Not yet.
“Colorado Springs,” Cheyenne said.
“Lovely place,” Bennie said as the small and sleek electric car made several smooth turns and soon found itself on a one-lane highway built specifically for Autovehs. “And whereabouts in Colorado Springs?”
That was a very good question. She hadn’t gotten that far yet.
“I haven’t made any reservations.” She knew that’s all she needed to say for her “driver” to list several hotel suggestions that best fit her. It didn’t take long for her to book a room at a boutique hotel.
“What would you like to listen to?” Bennie asked.
Normally an Autoveh would have instantly known what sort of music she wanted since it would be connecting to her SYNAPSYS, but since she had turned it off, it needed to ask.
“Surprise me,” she said, watching the countryside spread out as the vehicle drove at 120 miles an hour, passing the black security boxes every ten minutes.
For a moment she closed her eyes. Just a single second.
“Remember why you’re here,” the voice said.
Cheyenne’s eyes shot open, and she bolted up in the seat.
“What was that?” she asked the voice.
Grandpa Bennie was the one who answered. “I asked what you would like to listen to, and you said ‘Surprise me,’ so I was sorting through—”
“Yes, but the other voice. What was that?”
“I’m sorry, missus, but I didn’t hear anything else.”
Bennie wasn’t lying, unless someone specifically had programmed him to lie.
“I’m sorting through my collection up here,” the driver said as if he were going through a case of compact discs or, better yet, picking through a bag of cassette tapes. Ridiculous, of course, since the choice had been made in a fraction of a second, but that was all part of the mirage. It also gave someone like Bennie his charm.
“You didn’t hear that voice?” Cheyenne asked.
“No, but my hearing is getting a little iffy these days.”
Normally she would have smiled and engaged in a playful conversation with her imaginary AI driver. But the voice…She knew she had heard it.
It was Dad.
Four words. That was all. But it was enough.
In the same way the other voice had spoken to her through her SYNAPSYS, her father had somehow gotten through to her.
But how? How could he? Especially since my SYNAPSYS is off? Is that really him?
“Here’s a nice nine-minute melody you will like,” Bennie said.
A low bass and piano began to play, soon joined by the trumpet and delicate drums. A wave of goose bumps and chills, or whatever they could rightly be called, folded over her. She smiled as she looked at the selection scrolling on the front windshield glass.
“So What” by Miles Davis. From Kind of Blue, released in 1959.
“Perfect selection,” Cheyenne told Bennie.
This wasn’t a funny coincidence, since there was no way the song could have been randomly picked. Bennie’s choice had been made for him by someone else.
It was confirmation that she was in the right place. And a reminder of the person she was looking for.
3.
The first person she asked was a busy bartender, who was completely uninterested in both serving some stranger and chatting with her about anything. He only shrugged as if he didn’t even hear her inquiry. The second person she set her eyes on appeared to be a manager of sorts in this bar, so as Cheyenne carried her beer to a table, she casually stopped to ask her.
“Hi, I’m wondering if you could help me?”
“Of course,” the focused blond thirtysomething said.
“I’m looking for someone named Jazz. Does that name sound familiar?”
“No,” the woman said, the quickness in her response and her split-second blink giving her away.
“You sure? I heard that he comes around here a lot.”
“Sorry. A lot of people come around here. It’s hard to keep track of everyone.”
Now the blonde sounded as unfriendly as the bartender. Cheyenne thanked her and walked to the back of the long, rectangular establishment full of old western and Coloradan artifacts hanging on the wall and from the ceiling. As she sat at a table next to a rusty wagon wheel, she noticed the manager she’d spoken with was whispering in the ear of a man at the end of the bar. The man stood and looked at her.
Seems like they might know someone named Jazz. Someone who probably doesn’t want to be found.
Her father had tried to convince her over the years to listen to jazz music, telling her how fascinating it was, how its beauty came from its unpredictability. How no computer system or AI could ever produce anything close to a jazz masterpiece. Creativity was something that still couldn’t be artificially or mathematically generated, though Cheyenne had often argued with her father about that, showing him the magnificence of some of the algorithms she had created, ones that took on a life of their own.
“That’s not creativity,” her father had told her with a bit of alarm. “That’s more like a virus that can grow out of control.”
As with so many things, this was an area where they disagreed. She knew her father would have been very intrigued to see how far she had progressed with her work as an algorithm architect. He also would have certainly been against the ethics behind putting algorithms into SYNAPSYSes. She remembered his warning to her when he asked what would happen when the algorithms knew you better than you knew yourself.
“Excuse me,” a voice behind her said.
A man walked up to her and grinned. It wasn’t the same guy the blond manager had been talking with.
“Rosie said you were looking for someone,” he said.
Could it be this easy?
“Yeah. I was wanting to talk with Jazz.”
“Jazz, huh?” he asked, rubbing his face. Stubble from perhaps a week of not shaving could be seen with the orange glow of the lights above them. “That’s someone’s name?”
