by Jamie Davis
“Open the door and come on down.”
It took a couple of tugs to pull the old wooden door open. It was wedged tightly in the frame. When Cass finally managed to open it, she found another staircase leading downward. This one was concrete and there were small, but bright, LED lights spaced along the ceiling all the way down.
She smiled into the camera, realizing Derek had been watching her the whole time. There were probably hidden cameras upstairs she hadn’t noticed. Maybe he was just as scared as she was.
Ratcheting up some additional courage and channeling a little of what she thought Shelby would do in a situation like this, Cass said, “Derek, if you want me to go down these stairs, you’d better tell me how much farther I have to go until I reach you. I’m a girl walking alone at night here. I’m not going to stumble into your lair so you can kidnap me or something?”
“Kidnap you? What kind of guy do you think I am?”
“The kind of guy who lives in creepy dark basements and secret tunnels.” Cass stopped talking and waited for a response at the top of the steps.
Derek didn’t answer for a long time. When he did, it wasn’t over the intercom.
After a series of strange clicking sounds from below, a small, rotund figure walked to the bottom of the steps and stared up at her. The tiny man couldn’t have been more than four feet tall. He walked on metal prosthetic enhancements instead of legs. The gray metal stilts ended in what looked like normal, bare human feet, though. The whole thing appeared very strange to Cass.
“Now that you can see me,” Derek asked from the bottom of the stairway, “Are you still afraid?”
Cass smiled. She’d been right. He lived hidden down here because he was just as frightened as she was. “Thank you, Derek. I appreciate you coming out to see me.”
Cass descended the stairs, reaching the bottom and following the little man down a long concrete corridor until they reached a steel door with at least a dozen locks and deadbolts scattered across the surface. Derek pulled the door open and gestured for her to enter.
Cass spotted a modest square room on the far side. There was a bed, a table with one chair, a small refrigerator, and cook stove with two coiled electric burners, all sitting opposite a desk that filled the wall to the right. The desk was covered in computer monitors and holographic displays. She saw a video feed scrolling through images of the rest of the building above.
After a brief hesitation, Cass stepped inside. Derek followed her, closing the door with a clang. As the door shut, all of the locks activated, each latching with a distinct click until all had sealed the door tightly. That explained the clicking sounds she’d heard from the top of the stairs.
“Hey, you’re gonna let me out of here, right?”
Derek gestured around the room and smiled. “Of course. There’s no room in here for two of us to live. It’s just a security measure. Now, what do you want?”
Cass took a deep breath and started explaining her situation. “I need a way to get past the perimeter security wards of a Sapiens enclave. Is that something you can help me with?”
“Why would you want to go back into a place like that? You did it. You escaped. Make a run for it and be free while you still can. A girl like you would get chewed up and spit out by those animals. Didn’t you see the video of what happened at the Saturday Massacre?”
Cass resisted the urge to scream at him that she knew all too well what happened at the Saturday Massacre, but she held her tongue. “I have my reasons. I just want to know if you can do it. So, what’s the answer?”
“Oh, it can be done. It’s not easy and some precautions have to be taken, but I can do it. Those protocols are constantly updated and changed. You could get a patch today and find out tomorrow that it won’t work anymore. The big challenge is to create an interactive and flexible system that hides your identity from the sensors so that you can come and go safely without being detected and stay hidden while inside no matter what happens.”
“And?” Cass asked.
“That’s why you were sent here. Frederick told you he thought I could do it. He wasn’t wrong. He just wasn’t sure I would do it, that’s all.”
Derek squinted his eyes as he looked up at Cass. He appeared to be examining her face for something. “You still haven’t told me why you want to go back into one of those places. A pretty thing like you should want to stay away from the lion’s den.”
“Why do you need to know that? It’s none of your business.”
“It is my business. If they discover I’m giving out this kind of technology and software, they’re going to come down here for me. I need to know you’re worth risking a Sapiens First hit squad for. I also need to know you’re not going to turn me in, if they discover you’re there.”
Cass thought about what Derek said. A few months before she’d have called him crazy for believing in the mythical Sapiens First arm of the movement. Now she knew too well how real they were. She’d seen the horrible things they were willing to do to protect the movement’s views.
Cass leaned forward, peering down at the small man standing in front of her. She had to convince him to help her. “Fine, Derek, you want to know why I need to get inside? It’s because I was born there. My family lives there and I have to go back there now that the semester is finished.”
“Your family doesn’t know about your implants?”
Cass shook her head.
Derek cocked his head to the side as he looked up at her, examining her face. “You’re putting yourself at risk, girlie.”
Tears suddenly filled Cass’s eyes. She was tired of explaining all of this, tired of being afraid. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. If I don’t return home, I’ll lose everything. I won’t be able to go back to school or anything else. I need to keep them from learning about what happened to me so I can go on with my life.”
Derek continued studying her face. Then he nodded. “Hmmph, I’ll do it. It’s a bad idea to go back, but I’ll help you if that’s what you’re determined to do.”
