terrorists tried to acquire that part of the union for themselves, or the final fitful campaigns as part of the UN army that quelled the upsurge of nationalism in Europe and the revolutions in the Middle East.
Veterans of failure, Jamerson thought. The only conflicts the army won these days were small-scale skirmishes against insurgencies across the remaining United States, where overwhelming firepower easily put down men and women armed with obsolete gunpowder weapons or light rail guns. Which, according to the scenarios Jamerson had worked on these past six weeks, were exactly the kind of opposition the army would face when it went in to clean up Chicago's lake front.
"Why is Fort Sheridan involved in this?" Trapp said. She hunched forward, her large hands on her kneecaps. The cuffs of her trousers lifted a bit to expose thick white socks. For some reason, Jamerson expected she'd be wearing high-top combat boots even in her office.
"Not my call, Commander," Jamerson said.
"You just do what you're supposed to do?"
Jamerson nodded.
"We might get along." She rose to her feet. "I've arranged a meeting with someone from the general's office at Fort Sheridan."
"Today? I didn't expect -- "
"I can tell by how you dressed. You didn't expect to work. Something social, you said? I work every day. I've got a car to drive us."
"Then I need to change." Jamerson stood. He didn't like raising his head to look at Trapp, but staring straight ahead into her chest was just as unnerving. Colorful ribbons arranged in four lines of unequal length decorated her left breast, with her unit insignia hanging from a pin below.
Trapp tapped her jacket's cuff. Lights glowed. "Fine. There's time. You live in that lake front Towers complex? We'll take Lakeshore Highway straight up to Fort Sheridan." She tapped the glowing part of her wrist, as though adjusting her schedule or a map or some recording of her plan for the day.
"With me," she barked, and headed for the office door, which opened with a swooshing sound. Jamerson followed behind her, hating that he probably looked like a puppy or a lackey doing as ordered. He tried to keep an even stride, but had to hurry to catch up, and then found the corridor to the elevator down to the motor pool too narrow for side-by-side walking, leaving him no choice but to walk behind the commander.
When the project began more than six weeks earlier, the idea of involving city security was farfetched. According to the briefs Jamerson read, the mayor's office had originally taken the problem of lake front corruption and criminal activity to the police and encountered staunch opposition. That's why army action was considered. In running his computer simulations, Jamerson didn't factor in muni
cipal cops, though one of the later what-ifs introduced a small quasi-military strike team much like the SWAT teams that handled hostage and in-city terrorist situations.
When his department's activities became common knowledge, social services, health officials, community outreach programs, and others clamored to add their advice, to offer their help, and, in some cases, to hinder the project. As his department's contact with the military Jamerson thought he could ignore these outside factions. His boss, Tony Bandinni, insisted he pay them lip service, tell them he'd take their messages of caution, their appeals for calm, their advice and anything else they told him under advisement. And only admit that he'd been running scenarios, like his department always did, which was the job of a Strategic Studies organization.
But then Bandinni told him to meet with Commander Trapp, the head of Strike Force, which would represent the police in any future planning. Jamerson represented the "strategy" part of the equation. Trapp represented tactical. For something like this, Bandinni espoused, they needed both sides. In truth, Jamerson thought, the cops had wheedled their way into the project, with Trapp the type of person who'd take charge.
Trapp stopped at the elevator at the end of the narrow corridor. An open cage, the car had space for twelve husky men and women, tactical police with all their equipment, including attack dogs and heavy weaponry. Jamerson boarded behind Trapp. The metal mesh door clanged shut. Trapp worked the manual controls to send the elevator down at a fast clip. Red numbers flashed past, culminating in LL-1, then 2, and then 3, where the elevator stopped, swaying a bit at the end of its chain and pulley.
Jamerson had the sense that at least one more sub-basement lay beneath him. Nothing in the elevator car hinted at additional levels, but the car didn't seem to rest on solid ground. As he followed Trapp into a dusty corridor, its walls rounded and the ceiling a half-circle of gray cement unadorned in anyway by stripes or other features, the distinct odor of oil stung his nostrils and burned his eyes. They turned a corner and he saw an open bay full of police cars, many of them the three-wheeled variety used for traffic control and many more of them sleek, four-wheeled squad cars equipped with red-and-blue lights, eye-searing spot lights, and rail gun muzzles sticking up at the front of the hood.
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