Digital Divide

by Spangler, K. B.

  “Rachel, I swear, if half of the world didn’t want us to be the bad guys, there’d be no question about what you did last night.”

  “But they do.”

  Josh paused. “But they do.”

  “I jumped too early. The gun wasn’t out yet.”

  He cracked his knuckles, a neat trick considering he didn’t have any. “No, it’s more about how your back was to him, but it’s the same outcome. The anti-OACET contingent is saying it was a setup, and we’re trying to ruin the judge’s credibility. Then there’s Edwards. He’s starting to ask those questions that aren’t really questions about what it means if an Agent can search someone without their knowledge or consent. He’s getting a nice bump from this.”

  Rachel collapsed in her other armchair. There was a smudge of old cheese against the mahogany leather and she wet her thumb to take it off.

  She was not looking forward to the next few days. The pundits and scholars made much of how the fear of OACET was always associated with immediate risk, such as wiping out financial records or the ever-popular threat of nuclear annihilation. They carefully noted that the real danger was the lack of checks and balances to restrict how Agents could acquire information about American citizens, law-abiding or otherwise. All of OACET knew her sixth sense was a landmine waiting to go off: “in plain sight” meant something entirely different to Rachel, who violated the Fourth Amendment more times than she could count just by walking to the grocery store. She was their opponents’ best example of why OACET shouldn’t be. Thus far, the Agents’ method of dealing with this had been to hide her unique abilities within the ethical and legal morass caused by those other skills they possessed which also threatened civil rights. It was quite possible that the fallout from the coffee shop fiasco would tear even this flimsy protection away.

  “There are two options,” Josh said.

  “I don’t want to hear the second one.”

  He ignored her. “The first option is perfectly logical and makes you look good. We release some of your service record, the parts which show you’ve been in similar situations overseas and you have experience in predicting likely outcomes for mob scenarios. The Army will have to back us up on it, so it’ll give you some extra credibility.

  “We’ll also have to tell the public that Agents have some ability to detect metals,” he added.

  “Yippee. Let’s make people think we’re irradiating them, too. That’ll be jolly good fun.”

  “We can’t help it if they don’t understand the science,” he said. “We’ve got to do it. Stack yesterday’s bank story with the incident at the coffee shop and it’s about to become common knowledge that you can see through solid matter. We’ve got to try and nip this in the bud before we get sued for causing leukemia or whatever, and if we handle it well enough, they’ll be less likely to ask how you knew to jump before the gun came out.

  “I’d really like to keep your other skills under wraps,” he added. “Mood reading is too close to mind reading for the media to stay on-message. But the timeline works out so we can avoid it. Just remember you scanned them after that one guy shoved you, okay? He gave you cause.”

  He paused. “The second option…”

  “Do.” Rachel said as she gave the stain a strong rub. Her thumb squeaked against the grain of the leather. “Not.”

  “We tell them you’re blind.”

  She looked over at him and met his eyes. It was a meaningless gesture for her but while new habits were formed quickly, old habits died hard. Rachel didn’t think she’d ever shake off the unspoken side of conversation; she was sure she didn’t want to.

  “No,” she told him.

  It hadn’t been easy, those first five years. They all bore scars. Unlike most of the others, hers were physical. Rachel couldn’t remember what had driven her out on her apartment’s balcony to stare up at the sun until it had set, and then for hours and hours after that, but she hoped it had been her choice and not an involuntary act. She couldn’t bear the idea that part of her was so self-destructive that it could override her rational mind.

  Josh had been the one who saved her. He had come out to California to help them with the transition. When she failed to check in, he had broken into her apartment and found her, exhausted, dehydrated, and seeping from second-degree sunburns after two straight days of staring up at the sky. He had pulled her back from the ledge and had stayed with her until she came back to herself, screaming.

  Her skin had healed but her eyes had weakened until there was nothing left to see but black. Still, Rachel didn’t think of herself as a member of the blind community; solar retinopathy, followed by progressive macular degeneration, had locked her into a dark world for all of a month until her implant had provided a substitute. Folk wisdom had it that the other senses become more acute with the onset of sudden blindness, but in Rachel’s case it had kickstarted a sixth sense so powerful she preferred it to sight.

  She had struggled with blindness. Not so much the changes caused by her loss of sight, but how being classified as disabled would affect her opportunities, her sense of self. Rachel had yet to find the frequency that replicated human vision, but the range of alternatives was so vast her only problem was finding the one which best fit the situation. Unfortunately, rigid clinical definition meant she would always be categorized as blind. If she came out, she’d lose her position at the MPD, or would be held up as an example of how minorities could overcome insurmountable odds, or both. Rachel felt these outcomes were neither fair nor accurate, and she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with disclosure.

  Josh knew it, and still he said: “Yes.”

  “No,” she said again.

  “Yes. Rachel, it’ll come out eventually. If you introduce it on your own terms, you can control it.”

  “Chinese. Lesbian. Cyborg.” She held up a finger for each point. “That’s already a lot of baggage to carry, Josh. There’s no way in hell I’m attaching another label, especially since I’m not blind.”

  “A lot of people would disagree with you.”

