by Jones, Raya
‘I can’t help you being here.’
‘Sometimes your expression changes. It’s very subtle, but you seem more intense. More determined. Am I embarrassing you? Your moves are so precise and repetitive it’s hypnotic.’
‘You don’t have to watch,’ I told him, irate. ‘Get an OK kit and watch movies.’
‘You are better entertainment, sunshine.’
I went out to dispose the trash. When I returned, he said, ‘It’s a strange relationship we have. It’s as if we started our journey together that evening in Terminal 37. Why didn’t you stay in the academy?’
‘I was caught.’
Less than three years into the five-year training I was summoned to the Dean’s office and told to sit down. Three heads appeared in a videoconference. The Dean introduced two of them, a man and a woman, by their names. They were both chiefs. The third man was not introduced. He was the one who spoke. ‘How good do you think you are, Jexu Jiu?’ he asked. I asked, ‘Good in what sense?’ He replied, ‘In the sense that allows you to carry out unauthorised investigations.’ There was no point answering, since clearly this was a tribunal leading to my expulsion. The man asked again how good I thought I was. Again, I didn’t answer.
The Dean told him that I wouldn’t speak.
‘Won’t you speak to defend yourself?’ asked the man.
I remained silent, and the Dean answered on my behalf that I never speak to defend myself even when I’m innocent.
‘Why?’
‘You’ll have to ask him that,’ said the Dean
When he asked me, I replied that I had violated the rules and there was nothing else to say. The female chief suggested that I could explain why I had done it and how I felt about it now. I said nothing. The unnamed man pressed on, ‘Do you know how you got caught? You are good, but I’m better. Find out how I caught you.’
I asked whether I’d be sent back to Ground Zero, and the chiefs laughed. ‘We’re not getting rid of you. This isn’t a tribunal. Think of it as a special assignment.’
They gave me a fortnight to find out how I’d been caught.
A fortnight later I was summoned again. The same three heads appeared, and the Dean was asked to leave. Then the female chief said, ‘Such a shame. You seemed to be doing well until you gave up. You can still make an excellent agent. There will be a disciplinary action but you’ll stay in the agency.’
I told them I was quitting. The unnamed man smirked, so I told him, ‘It wasn’t you who caught me, Alpha Radar.’ He stopped smirking. I wasn’t supposed to know his name. I said, getting up, ‘I’m done here.’
The male chief said, ‘Not so fast. Sit down. There’s a formal process.’ They asked Alpha Radar to leave, and then told me that I could speak freely.
I had nothing to tell them except to point out that they couldn’t legally make me stay.
They said that since I knew the protocol, I knew they had to be satisfied that I wouldn’t abuse any knowledge gained during my training. I retorted, ‘I don’t have to satisfy you and I don’t want anything to do with a law-enforcing agency that entraps its own cadets by deception.’
They exclaimed, ‘So you did complete your assignment! How come Alpha Radar didn’t know?’
‘He’s good but I’m better,’ said I.
‘Wow, you really must stay with us.’
They pointed out that I operated my illegal enterprise under their noses for almost a year. I was too slippery. Having Alpha Radar pose as my client was the only way they could be sure. They inquired how I’d go about it if I was asked to check out a rogue agent. I told them that I don’t share my methods, and got up again. They told me to sit down.
They could lock the room from their remote computers before I’d reach the door, so I sat down again, and truthfully told them that it wasn’t in my nature to be an agency man. I wanted to set myself up legally as a freelance hacker. The CSG could monitor me as they monitor any business, and see that I don’t abuse my training. They pointed out that I needed a safe base. To live safely means living in corporate society. The CSG supports start-up enterprises, but those are started by people who are already citizens somewhere. The scheme protects them from being expelled from their corporation until their enterprise is successful, and then it usually becomes affiliated to some corporation or consortium. ‘Don’t be so impatient,’ they advised. ‘You are only sixteen. Finish your training, and in four years’ time we’ll approve your application to set yourself up as a private investigator.’
