by Nick Thacker
>Deactivating Umutsuz. Need help.
For about ten seconds, there was no response. He waited, impatiently, at the blinking cursor on the station screen. Finally, he saw a flickering below his initial request and watched as a message appeared.
>Confirmed, ETA 1845. Alert 318532110?
A single-letter response was all that was needed.
>Y
He waited again, until the confirmation came through.
>Affirmative. Z6 exit.
Rand
SOL
SOLOMON MERRICK DIDN’T NEED TO tell Myers that the Current he’d just earned himself wasn’t the prize. Myers knew enough now to know that getting out of the city was the ultimate goal. The Current would be a welcome addition. He still had plans to purchase a car, something off the Grid that the System wouldn’t be able to track. It would have to be something old, and that meant he’d have to pay a premium for it.
They had owned vehicles back in Seattle, before the System. Shannon had a sedan, a 2018 model, but it was the truck that Sol missed the most — a Toyota Tundra, large enough to fit the young family of three, but small enough to be emission- and mileage-friendly. He loved that truck. When he had been reassigned to Washington, D.C., the sedan was sold, and a year later the truck was as well. System-implemented public transit had improved and expanded to a level of usefulness that efficiency-conscious types couldn’t ignore. Sure, there were still people who hung on to their precious personal vehicles, but Sol wasn’t one for sentimental ties. He hated the rising taxes on personal vehicle ownership, and was happy to remove the burden of bi-monthly inspections, recertification, and constant maintenance.
The trend continued, and now vehicles that ran on gasoline were as rare as solar-cell cars used to be. Still, personal vehicles in general began to seem to excessive in the changing culture, and most families commuted to and from work using System-controlled transit.
He needed a vehicle to get his family out of Istanbul. They’d just about used up their rations allotted to them when he’d been assigned there, and walking to and from Umutsuz wasn’t going to be a viable solution for very long.
The problem was that the plan had changed. The Unders were in the city, and now he was being hunted alongside Myers. The city had been deactivated, a mass exodus was now taking place, and Merrick still had to get to the other side of the city.
He had to get to Rand.
A knot had started to form in his chest as soon as he saw the deactivation notices and the people rushing toward the gate. The knot turned into a feeling just short of panic when he saw the Unders approach and start firing at them. He’d reacted as he had practiced many times, pushing the emotion away long enough to get the job done. Myers had done what he’d always done, asking for a plan and retreating to hide behind something.
It was probably an unfair assessment, Merrick realized. The man had been through hell these past days and he was ill equipped to fight back.
And Merrick himself was barely able to hold it together. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if he didn’t achieve his goal and find a vehicle to take back to Istanbul. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if the knot of sneaking suspicion and panic turned into a premonition that came true. He didn’t want to think about what would happen to his family.
So he pushed the knot back down and ignored it, for the moment. The transfer had worked, and that was enough for now.
One step at a time.
Make one decision, act on it, and then move toward the next problem.
It had gotten him through so much, and they were close. So close to the real prize. The actual goal that had put them all together here in this forgotten patch of Earth.
Merrick said a silent prayer, checked his gear, and turned off the station. It had no internal memory chip, so there was nothing inside the machine that could record keystrokes or recall any incoming or outgoing requests. It was a security feature Rand had built, and one that seemed overly paranoid at the time. No one who happened to stumble across this tiny room at the back of an empty alley and see the station would be able to pass through the layers of encryption to even power on the computer. It seemed excessive to Merrick.
But as Rand had explained in his last communication to Merrick a few days ago, it wasn’t people Rand was worried about.
Merrick laughed a bit at the absurd implication, but over the past three days he’d started to wonder if Rand was on to something.
MYERS
“WHERE ARE WE HEADED NOW?” Myers asked. They were, once again, running. Myers no longer felt the pain; it was as if his body had accepted its fate and was forever destined to run.
“I need to find my contact here. He’s the one who set up that station back there and ran its power block through an old generator. I looked up the deactivation notices on the city and it’s by zone. He’s in Zone 6, and that’s on the opposite side of the city from us. We’ll head through Zone 3 to get there, since that’s the center of the city and will give us the best options for staying out of sight.”
“We have to run there?” Myers asked through short fits of breath.
“You have a better plan?” Merrick pulled out his hand terminal and read the display screen for a moment, typed something, then placed it back in the pack.
Usually I would have a plan, he realized. Myers Asher always had a plan. These last few days were hell for many reasons, but he was surprised and a little disappointed that the main reason he was having such a hard time with all of this was because he felt out of control.
People, including women and children, had literally been murdered in front of him. He watched them get trampled, running from a horrific band of people who wanted him dead. He’d watched Ravi get killed by his side, and the thing he was most upset about was this feeling of being rudderless. The ‘plan,’ that word he’d always latched on to, was always there. It comforted him, and gave him something to reach for. It was a system that allowed him to feel successful as long as he was working in it.
The realization hit him and caused him to stop in his tracks. The streets were all but empty, and Merrick stopped and turned around when he no longer heard Myers’ footsteps.