  “Yeah, and those people all see the alarm clock when they wake up in the morning. The blind community would flay me alive. I’m not piggybacking on a disability for good press.” The last two words were hurled like a curse.

  “Penguin, this is not just about you. Think about it: you redefine the discussion. It’s no longer about how the implant might break civilization apart, it’s about what the implant can do to improve it. You would be giving hope to millions of people. And we could really use that kind of publicity right now.”

  She watched her friend slouch down in her lovely new chair and was glad for his avatar. Emotions weren’t carried across projections. Yesterday, Mulcahy had similar body language when he flashed depression, and Rachel wondered what was happening behind the scenes in their administration.

  “Are you ordering me to do this?”

  He shook his head. “It’s your call.”

  “Go with the Army story,” she replied.

  He nodded. He knew her well enough to already know her answer; she knew him well enough to understand why he had tried to change her mind.

  “All right,” he said, standing up to leave. “See you at nine at the coffee shop. We’ve got a press conference planned. Change into a white shirt with a skinny suit. No gun and no vest.”

  Rachel sighed. When she had started working at the MPD, Josh had taken her shopping for a few outfits which met the public’s expectations of clothing worn by attractive women with badges. He had made her promise she would always keep one dry-cleaned and ready to go. She did not like these skinny suits: people with combat experience planned their outfits to reduce risk. Her usual daily attire was made up of jackets a size too large to accommodate her ballistic vest and gun, and shirts that matched her suit to prevent that V-shaped target which came from layering dark fabric over light. The skinny suits made her nervous.

  “Hey Josh?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Dumbledo
rina?” Rachel took her feet off of her old pine table. “You know, Mrs. Wagner from next door? She talked to me.”

  “Hm,” he said, intrigued. A veteran in the ongoing battle with Mrs. Wagner, it was only Josh’s innate charm which carried him safely through enemy lines on pizza nights. “Talked to you or took her golf club to you?”

  “Spoke. She was outside when I got the paper. She said I saved the boy.”

  He looked out the window towards her neighbor’s house. “No kidding?”

  “No kidding.”

  “Things might be better than we think,” he said. To Rachel, it sounded as though he was talking to himself. A healthy internal monologue was a casualty when going out-of-body.

  “Got anything you’d like to tell me?” she asked.

  Josh smiled at her, maybe a little sadly. “Keep doing what you’re doing, Penguin. We’ll let you know if anything changes.”

  He popped out of existence and Rachel went on the hunt for the much-reviled skinny suits in a house full of empty closets.

  She lived within walking distance of the train but the coffee shop wasn’t anywhere near a station, so by the time the cab dropped her off she was running late. The place was teeming with reporters. Now this, she thought to herself, is a press conference. A small podium had been set up at the front of the room, the old brass and stone of the store polished to gleaming. Feds were to the left, with Mulcahy and Josh chatting quietly with representatives from other agencies or various Departments Of The, enjoying the excellent coffee. To the right were the locals. Santino stood with several of the higher-ups from First District Station, and, to her surprise, Zockinski and Hill. Edwards was bright with the yellow-white of eager energy and stood as close to the center of the podium as he dared. A woman with salt-and-pepper hair and a tailored pantsuit was whispering in Edwards’ ear, and Rachel grinned. The man was not dumb.

  With their attention on the notables at the front of the room, the press ignored Rachel’s efforts to squirm around them. She coughed politely, then when that didn’t work she went straight to acute pertussis, but when they did finally notice her they didn’t trample each other to get out of her way. Instead, they closed in on her and asked for interviews. Heart sinking, Rachel said something happy and harmless and wondered how long it would be before she mourned for the good old days when people tried to spit on her.

  Santino adopted a kicked-puppy expression when she passed him to stand with Mulcahy and Josh, but from his colors he had expected it. Surprisingly, the two detectives flashed confusion and Hill cocked his head at her as if to say: Where on earth are you going? as she walked away from them, his kinesics set off by that same odd teal.

  Josh was slouched against the counter, his slightly rumpled suit a public comment that the previous night had been of far more interest to him than this inconvenience of a press conference. He was buffing his sunglasses on the arm of his shirt; the optical implant made all Agents photophobic and dark glasses were the norm, but Josh had a mild case and wore them mostly for style. She slipped into the niche between him and Mulcahy, and Josh bumped her with his shoulder.

  “What’s the deal?” she asked, initiating a private three-way link.

  “The usual. Bunch of long-winded political wannabes mugging for the cameras,” he replied, and dug a thumb at Mulcahy, who took a tiny sip of his coffee and pretended he hadn’t heard.

  Unless it was unavoidable, Patrick Mulcahy and Josh Glassman never shared the stage at the same event. Theirs was a well-crafted dichotomy. Mulcahy was authority personified. Always calm, always unfailingly polite, Mulcahy did not so much discuss options as state: “This is how things will be,” then show how the inevitable would benefit everyone involved. The analogy worming its way around Washington was that working with him was like working with a tidal wave, as there was nothing to do when he came for you but to get out of his path and to appreciate the new topography when he was finished.