It was a sound advice. But I grew up in the Edges with a sense of freedom like nowhere else. The nearest I got to living in regular society was the academy. It was clean, healthy, comfortable, and there were people I liked, but I felt imprisoned. I told those chiefs, ‘That’s how I got caught. I’ve been operating from a fixed location for too long. Alpha Radar spotted the unauthorised signal. I’m not going to make the same mistake again.’
‘Are you going to be on the move for the rest of your life?’ they asked.
At age sixteen, it didn’t sound too bad.
When I told Freedom about it, he said, ‘Don’t feel guilty about working from my home for too long. From my point of view, just as well it was burnt down. It got me out of the rut.’
I insisted that it didn’t make sense that I was the target.
‘You must have made enemies in your line of work,’ he reasoned.
‘They usually try to burn me in cyberspace.’
‘Killing you in the flesh will be more final.’
‘No. It will activate my time bombs.’
‘Your world is a strange one and your mind is stranger. Well, perhaps someone is prepared to risk your posthumous wrath.’
‘But I’m not dead.’
After I fell asleep, his voice rang in my ear, ‘Are you asleep?’
‘Not anymore.’
‘I’m trying to picture you as a sixteen-year-old.’
He could be very tiresome, but we had a long journey together ahead so I had to put up with him. ‘I’ll show you,’ I said tiredly. Before leaving the academy, I had hacked their archives and copied those videoconferences. Now I set up the mat, retrieved them, switched to external display on mute, and sat down next to him.
The spectre of a shaven-headed slanted-eyed teenager hovered in the air. Freedom laughed. ‘Look, Jigsaw-san, your mouth doesn’t twitch! Interviewing you is like getting blood out of a stone.’
‘Seen it now? I want to sleep.’
‘Can we have the sound on? Show me the bit when you tell them you’re quitting.’
There was nothing in the exchange that I didn’t already tell him. The only confidential information was the identity of the two chiefs. I skipped that part, found the sequence he wanted, let it play, and closed my eyes.
Freedom exclaimed, ‘I know that voice! I’m sure of it. Will it be too much to show me her face?’ When I hesitated, he said, ‘Why are you protecting her identity? Did you really quit the CSG?’
‘What are the chances that you know her?’
‘Pretty good, I’d say. Her name is on the tip of my tongue.’
I switched off the replay and packed up the mat.
When I lay down again, he said, ‘If it’s Amber May, she was based in Luna when I was there. The moon is a small world and we mixed socially. Things got awkward.’
‘Don’t tell me you had a fling with her.’
‘Yes, we did, but that wasn’t the awkward… Well, it was, since I was still married at the time. What I mean is that it was uncomfortable when your agency audited my department.’
‘She wasn’t involved in that audit. And it’s not my agency.’
‘It is Amber May, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know she was a trustee of the Man in the Moon Museum? You are very quiet suddenly. Are you asleep?’ He knew I was wide-awake.
I had no dealings with those chiefs after I quitted, and no reason to find out about them. I hadn’t spotted her name on
the list of people with access to the ancient server at the time of the sumo cryptogram.
Freedom spoke quietly, serious. ‘I’m going to ask you again. Did you really quit the CSG? I don’t mean the academy.’
I didn’t know how to answer that.
There was no legal way to stop me from dropping out of the academy, but they found a clause that allowed them to place me under psychiatric evaluation for up to a month. I was teleported into a comfortable room that had no doors or windows. The only way in or out was by teleportation. There were no portals and no networked terminals. When I finished checking out the place and sat down, a young man materialised. He introduced himself as a junior psychologist. ‘Do you know why you’re here, Jexu Jiu?’
I replied, ‘They think I’m crazy to want to leave the academy.’
He laughed, saying we’d get on swell, and asked how long it would be before I went mad from not going online.
I told him it would be longer than 5 days, 3 hours and 27 minutes.