“What is it?” he asked. “We can’t stop here. His house is —“
“The plan,” Myers said. He was sucking in air now, and his body was screaming like never before to stop, to rest. He wanted nothing more than to just lie down. “The plan is no good.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The plan,” Myers said again. “I’ve always had a plan, or always found one to adopt.”
Merrick looked frustrated. “They called you ‘The Man With A Plan’ when you ran for office,” he said. “But seriously, Asher, this isn’t the time to reminisce about —“
“You don’t understand, Merrick. Just stop for a second and think about this.” Myers saw the man’s eyebrows raise a bit, feeling challenged. “Sorry, it’s just… I’ve just been playing catch up all this time, and now, I think…”
“You think you figured it out?”
Now Myers was confused. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’m starting to. But what are you talking about?”
“Myers, I told you before, this is a much bigger game than what you and I can see. Look around, man. Forget about cities that exist for no reason other than creating a workforce to keep the System running, forget about deactivating those same cities and sending people around the world to start all over again, and forget about the guys running through this place trying to find us and kill us, and ask yourself why. Why are we doing this? Why are feeding this perpetual machine?”
Myers nodded. “That’s… that’s exactly what I’ve been asking myself.” He looked at Merrick and stepped closer. “You knew me, didn’t you? Before all of this?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I did. Pretty well, actually.”
“We worked together?”
“EHM. I was the CEO, brought on by you and some of the board members about three years
into your stint as Financial.”
“And doesn’t it seem strange that the System, the same System we apparently built at EHM, put you here, and me here, at the same time?”
“It does seem strange, Myers.” Merrick wanted him to continue.
“And doesn’t it seem strange that the System also deactivated this entire city just as we were getting here?”
Merrick nodded.
“Who’s your friend, Merrick? The one we’re trying to find? He has something to do with this, doesn’t he?”
“Jonathan Rand. He works for a company called Vericorp, which is essentially one of the many companies under the umbrella corporation of the new system run by EHM. He’s a programmer, and a good one. He built that station we were using, and he’s been working on something else. Something that’s going to get us out of here.”
“We can trust him?”
“We can. I do, and you did too, long time ago.”
Myers nodded and looked up at the darkening sky. A rat-tat-tat of automatic gunfire snapped him back to reality. “It’s hunting us, isn’t it?”
“The System?”
“Yes. It’s looking for us, and using the Boards and the Unders and anyone else it can control to get to us.”
“And what does that have to do with this plan, Myers?” Merrick asked the question in the sort of way that made it sound like he already knew the answer.
“I just mean that any plan we have, it’s going to know about it. It’s a computer, Merrick, which means it’s going to compute the possibilities. Whatever we’re planning to do, the System is either going to know about it or already have a plan in place to prevent it.”
“You’re assuming that the System wants to prevent it.”
“But why wouldn’t it?”
Merrick laughed. “That’s the real question here, Myers, isn’t it?”
The rat-tat-tat sounds grew louder and deeper. Myers heard the shots reverberating off the buildings as Merrick continued. “And what are you saying, anyway? We have to have a plan, something —“
“We don’t, Merrick,” Myers said, cutting him off. “We don’t have to have anything. That’s the point. Any plan we come up with, the System’s already got a solution to mitigate against it. It already has a plan to counter ours. The only safe way out of this is to improvise.”
Merrick was looking back to the area the shots seemed to be coming from. They couldn’t see anyone firing, or being fired at, but Myers knew they wouldn’t rest until they found what they were looking for.
Merrick turned and spoke. “Again, you’re assuming the System wants to prevent us from achieving our goal. From finishing the plan.”
Myers had a sudden flashback, the tentacle of the rembrance of an event that was still latched on to his active memory. He pulled at it, taming it, and made sense of the few images he could see.
I’m at a meeting, he thought. We’re arguing about something, something big. This is big — huge, actually. And that’s coming from a president. He wasn’t sure if the commentary was his own in the present or part of the memory itself. I’m slamming my fist on the table — that doesn’t seem like something I do very often. I’ve always been calm, collected. Why am I angry?
And then, am I angry? Maybe I’m just trying to make a point? But he felt anger. It seethed in and around him even then, in the streets of Umutsuz, and Myers knew he was supposed to feel anger at the memory.
I’m angry at someone else here. If only… if only I could see them. He couldn’t see more than fuzzy outlines of heads and a few eyes — black against a whitish background and a circular shape — so there was no way of determining who was sharing this memory with him. Is it my staff? Another group?
One of the men — he somehow knew it was a man — in the dream reached out and slid something across the table to Myers. “Mr. President,” the man said. But Myers cut him off. “Come on, call me Myers,” he said. He felt the words as if he’d spoken them in the present, but it was still only a memory. A drifting, fading memory of an event he couldn’t fully picture.
“Mr. President,” the voice continued, ignoring Myers’ order. “We have reason to believe there’s a group of outliers preparing to —“
“Outliers?” he asked. “What are you talking about? A lobbyist organization?”
