by Rhine, Scott
I don’t know what I expected, but on the scan for last Friday night, I found a distinct double image signature that snaked into the beach area and then back toward the city. The signature repeated itself at 2:00 AM this Friday, just before my data snapshot ended. What should I do about it? Something obviously illegal was going on, but I didn’t have any concrete vehicle identification or destination. Since the multi-state superhighway system, the national parks, and the satellite guidance system were all under Federal jurisdiction, they required a special type of Federal Marshal to police them—the Hover-way Patrol. This was also necessary because local police often couldn’t accelerate fast enough to catch perpetrators before they left city limits. The only member of the Hover-way Patrol I knew on a first-name basis was Mary Ann Anselm.
She was a no-nonsense kind of gal with long legs, shoulder-length, brown hair and three older brothers. Mary Ann played Lady Macbeth in our high school Senior play in a performance that sends sado-masochistic shivers down my spine to this day. She could also smell BS a mile away, and wouldn’t tolerate a lie.
I met Mary Ann again just after high school graduation when she brought her cruiser in for a maintenance check-up. I mustered the nerve to ask her out, and we ended up dating steadily for over a year. She’s in great physical shape, knows as much about vehicles as any guy, and is one of the outright best friends I’ve ever had. Being with her felt like home.
Eventually, I had to cut it off. Things were getting too serious. She wanted to get married, and I couldn’t do that to her. You see, she’d be legally responsible for my debt, too. I couldn’t see dragging two people through that misery. The final straw for me was that any kids might inherit my hemophilia. I could barely afford my own medication. One male in ten-thousand has my severe problem with clotting, so I try not to take it personally. But I had seen first-hand the constant worry my condition could cause a mother.
I decided to show Mary Ann the FedNet tricks I’d found and see if she could get any mileage out of it. Because of the potential for misuse, I hid my files on the university Meteorology department computer. After taking a few days to get my courage up, I made a lunch date with her at “the Oasis,” a Mediterranean food joint that had been one of her favorites. I figured at a worst-case scenario we’d talk about SimCon, which was coming up in another three months. Maybe at best, I expected her to be grateful enough to spend the weekend with me over Labor Day. I wasn’t counting on anything, just enjoying the fantasy.
Thursday afternoon, on a tan cement patio with white iron lawn furniture and huge umbrellas painted to look like palm trees, I watched traffic whiz by for half an hour till I saw her walk through the gate.
My heart raced like a teenager. Dry mouthed, I finally managed to say, “Hey, Mare. I got you a shwarma and Dr. Pepper, just the way you like it.”
She said, “What do you want, Hayes?” Suspicious? No, just cautious. Her chair made a grating sound as she pulled it out.
I hastened to clarify. “Call me Ethan; I’m not selling anything, and I haven’t clubbed any baby seals. I’ve stumbled across an abuse of the law, and I thought you might be able use the information. Hell, it might even get you that promotion you’ve been waiting for.” I signaled the waiter.
“Bring the Lady a fresh set of everything, and a Baklava for me.”
Mary Ann mellowed a little. “Are you sure you can afford it, Ethan?”
I shrugged, “I skipped a meal yesterday, so I’ll have two today.”
“You look tired,” she said, genuine concern creeping in. “Have you had a check up recently? What your mom had could be hereditary.”
“I’ve just been up late programming. Forget about me. How’s your life been going? How’s the patrol unit running?”
“Fine,” she said in a tone that sounded exactly like the word lonely. “Ethan, spit it out. I have to be into work in less than two hours.”
“We might go in together,” I hinted. She said nothing, but raised an eyebrow. She plucked one of my cold fries and put on her “convince me” face. I started explaining. After I told her the whole thing, she had finished eating and was even beginning to smile at the right places.
“I didn’t want to leak the secrets—partly because I want to use them myself in the game—but mainly because ignorance of these loopholes is preventing a lot of crime.”
