Different Paths

by Nat Kozinn

  The design on file was far from completed, and it may well never be, but it contained an intellectual fete of paradigm shifting genius. One performed by a vastly inferior mind to Ben’s, and one only accomplished through the exploitation of the reality of probability. Human minds are much less likely to perform single innovative miracles compared to Ben’s brain. However, there are more humans by a factor of about 3 billion, give or take. That’s a lot more rolls of the profound inspiration dice.

  That’s the only reason a human could conceive of the breakthrough needed to replicate a Telepath’s abilities through technological means. The worst part is that it is a simple enough idea, that Ben should have had it himself. Of course, the original plans were impractical because the amount of electrical power needed to operate the device was far too vast. The device would have to be mounted on a truck large enough to haul a generator. In addition, the human designer was limited by a myopia befitting his mental acuities; the Cognitive Scrambler could do more than just deny Telepaths the use of their abilities.

  The design changes Ben implemented addressed both of those limitations. The new device can run off a reasonably sized, if still somewhat unwieldy, battery pack and it can now be used to locate Telepaths, along with blocking their abilities to mess around in someone’s head.

  Nita contacted Gavin through a Telepath, which means there is a semblance of think.Net left in Los Angeles, which is another notion that should have been easy to figure out. Think.Net is one of Nita’s great advantages. The military has to rely on a hodgepodge of unsecured radio communications, literal foot couriers, and a few barely functional Pre-Plague satellites in order to connect the nation. Without the need to provide telephone service for the United States population, it would take only a few dozen Telepaths and Big Brains to blanket the nation, giving Nita the ability to coordinate and react at 100 times the speed of the National Guard.

  Nita wouldn’t throw that advantage away and Ben can exploit that fact. If he can find the local Telepaths, he should be able to trace the signal from Telepath to Telepath until finally they lead to Nita. If that doesn’t work, he can just get Gavin to beat a confession out of them when he gets back to town, but that is Plan B.

  Plan A will require a quick field test using Linda as a subject, merely to confirm the functionality of the no doubt successful design revisions Ben just implemented. After that, Ben will be ready to go on the hunt, carefully of course.

  #

  “Olly, Olly Oxen Free,” Ben shouts. His voice echoes in the nearly empty building.

  He’s wearing a large backpack with protruding wires. He’s got an antenna like device in his hand, which is emitting a high pitched buzz.

  “You still haven’t found me!” Linda answers, the echoes obfuscating her voice’s origin.

  “This counts. I thought I’d be lucky to find what block you were on. I’m not getting any higher fidelity than this. Besides, the battery is dying again. The radio scanner I added is pulling more power than I expected, but it’s worth it to make sure the police don’t catch up with us while we are out in the open hunting Telepaths.”

  Linda walks down what’s left of the staircase and joins Ben in what was the building’s lobby before it was abandoned.

  “I’m glad it finally worked. I think I might have gotten Legionnaire’s disease from all the time in these bacteria pits,” Linda says.

  “You know, Marie Curie died from the radiation in her experiments. A few afternoons hiding in old abandoned buildings is not a high price to pay for a scientific breakthrough.”

  #

  Ben rubs his calf. All of this walking is taking its toll on his body. Though he’s only 27, his perfect memory bears with it the curse of the acute knowledge of his aging. When he was twenty, he could have gone at least 12% further without stopping. Extrapolating that rate of decline out to a ripe old age yields some truly horrifying results.

  “My God, do my feet hurt. I haven’t walked this far since the Plagues,” Linda says as she rubs her foot.

  “For some reason you don’t hear much about all the problems with public transportation during the Plagues. People always focus on the disease and starvation,” Ben replies, masking his own achiness.

  “You joke, but before them, no one in Los Angeles walked anywhere. I took my Corvette down the block to get a Coke. My feet almost gave out those first few months after Cabot screwed it all up.”

  “Weren’t there, what you do you call them, trolleys?”

  “How old do you think I am? Those were all torn out in the fifties. We might be regretting that now, we’re going to need something if Ultracorps doesn’t come back to work,” Linda says.

  “We’re going to change a lot of things if the Differents don’t go back to work. That’s what finally made me decide to participate in taking out Governor Khan. His refusal to make use of the labor from the remaining Differents was going to doom the Metro Area. Sooner anyway, we’re all still doomed if Nita keeps up the strike.”

  “I don’t recall you participating all that much. Gavin found the diary and that police officer girlfriend of his helped figured out how to charge Khan with a crime… What did you do?”

  “Me, nothing?” Ben says but the edges of his lips curl upwards.

  “I know it’s something.’”

  “No fair, reading my mind.”

  “I don’t need to read your mind. You’re sporting you’re ‘proud of yourself smile.’ What did you do?”

  “Go ahead and take a look, I’ll show you,” Ben says and points to his head. “I’ll think about it.”

  Linda stares off for a moment, then comes back to reality.

  “I can’t think of anyone who deserves to be framed for a crime more than Governor Khan. Do you think the charges will be able to stick?” she asks.

  “Depends how good Khan’s lawyer is,” Ben says with a shrug. “We don’t have to worry about it for awhile anyway. Case like that, it’ll be years before it makes it to court, and that was before the country went to hell. Let’s keep moving.”