He asked how I could be so precise.
I informed him that this was the countdown to when the worm I had planted in the academy network would be activated if I didn’t call it off.
He started to say something, but whoever was monitoring us yanked him out. He vanished with his mouth agape.
I sat motionless for a long time. Eventually I got up to eat something, then sat some more, went to the bathroom, sat down again, and went to sleep. I kept that routine for three days. I didn’t touch any of the movies, books, or games.
On the third day an older man jaunted in. He introduced himself as a senior psychologist, and pulled a chair to sit opposite me. ‘How long can you keep it up?’
‘Longer than 2 days 5 hours and 13 minutes,’ I told him.
He did the calculation on his wrist utility. ‘You’re right! Are you keeping count in your head?’
‘There’s a clock on the wall behind you.’
He disclosed that they didn’t know whether I was bluffing or not, but either way I’ve won. They’ll set me up as a freelance, and wanted to know where I’d like to be based. I told him to deport me to Earth and I’ll find somewhere. He pointed out that on my own I could find only places like the Edges. I retorted that it wasn’t his problem. ‘But it is,’ said he. There was pressure on him to make sure that I’m well provided for. CSG chiefs were going to a lot of trouble on my behalf, he told me. They persuaded Cyboratics to give me citizenship. I only had to say where I’d like to live. It could be anywhere in the galaxy as long as there was a Cyboratics base there—but they have cities everywhere. I told him that I needed time and network access to compare places. He asked, ‘If I return you to the academy, are you going to make trouble?’ I replied that I had nothing to gain by making trouble. They’re giving me everything I want.
I was learning the rules of the game. Like Boss Ben said, don’t make a nuisance of yourself and they won’t have an excuse to zap you. I wasn’t going to bite the hand that fed me. I was going to make sure I won’t have to be fed by anyone.
I played along and didn’t question the oddity of an honorary citizenship granted to a sixteen-year-old. I chose Cy City Earth, the administrative heart of their empire. As soon as I arrived in Terra spaceport, I went somewhere else.
‘Where did you go?’ asked Freedom.
‘The nearest inn like this.’
I’ve been on the move ever since, but I wasn’t hiding. The CSG contacted me soon afterwards and started to put jobs my way.
‘I can see how it’s in their interest to keep you on their side,’ Freedom said.
Presently he started to snore. I lay awake wondering whether he had figured out my connection to his Suzie. I couldn’t recall whether Boss Ben referred to her as my mother when we queued for the portal. Freedom had given no inkling of knowing that she had a child. But he’s made the connection with Cyboratics, I thought, remembering his ‘poem’. It was likely that my sponsor was from Cyboratics. My father had to be from somewhere.
After I fell asleep, his voice rang in my ear again, ‘Are you asleep?’
‘Not anymore.’
‘Trust based on mutual interest is good. It’s loyalty to ideologies that causes wars,’ spoke the history professor.
‘You’ve woken me up for that?’
‘No. I’ve been thinking, just wondering, trying to figure out where our relationship is going, Al. So far it’s in our mutual interest to trust each other,’ he said. And I said, ‘Freedom, can you promise one thing for the sake of mutual interest?’
‘Yes, yes, we’ll get separate rooms from now on.’
On the eleventh day since becoming a wealthy homeless, Freedom returned to the inn to find me sitting cross-legged in darkness, my gear packed up. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, turning on the light and immediately worrying. ‘How long have you been sitting like that in the dark?’
‘As long as it took.’
‘Good grief,’ he muttered, sitting down and laying out some food. ‘Where do you go to?’
‘I stay right here.’
‘In your head, I mean. Where do you go to in your head when you’re not online or listening to me? Oh, never mind. You’ll win every round in a contest of silence.’
I ate what he had brought and drank some water. He didn’t touch his portion for a while. He sat leaning against the wall and studied me intently. Then he spoke. ‘Do I need to update my avatar for you to notice that I’ve had a haircut?’