She snickered. “Don’t worry. Even the smart crooks are still pretty ignorant. I appreciate what you’re telling me, but how many busts can we make? We can’t afford to link our computers into real-time satellite feed for a week at a time to catch just one speeder.”
I shook my head and snatched a little of her drink. “Let me run the pattern detectors for the five sure-fire dodges I’ve come up with, and I bet you I’ll find a dozen regular offenders in this city alone.”
She gazed at my left shirt button for a full minute, and in a soft, almost apologetic voice, she said, “I’ll give you a chance. Tonight. I’ll get permission from my shift chief, and bring a CD of data over from the last two nights. You show me something concrete, and we’ll owe you some reward money.”
Again, I shook my head. “Sorry, babe. No money. I’ll never see it; the Credit Recovery Bureau sucks it like a leech. I wouldn’t mind, but with a debt that big, throwing in a measly hundred is like spitting in the ocean.”
My mother ran up incredible credit bills in the year before she died, the year I turned eighteen. It was also the year that several major banks pressured Congress into making credit debts pass on to the beneficiaries of the debtor. I can’t blame them. Ever since hospitals started taking plastic, people have been taking advantage. Technically, I could have fled to Brazil to pursue my citizenship there. They don’t recognize debts from the United States. But I like this country. A servant here is richer than 95 percent of the people in the third world, plus the water is safer.
“Okay. No money, your favorite charity, anything. Hell, we have a few lawyers who owe us big. I could give you your reward in free legal visits.” Mary Ann got a lopsided grin as she considered the ramifications. “You may help me catch more than one slippery customer.”
Later that night, in Sam’s place, she looked over my shoulder at the color-enhanced read-out. “I don’t believe it. That came from a high-speed chase that stretched out across three counties. The Masserati just vanished.”
“He didn’t vanish. His twin car was this station wagon, which means he really disappeared about... here,” I said, pointing to a stretch of rural road just off the main Hover-way, three miles from where the trace stopped. “Masseratis can’t swallow dirt in the intakes for long. If the driver’s any good, he’ll pull it off into a barn or under a bridge. Then tomorrow, after they’ve switched their rear transponders again, they can drive off in broad daylight.
“This wasn’t much of a challenge for the package I put together. All in all, I found twelve loopholes in FedNet. When I plotted the reply addresses for all guidance queries, I found hundreds of scattered points with inactive or incorrect transponders. Some of those are just defective, but if we filter out the ones we see every day in the same residential speed zone with this button here, we’ll see the people who are traveling illegally. If you hit the animation button here, you can track...” I wanted to impress her with the interface I’d designed, but she wasn’t listening any more.
“Stop. Go back!” I hit the button to return to the Masserati example.
Mary Ann gawked for a minute, looked over at me, and then back to the map again. “Is this time stamp from the data or when you processed it?”
“I process it in real time. The time stamp is from the satellite,” I explained.
“This data is less than five hours old. We can still get him.” Quick-drawing her police mobile-phone from its holster, she dialed dispatch. All four units in the area were told to converge discretely on Salem’s Pond.
On her way out, Mary Ann surprised me with a quick kiss that gave the promise of many more. The faint taste of raspberry lin
gered. It was the same lip gloss that she’d worn when we kissed for the first time.
“As soon as we nab the bad guys, I’ll be back! If you can give us a couple of these gadgets, we’ll get you all the Philadelphia lawyers you can handle. The police have an edge again for the first time since radar.” She barely finished her sentence before the shop door slammed shut behind her. Dazed from the kiss, I waited three hours before shutting down the glowing screen and taking the wine coolers back to my apartment.
Chapter 3 – Cinderella
Monday morning, I got a call. I was up to my elbows in fleet cars from a local business that had bad coolant control chips, and it was causing the coolant pumps to shut down when the computer overheated. It seems that a warning to this effect appeared in the chip’s warranty and that nobody had taken the time to read it. I took the call on my headset in the service bay.