He shook his head as he turned and waddled over to his desk. He climbed up onto the chair in front of it and sat down with his metal legs dangling over the front, the toes wiggling as if they were real feet. Cass smiled despite her situation at the peculiar image it presented. Derek began tapping away at a virtual keyboard which appeared in the air above the desk.
The machines and monitors on the desktop hummed to life. Lights began blinking across several different devices sitting here and there on top of the desk. Several of the monitors started scrolling lines of what appeared to be some sort of computer code.
Cass studied it all, unaware of what she was looking at. She realized she was taking a huge chance here, but she was right when she told Derek she had no choice. She could only hope this strange little man knew what he was talking about.
“How long will it take?” Cass asked.
“I need to compile a new set of instructions for the software. It changes every time they update their systems in the enclaves. That reminds me, which enclave are you from? They’re all a little different.”
“The Pottstown one, outside of Philly. How will you know what makes that one different?”
“People like me have set up sensors outside all the Sapiens enclaves for years to monitor their security protocols. The guy who runs the Pottstown enclave is particularly devious and paranoid. This is going to be tricky.”
“You can do it, though, right?”
“He’s good. Top notch really when you consider where he lives and works. He’s not better than me, though.” Derek hooked a thumb over his shoulder without turning away from his screens. “You might want to sit down and relax. It’s going to be a while. Probably a few hours or more.”
Cass looked around. The only other chair in the room was the one next to the small table beside the stove unit and refrigerator. It had a stack of dirty clothes on it. She carefully moved the clothing to the cot in the corner and sat down on the chair.
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She didn’t have anything else to do so she began searching for some music to stream in over her connection to the Mantle. That was when she first realized she was completely cut off from any wireless signals. How had she not noticed that when she came down here?
“Hey, I can’t connect. What’s up?”
“Of course, you can’t connect. Nobody can connect from down here. That’s how I hide.”
Cass became slightly annoyed. Derek didn’t even bother to turn around when he answered her. He just kept tapping away on the virtual keyboard while he worked on whatever it was he was doing. “How come you can connect on your computers then?”
“That’s why I live in this house, girlie. It’s built right over an old T-4 fiber-optic data line. I’m jacked directly into the connection to the Mantle with a hardwired line. Everybody’s so busy looking for wireless signals these days, nobody even thinks about trying to track down connections to the network over the old fiber cables.”
Cass didn’t even know what a T-4 line was. She shrugged and sat back, occupying herself by reading the book she’d downloaded to her implant a week before.
Hours later, just before she reached the climax in the book, the tiny man slapped his hand down on top of the desk and said, “Got it.”
“What?” Cass asked.
“I finally got it to work. For some reason, when I updated with the new changes in the security system at the Pottstown enclave, it caused my software to crash, repeatedly. That kind of pissed me off because I had to start over and write new code from scratch. It would’ve been nasty if that happened while it was installed in your implant. It would have caused your implant to fry itself. Whoever’s running things over there has got a really nasty sense of humor. He’s not just trying to stop people from entering with implants, he’s intent on injuring or killing them just for going through the gates.”
“Wait, what? I don’t want my implant fried. It’ll kill me.”
Derek waved his hand in the air. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got it figured out. Weren’t you listening to what I said?”
He hopped off his seat and reached into a bin under his desk. He pulled out a shiny metal tube that looked suspiciously like the one police used to disable implants for prisoners taken into custody. Cass had first-hand experience with one of those. It wasn’t pleasant.
“Hey, I don’t want you using that thing on me.”
“Relax, it’s not the same as the ones police use or the one that Sapiens First goon used to kill the cybers in the Saturday Massacre video. I’ve modified it quite significantly. Its built-in wireless control interface is still the best way to connect and control large sections of the systems in a cerebral implant. Let me just load my custom software on here and then we’ll give it a try and see if we can get it to download.”
Cass didn’t like the idea of trying to download new software into her cerebral implant. It frightened her more than a little.
Derek finished doing whatever it was he had to do with the electronic tube. He slid off his chair and came across the floor to stand next to Cass where she sat in his rickety wooden chair.
“Hold still. If you move, it could screw everything up. This might be a little uncomfortable.”
Cass sat up straight, holding herself rigid while she stared out of the corner of her eye at the metal tube approaching the right side of her face. Derek waved the end of the tube about a quarter of an inch away from the implant.
A faint hum rose in the background as he thumbed a switch on the end of the device. A tingling sensation tickled the sensors inside her head. It was curious because it wasn’t a physical sensation at all. It was more like the memory of such a feeling. There was a flash of warmth and then a brief stab of pain that caused Cass to gasp.
“Hold still, girl,” Derek hissed. “We’re only halfway there.”
“What are you doing to me? I’m feeling all sorts of strange things going on.”
“The software has to mesh with all of the systems controlled by your implant. You have quite an extensive upgrade there. There’s a lot of stuff going on in there according to what I can see over my read out. You’re probably feeling the different systems that control sensations around your body being integrated in with my software. Everything has to work together or it won’t do what it needs to do.”