  Ben hits a switch on his backpack, which activates his makeshift Telepath tracking device. He moves the antenna in a circle around his body, the device lets out a series of beeps, most notably when he’s holding the antenna straight out in front of himself.

  “We’re almost to the signal’s origin point. We have to hurry. Who knows how long the Telepath will keep actively using his abilities.”

  “You’re the one who insisted I come, even though I’m not allowed to do anything,” Linda complains as she struggles to put her foot back into the shoe.

  Ben could not wait. He’s already hustling down the street as fast as he reasonably can given the forty pound weight on his back.

  They continue down the torn up street past endless rows of disheveled buildings in mid-collapse. The skyscrapers of the Metro Center can barely be seen in the distance.

  “We just stepped past the official boundary of the Metro Area,” Ben says as the pair is mid-step. His backpack still buzzes at a slowly increasing pace.

  Linda just nods, focused on the effort needed to keep her body moving. As they walk, the buildings transition from mid-collapse to full-collapse as they continue beyond the outskirts. The buzz is going crazy now, zeroing in on the source.

  “We’re close,” Ben says in the middle of a nondescript spot pressed up against a hill. It looks like the remains of an old ranch, there are a couple of fence posts still standing. “Look around.”

  They head in opposite directions, brushing aside dust and small debris. It’s hard to find something when you don’t know what it is you’re looking for, but it’s made easier when you find something that has no business being there. That’s just what Linda thinks when she spots the unmistakable glimmer of Maceo Steel.

  “Over here!” Linda yells, before she even starts clearing away debris.

  “Careful!” Ben yells as he runs over. “There could be security cameras.” Ben’s head darts every direction, lookin
g around like terrified animal. Certain he’ll spot the flare of a lens up over head, but there aren’t many buildings nearby to mount a camera on.

  “That would defeat the whole point of Maceo Steel. We can’t get in. What do they care what we do up here?”

  “I’m not sure if I agree with that logic,” Ben says scanning around for a gap on the sheer Maceo Steel. “The question is how deep down does it go?”

  A loud buzz comes out of Ben’s backpack at a different pitch than the many previous buzzes.

  “What the hell is that?” Linda asks.

  “It means there’s a broadcast on the emergency alert channel. I’ll turn it on.”

  Sources in the United States Army say the National Guard is preparing a counterattack but it is not yet clear how the forces will be able to take back control of the Manna Fields…”

  “Change of plans. End of the world is starting now. We’ve got to get out there, that’s where Nita will be,” Ben says talking over the broadcast.

  13

  Of course it’s unjust to test children’s blood, rip them from their homes, force them to live in segregated housing, and control their employment. It’s a horror that should be reserved for a dystopian novel by Orwell or Huxley. But do you know what else is a horror? Being instantly vaporized like what happened to millions of people in the Minneapolis Metro Area ten year ago. Unfortunately, life does not always provide elegant solutions. Often we’re trapped between a rock and a hard place, and the only solution is compromise. While the critics are quick to point out the inequities in our current system, I’ve yet to hear a proposal that balances our desires for freedom with our need for safety. If someone has a better solution I’m all ears, but until then, we have to choose from undesirable choices, and I think we chose the only tenable option.$$

  “Rock and a Hard Place” by Roberta Clemens, Los Angeles Times

  The winch on the tow truck screams in protest over the load it’s pulling. The gears inside the machine are stripping as is struggles to lift the Manna tanker truck onto its bed. I step up behind the tanker and push, helping ease it into place. The soldier driving the truck gives me a little thank you wave out of his window. For some reason, that means a lot.

  “Attention!” one of the army guys yells.

  Like Walters following Telepathic orders, every man in green goes stiff as a board and stands just as strait. They all salute as Colonel Graves as he walks by.

  “At ease,” he says as he walks towards me.

  “You even got a Manna tanker out of it,” I say and plaster my face with a grin. Who on earth doesn’t enjoy a good I told you so?

  “We’re going to need all we can get. I just got word from command, Nita has taken the Manna Fields,” he pauses there letting the weight of what he just said settle in.

  The emotional centers of my brain would like me to feel anger, concern, fear and even some jealousy. But none of those feelings will help me right now. I need to be rational. I have to be able to act quickly. There might only be a few short days until a nuclear war.

  “You have to take me there. I need to stop her,” I say to the Colonel.

  “You’re a few cards short of a full deck son. I’m supposed to put you in chains, but there’s no point, I’m done already. The only reason I haven’t’ been relieved of my command, is that General Reeves diverted before he could get here in order to lead the assault to take back the Manna Fields. Anyway, if I’m done, I don’t want my last order to get a few more of my boys hurt for no good reason. If I try to arrest you, I’m guessing that’s what will happen.”

  “Good guess. I have to get out there and I’m not going to be easy to stop.”

  “General Reeves seems to think you’re some kind of terrorist, but that’s not what I saw. I saw a man walk through hell to try to help his country, and when it didn’t work, you turned around and walked right back in. I’m sure there’s all sorts of plots and intricacies I’m not privy to, but some things are clear. You want what’s best and you’re willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that. If we’re going to war, we need to bring our best.”