Mary Ann said, “Ethan? Could you come in and talk to my captain some time today?” I’m the chief mechanic, so I have to close the place and we still had about fifteen regular customers to see. I set the appointment for 7:30 that evening. I could’ve made it over lunch, but she pissed me off by not calling for two days.
Technically, I didn’t know till now that she had survived the early morning raid after our last meeting. I’d worked all Saturday on a cheap, portable “decloaking device” for the Patrol. I had some software that ran four scans simultaneously in a target grid square, compared the results, and plotted any anomalies. It was nothing special, just modifications of some traditional image-processing and pattern-recognition algorithms. The hard part was knowing what to look for. Burning the whole thing on a programmable microchip was easy; we do it a dozen times a day for vehicles with built-in computer software patches.
The Patrol Building was in the middle of nowhere, about two miles from the New York border. To most people, it was just another stop on the commuter train, or a long drab gray building on the road that reminded one to slow to the speed limit. When I reached the front desk, I was met by several men in dark suits and Captain Jenkins. They drooled over the little black box and CD case I brought with me, but I ignored them.
“Mr. Hayes, a pleasure to meet you. I’m Fred Jenkins, the captain at this station, and these gentlemen are from the Federal Satellite Surveillance Bureau.” As he escorted us to his office, Agents Lawrence and Morris introduced themselves. Since Agent Lawrence had frizzy blond hair that reminded me of one of the Stooges, I privately dubbed the pair Larry and Moe. Soon, the captain’s office door shut behind us.
“Where’s Mare?” I asked.
“He means Officer Anselm,” explained the Captain.
“She’s not cleared for this discussion,” said Larry. This suit was taller and had a nasal twang to his voice that would have been better suited to a clown on a children’s cartoon show. “Mr. Hayes, how long have you been an expert in electronic counter-measures?”
“I’m not. I’m just a good mechanic and a fair programmer.” Moe, the suit on the right tried to casually grab my compact data disc case. I jerked it away and held it above my head. He was a short bastard, but my temper was getting shorter.
“Your father held a security clearance at Exotech Industries. Did he at any time while drunk or sober discuss electronics technology of a sensitive nature with you?” asked Larry.
Captain Jenkins offered me a seat in front of the high-watt bulb. “I was ten when he disappeared, asshole. I want a lawyer.”
“Officer Anselm said you came to us,” argued Jenkins. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you don’t need a lawyer. We’re all friends here.”
And the check is in the mail. I wasn’t mad at Mary Ann any more. No doubt she had put up with days of this treatment before she agreed to call me in. “Sir, with all due respect, I know what you’re trying to pull. I’ve come up with something you all want, and you expect me to just hand it to you. No. I won’t say another word until I get a contract attorney, preferably someone who deals in patents.”
“We can’t have a patent on this,” said Moe, standing on his tip-toes. “Any putz with a stamp can get a copy of it from the US Patent Office. This is a National Secret. We can clamp down on it and don’t have to pay you a dime.”
I got dead calm. “Alright. Have it your way.” I handed the compact disc to the captain. The data disc was his anyway, I was just returning it. My decloaking device was another matter entirely. While the sweaty-palmed thugs wrestled the CD out of the case and into a reader, I quietly opened my black box and withdrew the crucial chip. Before Moe noticed me again, I stuck it under the chair leg. By the time he figured out what was happening, I had already thrown my full weight into the chair, shattering the brains of my invention completely.
Moe turned red and almost burst a blood vessel, pulling back his fist to deck me. The tall suit grabbed him from behind and muttered, “Easy, Morris. We just get the FBI to search his place for us.”
Just as he was regaining some composure, I put in another dig. “Won’t find it,” I explained. They would have to break the game security on the university computer system and know which remote site I stored the data on. “You think someone who can program an invisible car can’t hide things from some office weenie?”