Cass closed her mouth, gritting her teeth against the now persistent and uncomfortable ache in the right side of her head. At one point she wanted to scream. It felt like a million tiny ants were crawling under the skin on both arms. Just when she couldn’t bear it any longer, it stopped.
Derek lowered the tube and flipped the switch. The faint hum faded away.
“That should do it, girlie. Why don’t you go in and search your implant’s system for a file called protocol one?”
Cass found the file Derek pointed her towards. It popped up immediately upon searching the database and memory inside her implant. “I found it. Now what?”
“That is the installation file for when you arrive back at the enclave. It’s important that you run that program while you’re still outside the gates, but close enough for your implant to detect the security firewall.”
Cass shook her head. She didn’t know how to do this kind of thing. “How close is that? I’m not sure I will have an excuse to wait outside the gate while some program runs in my head.”
“You have to wait. The diagnostics system in the program has to operate to update your systems to any firewall upgrades that might have been added between now and then. Once it runs and notifies you it’s complete, you can slide past the firewall without a care in the world. If you don’t follow the instructions, the system will alert to your presence immediately upon passing through the gates.”
Part of Cass thought that would be what happened no matter what she did. She only partially believed this system was even going to work. “How do I know you’ve done what you said?”
“You won’t until you pass through the gates for the first time. I’m sorry, but there’s no way to know for sure. Plus, you have to run the update every day when you wake up and maybe again at night, too. They upgrade the systems there frequently. You’ll have to reset the protocol one patch each day while you’re inside to avoid detection.”
Cass got up, nodded, and pointed to the door. This was all overwhelming her. “Let me out. I need some air.”
Derek pulled a tiny remote with a single button on it from his pocket. He pointed it at the door and pressed the button. The locks all clicked open at the same time.
“You’ve never been a prisoner here, Cass. All you had to do was ask if you wanted to leave. I know you might doubt that my program will help you. It will, though. You only have to run the system and give it enough time to do its job.”
“How long will that take?”
Derek shrugged. “It’s hard to say. My guess is probably a minute or two. It all depends on what new upgrades have been added to the firewall between now and then. Part of the program will download updated patches from my local system here. The size and number of patches will determine the time needed to upgrade your implant. I’m sorry, but that’s the best answer I can give you.”
Cass shrugged. Her exhaustion at being up half the night was catching up with her. “I guess it’ll have to be good enough. Goodbye Derek. Thank you.”
“Good luck to you, girlie. If you ever get back this way, let me know how it all worked out.”
Cass nodded and proceeded out the door. Soon she was back up the steps to the main floor. It was after midnight and she had a lot of packing to do before her parents arrived later that morning.
Chapter 4
Cass woke up the next morning. She’d only slept for a few hours, having spent most of the night packing. She rubbed her eyes as she headed to the cafeteria for her final breakfast at school that semester. She was so tired and needed coffee to help her wake up before her parents arrived.
As she sat alone eating, Cass realized how much she misse
d spending meal time with Shelby. In the two weeks since she’d been gone, Cass had had to do a lot of adjusting to not having her girlfriend around all of the time.
The time apart also forced Cass to do a lot of the things needed to maintain her implant and its omnipresent access to the Mantle and the connected devices all around her. She’d only had the implant for a few months and Cass was still settling into using the device in her head along with all of the capabilities it brought with it.
One of the things she recently discovered was that she could track anyone with a cell phone signal on the network. It had surprised her to see their location on a map when she reached out to check for any messages from her father or mother. Her implant popped up a link to a map showing their location at home inside the enclave.
Cass wondered if her father even knew this was available to the system. He’d probably never carry a cell phone again if he was aware that anyone connected to the Mantle could track his every move.
Because of that feature in her implant, Cass had been able to set up alerts notifying her when her parents left the enclave that morning. The signal pinged her while she carried her breakfast dishes back up to the window to drop them off after finishing her meal.
The message from her implant gave an ETA telling her she had about two hours to finish getting packed up and ready to go. She’d done most of her packing the night before but still had a lot to do to before going home with her parents.
Cass hustled back to her room and started throwing the last of her clothes into the suitcase open on her bed. She got an empty cardboard box from the recycling dumpster behind the dorm to use for the last pile of things from her desk.
She’d just finished packing the last of the items when the alert in her head chimed once more, notifying Cass of her parents’ arrival at the front doors of the dorm. She kept an eye on the dorm’s hallway cameras as she watched her parents come down the hallway towards her room.
Cass glanced in the mirror one last time as her fingers traced the slight ridge above her cheek running back to her right ear. Her fingertips couldn’t detect any seam between her real skin and the artificial skin patch over her implant. She nodded as she straightened her hair to make sure it covered most of the area. It served as a backup in case the skin patch worked loose somehow. With her hair grown back, she no longer needed the wig she’d purchased. She left that in the dresser drawer. As her parents arrived at the door to her dorm room, Cass took a deep breath and opened it before they had a chance to knock.