  Josh was the accessible, approachable one. He was easy to underestimate. Back when they first went public, those seeking to manipulate OACET had targeted Josh until they realized he took a very literal approach to going to bed with his various allies. Or their wives. Or members of their staff, and their wives. A combination of Machiavelli and Don Juan, he had ripped entire political teams apart from the inside out and rebuilt them to better align with the purpose of his own agency, all without tipping his hand.

  (Once, Rachel had asked Josh how they had developed their public personas. Josh said he and Mulcahy had started with that old political saw: “Who would you rather have a beer with?” and had ended at: “Depends on what you want to get out of the meeting.”)

  At precisely thirty seconds to nine, Mulcahy put down his coffee. He tapped her on the arm and they walked up to the podium, the rest of the federal delegates following in their wake. Josh stayed behind, flirting with his smitten barista.

  Edwards joined them, smiling, but his new campaign manager had firmly muzzled her client and he radiated peace and goodwill. Incite a hate crime? Him? Never.

  Mulcahy paused for the press to get themselves in order.

  “Thank you for coming,” he began. “Last night, there was an incident involving a respected member of the local judiciary and an OACET Agent when three men brought firearms to this public space. Whatever you might have heard, neither Judge Edwards nor Agent Rachel Peng was at fault. Their constitutional right to assemble guaranteed both of them the right to participate in the same space at the same time. The men who assaulted Agent Peng did so of their own free will, and we expect they will experience consequences appropriate for their actions.

  “I’d like to address the rumor that this was an attempt by OACET to frame Judge Edwards. Agent Peng came to this location by coincidence. A separate assault had been committed here, a crime very similar to one she was already investigating. A spokesperson from the Metropolitan Police Department will brief you on the details of these events in a moment. Agent Peng stayed to hear Edwards speak, and was then attacked.

  “We are aware OACET is controversial,” Mulcahy continued, “but conditions which promote violence cannot—”

  Rachel didn’t catch the rest of that sentence, as “Whz up?” flew across her mind.

  It was a text from Charley, which surprised her. Rachel wasn’t good with scripts, but a friend had given her one that let her automatically dump all unauthorized incoming numbers to her own cell straight to messaging. She had left her phone on, and it was an inconvenient time to realize she must have added Charley’s cell to her approval list. She looked around the room and couldn’t find his familiar friendly colors, then traced his cell’s signal to Edwards’ office. “You stuck at work?”

  “Yes. Want me 2 call?”

  “Can’t do a conversation now.”

  There was a long pause as he typed: “c you on tv.”

  Rachel glanced over at the cameras, unsure if Charley had used that particular message to sign off or if he had stated the obvious. Then: “u guys b careful”

  “Why?” she asked him. “What’s going on?”

  No response.

  “Charley? Is there something about Edwards that I should know?”

  No response again, and she realized she had been completely out of line.

  “I get it. Thanks for the warning.”

  Long pause, then he replied: “wish I cld say more”

  “Hey, we all need to eat. Don’t risk your job over this.”

  “thx. gl.”

  As Mulcahy spoke of community, Rachel watched Edwards standing silently behind him, his colors churning in the whites and yellows of an electric sea.

  She was never sure how far she should trust some of her new abilities. Maybe Santino was right when he had called her a mood ring. Maybe she just picked up on body temperature and tricked herself into believing it meant something more. Sometimes she lay awake at night, alone and awash in doubt, absolutely convinced that reading emotions was complete bosh as the complexity of the human e
xperience could not and did not distill itself down into mauve.

  Edwards didn’t look sinister. He was heady with the same excited rush she saw in teenagers after they hit the adrenaline rides at amusement parks, thrilled to finally be living his dream of standing on the same stage as the big kids. But she wasn’t able to shake the fact that he was standing here today because he had painted her up as a target.

  She forwarded Charley’s message log to Santino’s cell so they could go over it at leisure, then pulled her attention back to Mulcahy. Her boss towered over all others in the room while he politely told them how things would be.

  “…no place in today’s society for discrimination or conflict. We are connected, more so today than ever before. We must decide how to best maintain these connections, and how we want to benefit from them. When we perceive these connections as a threat for no other reason than that they exist, we turn to violence.

  “Violence benefits no one. It is not a form of self-expression or communication, as no one person has the right to harm another as part of public discourse. Violence is not now, nor has ever been, an acceptable way to express personal frustration.

  “Now,” Mulcahy said as he wrapped up the first part of the conference. “I’ll turn this over to Chief Sturtevant of the Metropolitan Police Department.”

  Sturtevant was the Chief of Detectives at First District Station, which in the eyes of its officers put him just one step removed from God. He was not a good public speaker, which in Rachel’s opinion meant he was most likely an exceptional cop. He unfolded his notes and read directly from the copy, never bothering to look at his audience.

  “We are concerned that last night’s incident might be connected to a series of events intended to incriminate both OACET and the MPD, with serious potential consequences for the general public.”

  Sturtevant paused, not for effect but to control his anger; to Rachel’s eyes he was roaring. “Last night, one of my lieutenants ruined my evening when he told me we have a decorated young police detective on tape, savagely beating a civilian.”