Captain Jenkins was actually suppressing a chuckle. “Gentlemen, I said we’re all friends here, and I meant it. Mr. Hayes has done a good and patriotic thing. He’s been an upstanding member of this community since his family moved here. If he hasn’t gone anywhere by now, he won’t in the next few hours. Federal officers or not, if you don’t ease up on this man, I’ll let him walk. I have no reason to hold him.”
Moe almost blew another blood vessel on that announcement, but his friend came to the rescue. “Okay. He gets a lawyer, we get a lawyer, and everyone signs the non-disclosure agreement.”
“Certainly,” I said.
When Larry pulled out the Bic pen and self-triplicating form, I put my hands in my pockets. “I can’t very well talk to my lawyer if I sign that now, can I?”
Captain Jenkins moved us to adjoining rooms. For now, the suits had to settle for the remains of the black box and agreed to wait right there until I obtained representation. Do you know how many lawyers there are in a phone book? More than auto shops, and we’re everywhere! Unfortunately, the kind of lawyers that were answering their phones at this time of night might do me more harm than good. I was wading through the C’s in the yellow-pages by the light of a desk lamp used in old movies for “the third degree” when someone knocked on the door.
“Come in,” I said reluctantly. I envisioned a strip-search as a continuing part of the night’s entertainment.
“Mr. Hayes?” asked a gray-haired man in a polo sweater. The guy was holding a brief case that cost more than everything in my apartment combined.
“What do you want him for?”
The old guy smiled. “I’m his attorney, Nigel Foxworthy.”
It was a miracle, but how had he known? Mare! I ran over to shake the guy’s hand and to drag him inside before the Feds saw him. “Are you from Philadelphia by any chance?”
“Pittsburgh... Why?”
I almost kissed him.
“This is quite a house call. Especially for this hour. Thanks,” I said, trashing the yellow pages before he could see what I was doing.
“Don’t mention it. It’ll be on the bill,” he said, charmingly but with complete candor.
“Aha. Yes. About the payment...”
“Ms. Anselm posted a 5000 dollar bond to safeguard the investment of my time. She mentioned that you were an inventor in financial straits who had finally hit the mother lode, but were unable to exploit it due to circumstances she could not explain,” said Mr. Foxworthy, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the corner of the room. I hadn’t even noticed it there until now.
I paused a moment, licking my lips before warning him. “I really appreciate this, but Mary Ann can’t afford this and neither can I. I don’t think you’re willing to work for free.”
“If you’re half the genius she makes you out to be, then she’ll get her bond back with interest. What seems to be the problem?”
I had a seat, and mulled over how much I should tell him and where I should begin. “Sir, have you ever heard of the Federal Satellite Surveillance Bureau?” I whispered, pulling out the chair next to mine.
“They don’t exist,” he replied with a smile, taking a legal pad and a Cross pen out of his brief case.
“But?”
“The official name is the FCC, Annapolis Division. You start with your full name, your parent’s names, social-security numbers, and when we run out of that information, I’ll ask you about your invention. Not too many details, just enough to let me know what it’s worth.”
I talked for three hours, telling him most of my life story, including the first time I got drunk and helped the wrestling team steal signs from streets with funny names. I hadn’t even told Mary that juicy bit, but I really trusted this guy. I explained how mom’s long illness had drained our finances. Her coming to work on pain medication had been just an excuse to fire her. They never intended to honor their obligations, but I honored mine.
After he was done with the interview, he said “I’ll get an injunction against these hotheads till I have a chance to do a little research. Be polite, but answer no questions unless I’m there. Sign nothing; that’s the only thing you did right in your last encounter with our esteemed civil servants. The rest is my job. Ms. Anselm mentioned a bounty on the last bunch the patrol caught with your scanner. That reward money will cover tonight.
“It’s a safe bet that there’ll be a lot more criminals caught with your little black box. Even a sanitized, scaled-down detector would be better than what they currently have. A 2 percent premium on all tickets and fines they collect with the device is not unheard-of. That will go toward my on-going retainer. Since you have no next-of-kin and I’m sure you don’t want the State getting it all, I need a temporary beneficiary.”