“Yes.”
“Like his real name?”
“I was told he went by it.”
“Yeah? Strange. Maybe I can help you.”
“Are you Jazz?”
The guy laughed. “No. Do I look like a Jazz? I’m more of an ambient man myself. Can I ask why you’re looking for him?”
“Well, you just did. It’s personal business.”
The big guy gave her a laid-back nod. He seemed amiable enough.
“You have a slight accent. You visiting?”
“I don’t have any accent,” Cheyenne said. “But, yes, I’m visiting.”
“Where are you from?”
“Lots of questions.”
“Sorry. Don’t worry. I’m not trying to pick you up. I’m the brewer here at Stouts.” He patted his stomach and smiled, showing crooked teeth. “I know…it’s hard to tell, right? Rosie said maybe I could help you.”
“This Jazz is supposed to be a regular.”
“Yeah? Well, the thing about regulars is we want to keep them regulars, right? What if you were a regular and someone came in here asking about you? Would you want me blabbing to a stranger about you?”
She still believed this man could be Jazz.
“A man named Keith Burne sent me,” she said.
He waited for her to say more, but she didn’t.
“Okay. So you’re looking for a Jazz, and someone named Keith Burne sent you. Sorry. I got nothing for you.”
“Thanks,” she said.
“Are you sure I can’t help with anything?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
He gave her a nod and picked up her cue of being finished. The brewer started to leave, then paused and turned around.
“If I do run into someone named
Jazz, where could he find you?”
“I’m staying at the Ridge Hotel,” she said.
“Okay, great. And a bit of advice. Take it or leave it. But you might not want to be publicly asking around about this Jazz character. I mean, what if he was some bad dude or something like that? You know?”
“I don’t think he is,” Cheyenne said.
“Yeah. But just saying.”
The big guy disappeared into the crowd. Cheyenne waited around for an hour, sipping her beer but only managing to drink half of it before she left the bar. There had to be something more about the man she had spoken with, whether he was Jazz himself or knew him. It had to be one of the two. She hoped there would be another sign or clue or even a voice in her head, but none had come.
Once she was on the sidewalk, she scanned for anybody who appeared to be trailing her, but she didn’t see anyone suspicious, including Mr. Beady Eyes. The Ridge Hotel was close by and could be seen with its floors angling like the curves on a woman. She wondered if part of the reason the hotel had been a top choice was that it towered above the rest of Colorado Springs just as her former home, Incen Tower, rose high above Chicago. She always evaluated algorithms and why they made a certain choice or suggestion.
I would have preferred a two-story building.
Yet again the suggestion had picked up on pieces of her life but not the information in her heart. That was the great mystery she had been working hard to uncover—the magical components of people that computers couldn’t detect. Perhaps there were more ways of figuring out someone’s true wants and needs, the wants and needs of a soul? To find not only logical and smart choices for them but also to fill in the holes they had inside. And all people carried those holes, no matter who they were.
Automated security guards stood on the corners of several intersections she walked by, uniformed police officers that one could have thought were men and women in the shadows of the night. They all looked different and had dozens of expressions based on their experiences, but in the light of day, they still looked like robots. Lifelike robots were too expensive to reproduce in any number, so these still resembled moving and talking mannequins. What was frightening about them was their strength and speed.
Crime and accidents are down, but fear has never been more rampant.
Cheyenne was used to the intense security guards at Incen Tower, but most of them were actual human beings. She had watched machines like this only on the network but remembered hearing about the Atlanta incident where an early police-officer model malfunctioned and killed twenty-two people on a city street in the middle of the day. Not because it had been programmed to do that or suddenly decided humans were evil, but because the intelligence had a virus, and its confusion led to it unleashing all its ammunition on civilians. After lawsuits and trials and government mandates, law-enforcement robots were forbidden to carry weapons. They were still dangerous, however. They could simply pick people up or ram into them.
The hotel doors opened after recognizing her SYNAPSYS, and so did the elevator doors. Like most hotels, it had no counter and no attendant. A lounge was on an upper floor as were the two restaurants. It was rare to see anybody after entering or exiting a place like the Ridge.
The news of the day played on the steel doors of the elevator as she headed up to the 34th floor. There had been looting and fires set overnight in downtown Chicago, a result of the continued rioting over politics. Another terrorist act of vandalism had taken place, this one painting Michigan Avenue with quotes of the Bible that told people they were going to hell. Just another ordinary day in her former city.
As the elevator doors opened, Cheyenne wondered if this was all a big waste of time, if she had gotten the information wrong or if this Jazz person would pop up. At least she knew she wouldn’t be late for work tomorrow morning.
4.
“Miss Burne?”
The voice awoke Cheyenne, stirring her out of a groggy half sleep. Daisy, her hotel concierge, spoke to her through the control box next to her bed. It showed the time: 2:35 a.m.
