DysFUNCTIOpia

by Jose Moreno

CHAPTER V***

  The next morning, Barón woke up at 4:14 am in order to bury the HIEG device in the back yard. One reason for doing so was that they could not take any metal device to the North Central Valley: Metal was easy to detect by any of the government search devices. Another reason was that the residual radiation inside the thick, lead cylinder could be detected by satellites, even though the harmful radiation that was leaking out could not cause damage to any living thing that was one foot away from it.

  Barón got out of his bed, reached under his bed to grab the HIEG device, wearing his night gown. Then, holding the HIEG device tightly with his left hand, he walked out of the room silently and slowly to make sure he did not produce any sound that could wake up his dad. With small steps, he reached the kitchen. As soon as he entered the door of the kitchen, he immediately turned to his left to enter a room, which was connected to the kitchen, and led to the back patio—it was a room that was kept empty and had no light. Once he was in the empty room, which had the patio door, he tried to walk even more slowly because the room was not illuminated like the kitchen. With every step he was taking, he was listening to every faint sound that he could hear. Once he reached the back door, he opened it slowly with his right hand—no screeching sound was made by the door. He was able to open it just three inches when it got stuck by the muscular dog that loved to sleep by the door; the dog began to smell under the door to determine who was trying to open it. Barón, who almost dropped the HEIG from his left hand, was startled by the dog’s heavy sniffing. He continued to push the door to glide the static dog out of the way. Once Barón made it outside, he whispered, “Sorry Popeye”, closed the door slowly behind, and walked past the black dog towards the back garden—it was a garden that neither Barón nor his father took care of. Once he was at the garden, which was lit only by the moon, he grabbed the pallet, and began to make a hole as silently as possible. After excavating for twenty minutes, he accomplished a hole that was four feet deep. He dropped the HIEG, put the soil back in the hole, and marked the spot by planting a one foot stick, which had a 3 inch by 3 inch red flag on top. Then, he walked towards the patio door. As he was approaching the door, he noticed that the dog was still obstructing the door. Barón bent down and pulled the dog’s collar up to make Popeye stand up. Once the dog was up, he pushed him gently out of the way. He opened and closed the door quickly. Then, he dashed quickly to his room. He had successfully gotten rid of the HEIG.

  The plan was to recover the device once they were established at the Edge of the Valley of Northern California; they optimistically reasoned that once they were able to recruit conscientious, humanist adults into their functio-guerilla group, one of them could come in the middle of the night, break into the patio, excavate, and pulled the device from the marked spot. Once all of the teen-agers were smuggled out of Truxes, any adult would not have a problem entering and exiting Truxes.

  It was at 5:14am when Barón decided to call his older brother, “Hey Oliver. It is me. Can you come over today as soon as possible?”

  “What is it? Is dad sick?”

  “No…I cannot tell you about it electronically. I have to tell you in person.”

  “Ok… I will be there in 20 minutes.”

  “No problem.”

  At 6:05 am, his brother arrived to the house and went straight to Barón’s room while his dad was still sleeping. They greeted each other with a simple nod, as it was customary in their family, and sat next to Barón on the bed. Barón’s silence and eyes let Oliver know that something very important was about to be said by Barón,

  “Do you remember what we talked about some time ago?”

  “How can I forget? You left me in shock with the idea of anti-functiomaton guerilla, California Northern Valley, Functio-assaults….”

  Barón abruptly interrupted his brother: “I am going to the Northern Valley of California on Monday”. His brother was in shock. He remained silent for several minutes not knowing what to say and realizing the ramifications. Oliver realized that by helping his brother, he was going to commit a crime.

  At last Oliver was able to utter meaningful words,

  “Ok…Ok…Ok….I was going to leave the USA sooner or later….Certainly, it can be done on Monday.”

  Barón smiled and shook his brother’s hand in order to imply his gratitude. After a short silence, Barón said timidly, “There is one more thing that I did not mention…”

  “What is it?”

  “There might be a few other people that might want to go also…”

  “Don’t tell me that all of your gang wants to go! I can only fit…may be…4 people in the vehicle.”

  “That is a perfect number! This is a sign!”

  “That is very funny. Are you sure the four of them are going to follow you?”

  “I am not sure… but, you will know. Your repairmen service will be requested… if you know what I mean.”

  “I see.”

  It was obvious to Barón that Oliver seemed to want to say something. Thus, Barón helped him by asking, “Oliver…Is there something you want to say?”

  “Yes…Yes…I support you completely. However, I ask you to think twice. You will be a legal adult in a few years and you will be able to do more things to carry out your plans.”

  “Will I be able to? Eventually, I will be also working for a functiomaton company and depending on the government like most USA citizens do in this collapsed economy. Furthermore, who knows what new technological devices will be out there in a few years that will help control the public even more…Will I be able to carry out my plans as an adult?

  “I understand….let’s talk about it.”

  Barón and Oliver discussed step by step what they were going to do the next day in the morning. First, Oliver was going to pick up his land vehicle as he usually did: Oliver worked as a house appliance technician Monday through Friday. As part of his daily routine, he repaired house equipment appliances as requested by customers. The plan was that all the teen-agers were going to sabotage the electronic oven later on that day; then, they were going to request Oliver’s service so that he drove his job vehicle early in the morning to the houses of those students that were going with Barón to the Valley. Like always, Oliver was going to start working at 6:30am. The teen-agers had until 7:20 am to load the cars—at 7:30 am, the security patrols were everywhere. Oliver would have to be careful not to get arrested for smuggling teen-agers.

  On the other hand, the group of teen-agers was also going to be taking drastic measure to avoid getting arrested. First, Barón and his group were going to use an old trick that they had watched in an old movie from the previous century, where a projection unit is set in front of the ODF so that the security agents observing the ODF observed as if someone actually were in front of the ODF. The teen-agers had already the projectors and the screens that they were going to use. The projection was going to give them just some extra time while they left the city. Also, with the projector, they were going to play their recorded voices so that the VRS recognize the image as legitimate. They knew the timing for each step in the registration process in the morning. The second part of the plan was to take care of their WIF. Barón and his group were going to need to obtain new WIFs, alter those new WIFs so that their electronic IDs match the ones of the WIFs they already had on their wrists, and take off the ones they had on their wrists once the substitute WIFs were operating, in order to avoid being detected by the satellite immediately. Eventually, the satellite was going to send a message to the Central Processing Functiomaton (CPF) that a new device was in operation; however, it was going to take several hours for the CPF to find out the illegal manipulation to their legitimate WIFs, carry out an investigation, and find out where Barón and his group had escaped to. Thus, all they needed to do right away was to look for new wrist WIFs as soon as possible on Sunday.

  Barón had already figured out a way to obtain illegitimate WIFs: Barón could go to a hospital and steal several wrist WIFs from p
atients using his community service government identification –a clearance only given to outstanding students. His identification was going to allowed him to enter the chambers of patients and have access to their WIFs, when they were taken off by the patients legitimately before they had a medical procedure that required it. He just needed to steal four wrist devices and have his brother distribute them later on.