  “War is exactly what I’m trying to avoid.”

  “See there you are, thinking of what’s right. You know something, General Reeves has no idea how fast you are. Boy, you’re like a flash of lighting when you get a full head of steam going. You move so fast, you could make it all the way out of here and head southwest towards the Manna Fields, before any of my boys could do anything to stop you.”

  “Thanks Colonel. You should tell your boys to go ahead open fire once I get moving. I can take it and it’ll help during your court martial… Nothing high caliber,” I say and extend my hand.

  “Keep doing what’s right,” he says and shakes my hand with a steely grip that belies his age.

  Then he turns his back on me, and I take my cue to exit. I get a thousand feet away before a few troops open fire with their standard issue rifles. Their aim is unbelievably poor.

  #

  My average step is about six feet long, I’ve managed 12,500 so far today. I did 22,728 yesterday, so I’m on pace to improve, which is good. Not having to stop and rest any more ever is a nice unexpected boost from gaining Regenerator abilities. My new cells are so resilient, they show no ill effects from the lactic acid my muscles produce. I can keep sprinting at full speed for as long as I have calories to sustain my muscles.

  For that, I come to a complete stop. I tried to sip one of my Manna canteens while I was in sprint before, but I ended up spilling way too much of the precious liquid. Besides, it’s nice to get a 360 degree view, even if it is mostly of nothing.

  Desert, desert, everywhere. And they say it’s growing too, every desert on earth is thanks to Cabot. A nice little left over gift from devastating global plant life. Turns out the roots of even tiny grasses and shrubs helped hold soil in place. Once they were dead, the earth was just waiting to break apart, dry out, and join with the encroaching desert.

  They say it’s supposed to get to Los Angeles in a few years. When I was a kid I remember a candidate running for Council Alderman who was all worked up about it. He didn’t win. You’re never going to get people to worry about tomorrow’s problems because we still haven’t taken care of yesterday’s.

  At least the lack of anything at all makes it easy to scan the horizon. I have only a vague idea of where I am, just as vague an idea of where I’m going, a general idea of how one navigates by the sun, and a map of the United States I memorized in my high school level history class. Not much to operate on. I have to be careful, I could end up walking into the Manna Fields by accident, or whatever command center the National Guard has no doubt setup a safe distance away. Neither would be good for me.

  I take a few deep swigs from my Manna canteen, pop a dozen multi-vitamins I appropriated from the Different gang, and sprint towards a setting sun I’ll never catch. I’m not even sure what my plan is. Am I trying to stop Nita? Am I going to kill her? It’s hard to believe I can do the first one without committing to the second. I push that thought out of my head. It’s like Linda said, sometimes it seems like terrible choices are the only choices, but if you wait, you might get more options.

  All I know is that a war between Differents and humans is one of those options, and that path leads to death for all involved. I don’t know what I can do to stop that from happening. But if I’m not at the epicenter of the action, I won’t get to do anything.

  Someone’s trying to get into my head. A familiar mind, Linda? I let her in.

  >>>Hey there. How you doing Mr. Olympic Sprinter?

  <<
  >>>I’m getting Spa treatments. What do you think I’m doing all the way out here? I’m here to help you and I brought your brooding buddy.

  #

  “It’s an old bunker they used when they were testing out the atomic bomb,” Ben says to me as I run my hand along the surface of the smooth concrete. Our voices echo in the large undergroun
d chamber.

  “A little ominous considering what we’re facing as a real possibility. I can’t believe you found me,” I say.

  “We were expecting you sooner,” Ben says.

  “He’s all talk. We know it’s a miracle we found you. I can look for a brain signature I recognize, like I’m trying to connect someone making a think.Net call, but I’ve only got about a half mile range. We had to rely on some math from Ben to get on your trail,” Linda says.

  “A few simple trajectories based on the direction you were heading when you exited the Metro Area in that motor vehicle, then how you would likely enter this vicinity upon learning that Nita had taken control of the Manna Fields.” Ben says like a know-it-all.

  “Yeah, but how did she do it, how did she take the Fields? I heard that the military had deployed a device to counter-act Telepaths. Was it a fight with machine guns and tanks and bombers up against Strong-Men and Speedsters? It must have been a bloodbath. How many are dead on both sides?” I ask.

  “We weren’t here to see it, but I’ve been able to piece it together pretty well by listening in on army radio chatter, encrypted radio chatter by the way. There were actually very few casualties from the assault, she deployed a single Different who was able to incapacitate the devices which allowed her to use the Telepaths to just send the National Guard away and take control of the Fields,” Ben says.

  “A single Different? Who was able to take on the National Guard on his own… The Beast,” I say. My emotional centers want to go ballistic at that news. They want me to feel a lovely mix of anger and shame. I tell them to go ahead and shut up.

  “He was the only one who killed anybody, but even he seemed to be taking it easy. After he smashed all the machines he stepped back and let the Telepaths take over. All those same troops are sitting in the forward base now, waiting to invade again.”

  “Did the radio tell you how the National Guard plans to respond?” I ask Ben.