“No, Mr. President,” the voice continued. “We’re talking about a significant threat to the System. A serious violation of every law we’ve had passed to help protect this thing.”
The voices drifted away, once again leaving Myers to grasp at straws. He tried, unsuccessfully, to pull back the memory, to reign it in and force it to concede its secrets. He frowned. It was frustrating to attempt to remember something his own mind was trying to forget. So he did the only thing he could think of that he knew would work. He ignored it.
“They’re getting closer,” Myers said. “They’re going to kill us. They won’t stop until they do.”
“Yeah, Myers. They’re going to kill us. It’s life, to them. That’s it. Life. Nothing more, nothing less. They were humans, but they’re no better than machines now. Input, output. They breathe air and eat and bleed and die, but they just live their lives following orders. That’s why we need to find Rand and get out of here.”
“Because humans are turning into machines?”
Merrick started walking, but shook his head. “No, Myers. Other way around.”
RAND
TIME TO RUN.
HIS CONTACT had responded again, letting him know they would meet him at the Zone 6 exit point, one of only two exits from Umutsuz that would be open. Zone 1 and Zone 6 were the “main” avenues into the city, connected by an almost perfectly-straight road that drove through the city’s center. It split into a massive roundabout in the perfect center, where the town ‘square’ featured a park, administration and network building, and a handful of smaller shops and restaurants.
Getting to the exit point would be simple, but getting through it was another thing altogether. The crowds had mostly organized in this area, but they were getting thicker and slowing. That meant everyone would be making their way to the same spot, following the main road out of the city. If he was going to get there in time, he needed to move.
Rand slung the backpack over his right shoulder and stepped out of the apartment. He paused for a moment at the door, considering whether or not he wanted to lock it. It wouldn’t matter, as he couldn’t imagine coming back here later, but it felt odd not to.
Satisfying his inner urge for order, he locked the door and turned to the street. The smaller road in front of his house was deserted now, the families and couples and single workers having already left the area. He wondered who might be hanging back, using up the last of their station’s battery power to surf until the Grid went down.
He wondered what they’d do after that, until the drones flew in. Read a book? Pray? He wondered if anyone did that anymore.
Of course they did, he reassured himself. Of all the things the System tried to replace with ‘better’ options, religion was one that humans clung to with all their might. They had to have something to pray for, to pray toward. He had never been religious, but with what he’d seen over the past ten years he often thought religion might be a viable alternative to reality. Religion, whatever flavor people chose, gave people hope. At least the good ones.
Give it time, he told himself. Give it time and the System will find a way to replace even that. The System would, like it had in virtually every other sector of private and public business, find a way to assert itself and create a systematic need for itself. Humans would bow down to it and worship it as their savior. Hell, they already did. Rand remembered reading somewhere that in Rome — ironically enough — some groups had begun circulating propaganda touting the System as their new creator, savior, and religious focal point.
The signs were still flashing with the deactivation notice, but the rest of the city seemed to be stopped in time. There were no cars — they’d all left
with the first wave, knowing they would be interrupted and overtaken by the hordes of people who wanted a ride out. There were no people, at least not yet. He ran toward the intersection with the main road leading out of Zone 6 and Umutsuz, but still he saw no one.
The cars would be halfway to Ankara by now, delivering the refugees into their new temporary home. Since they had cars, these people — the lower-middle class — would undoubtedly have work elsewhere, and Ankara would serve as their port city for wherever the System needed them next. Trains, planes, and more cars and buses would soon be overflowing with new passengers, and Ankara itself would see an upward tick in its municipal and regional economy. The upward trend, no matter how long it lasted, would alert the outside world to the System’s maneuverings, and even more people would vie for the chance to work and live in a ‘growing workforce.’ Some would tout the city’s bull market as a ‘natural progression of economic advancement,’ and write about it on the Grid, encouraging further relocations and uprooting. The resulting bubble would cause a rise in the International Exchange, and day-traders and speculators would rush in and unknowingly cause the bubble to burst and return to normal levels.
Rand had seen it happen on a small scale, when Detroit, Moscow, and even Istanbul had been slowly deactivated one zone at a time. Speculators and analysts lined up on the digital trading boards and waited for the next zone to be closed, the local businesses and corporate offices alike stripped for any remaining equity.
He’d seen it before, and he knew a deactivation of this scale and speed had the power to move the needle on the global economy for at least a month.
But Rand also had a unique view of these bubbles. Most people held the belief that nothing happened in the world without the System knowing about it.
He agreed, but Rand had been formulating a theory that took that belief one step further:
Rand had evidence to suggest that, instead, nothing happened in the world that wasn’t actually caused by the System. He remembered his own MAA, and the feeling he’d had when he was being questioned. It was the first and only MAA he’d ever taken, though it had been forced upon him by his future employers. He’d subjected himself to the ‘moral aptitude’ test as part of the application process to work for Vericorp.