“Yes?”
“I have a guest waiting for you in a vehicle outside the front of the hotel,” the voice said. “He said you had called for a vehicle.”
“What?”
“The man also said that he will be taking you to a jazz concert and that you need to leave as soon as possible.”
Cheyenne turned on the light next to her bed. “Please tell him I’m running late. Give me ten minutes.”
“Of course,” Daisy said. “Can I help you with anything?”
“No, thanks.”
Cheyenne took five minutes to dress, pull her long hair back into a ponytail, shove her toiletries bag and purse into her travel case, and then use the bottle of mouthwash the hotel provided.
So much for sleeping in that comfy bed.
After the glass doors of the hotel slid open, Cheyenne stepped onto the sidewalk and felt the sting of early-morning air. She couldn’t find any Autoveh waiting for her; the only thing around was a beat-up Jeep parked down the road a bit. She wondered if her ride had left, so she started back inside to get warm until something made her pause.
The taillights.
The black and boxy off-road vehicle blended into the night except for the red flashes of its taillights going off and on, several times in succession. A faint fog of exhaust could be seen, telling her the Jeep was running and someone was behind its wheel. Someone telling her to get inside.
The only time she had seen a Jeep Wrangler like this was in older movies, so she wasn’t sure how to open its door until it popped open for her.
“Get in.” The voice sounded indifferent and not very friendly.
This is a bad idea.
The doors to the hotel were closed and almost twenty yards away. She wondered how quickly they would open if she sprinted back and whether the driver would be able to get to her before she got in.
“Come on. It’s cold outside. Let’s go.”
The twentysomething driver waited for her to climb in and sit in the passenger seat next to him. She noticed a diamond earring peeking out from underneath the dreadlocks that fell to his shoulders. He had a casual, let’s-get-on-with-it sort of look about him, as if he were only running an errand.
“Where are we going?” she asked, still unsure about taking a ride.
“You wanna talk to Jazz?” he asked in a laid-back tone.
“Yes.”
He waved her to get in, so Cheyenne finally relented. For a moment she waited for the door to shut itself.
“You gotta do it yourself,” the young man said with a laugh. “Doors used to have to be pushed and pulled to open and shut.”
After closing the door, the locks clicked. Cheyenne thought about jerking it back open and getting out of there, but she remained calm.
“Anybody following you?” he asked.
“No. Not anymore.”
He reached into the side compartment and produced a miniature cylinder that looked like a shiny tube of lip balm.
“I need to reset your SYNAPSYS,” he said, putting the flat edge of the device against her temple until Cheyenne swiped it away with her palm.
“Why do you have to reset it? I already have it turned off.”
“We don’t want you tracked.”
“I won’t be connecting. All I’ll be doing—”
“Listen, this isn’t an option. This device helps put you off the grid a bit more. It’s an on-and-off switch, to put it in layman’s terms.”
“I don’t need layman’s terms, nor am I a man,” she said. “I know exactly what this does. This shuts down the Siphatic sensor, the kind the authorities use when trying to search for someone, the reason idiots who are clueless are found by the cops less than twenty-four hours after going on the run.”
“We’re going somewhere that the
powers that be can’t know about. The address cannot be given out in any sort of way.”
“That’s all you had to say,” she responded, allowing him to place it next to her head again.
Soon the engine roared to life, and they were racing down the street. The low throb of bass from the speakers around her could be felt more than heard. The driver said nothing as he ignored the stop sign.
“So where’re we going?” she asked.
“We have about an hour’s drive. You can go back to sleep if you want. I turned down the music.”
“What’d you say? I can’t hear you over the pounding in the background.”
The driver had a wide and friendly grin, and as he gave a short laugh, his eyes looked as if they could belong to a mischievous fifth grader.
“That was funny,” he told her, not bothering to adjust the volume but instead accelerating.
The bright headlights cut through thick snow flurries. Cheyenne decided she would wait to ask more questions. This guy probably wouldn’t bother to give her answers, and maybe he didn’t really have any to give. She still expected to see the stout brewer she’d met last night.
As the road began to weave upward through the mountains, the sound of drums grumbling and reggae singers rapping put her in a drowsy state. Several times her eyelids drooped shut and stayed that way for a few moments until she jerked herself awake. She was tired from the last few days, but she wasn’t about to pass out sitting next to a stranger.
The farther they drove, the thicker the flakes became, and the more snow covered the road. Soon they were moving at a sluggish pace of twenty-five miles an hour. She could tell by her ears popping that they were continuing to reach higher elevations.
“Can you tell me where we’re heading?” Cheyenne asked one more time after they had been in the car for forty minutes.
“We’re about to drive through a town that used to be called Divide. I guess it still is, but nobody lives there. The buildings are abandoned. The 2024 blizzard killed half the hundred or so residents. The other half who got away never moved back.”
American Omens Page 7