‘I noticed.’ He had it cropped short.
‘Well?’
‘It’s more practical.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ He started eating.
I told him that there was no record of a Suzie Suzuki.
‘It wasn’t her real name.’ He chuckled to see my expression, ‘If looks could kill! She has nothing to do with what happened to my home. I appreciate that you want to know why she was killed, but…’
‘I know exactly why.’ I interrupted. ‘She was caught up in gang warfare. And I know what happened to her killer.’ I grabbed my rucksack and stormed out.
The architecture of the five-mile long hollow cylinder was identical to all Milkwood malls. I walked through the accommodation complex, navigating a maze of escalators, elevators, ladders and catwalks, towards the mid-zone amenities complex. Popup surrogate reps of 1Step Teletek tried to get me interested in a portable teleporter: ‘Why walk when you can jaunt!’ ‘Hire a pert now!’ ‘With PertNet clothing designed by Mu Tashi Nanotronics you don’t even need to find a hotspot!’
They fragmented into fractal swirls when I punched them.
New reps latched on to me: ‘Buy our anti-popup shield now!’
I reached a small plaza with cafés, snack bars, and a fountain at the centre. It was early afternoon in a warm climate, and the water jets sparkled in the sun. There weren’t many people about. A young couple smooched on a bench. Four elderly people sat on another bench. Six laughing children played a chasing game around the fountain. A pleasant breeze carried a scent of blossom. Unseen birds twittered. The whole scene wavered for a split second, and the utilitarian metal architecture was momentarily visible. An EnViro3 logo flashed. Then the program started all over again. It’s always the same afternoon and same people in that plaza.
I looked around and spotted what I was looking for.
I called Freedom on my phone. ‘I have something to do, might take a few hours.’
‘Where are you? The way you stormed out, I thought you’ve left me for good.’
‘We’re travelling to Earth together.’
‘Yes, yes, and you need me for that? I’m so happy to be of service!’ He quoted an android slogan.
‘Freedom, will you shut up and listen. You need to check us out of the inn and wait for me in the runabout. I’ll be a few hours. But don’t be tempted to wander off or login anywhere to pass the time.’
‘What am I supposed to do?’
‘Write your memoirs or something. I must do this and I don’t
know the outcome.’
‘You’re scaring me, Al. It sounds like you’re planning a heist.’
‘Just check us out and wait in the runabout please.’
I switched off and removed the earpiece. A rep for phone implants popped up next to me. I made to punch her and realised she was real. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled, embarrassed.
‘It’s a shit job, I have bruises all over,’ she said. I started to walk away. She tagged along. I asked, curious, why she didn’t project her image like other reps do. She announced proudly, ‘It’s a new marketing technique.’ I slowed down to look at her. She beamed and started to tell me how safe the surgery was. I interrupted, ‘I’m not interested. Why do you do this?’
‘It’s a new marketing technique.’
‘People feel sorry after punching you by mistake?’
She nodded happily.
I crossed the plaza to the café I was looking for and activated the CSG badge. The badge broadcast my credentials to their system. When I entered the staff gave me cold looks and didn’t stop me from walking through the kitchen to a spiral staircase that led down to a heavy metal door. It unbolted automatically at my approach. The room behind it housed a twin of the site security’s HQ, maintained as a backup in case the primary headquarters went offline. It was usually unmanned, but now a duty manager jaunted in. I introduced myself, ‘Special Agent Dee Valiant. This is a spot check.’
‘Why? We do everything strictly by the Code,’ she protested. ‘Guardian Goose has a perfect record of quality service.’
‘Then you have nothing to worry about. I’ll only check the integrity of your tracking surveillance.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I want to go home early, that’s why,’ I told her. ‘Nobody keeps a 100% to the letter of the Code. That’s humanly impossible. What are the chances I’ll find a violation in how your company manages tracking? Slim, I hope.’