by Ken Barrett
“I don’t know who this nurse is, but I get your point.” He smiled ruefully. “The mercy of your city knows no bounds. I’ll work for Ron and do everything he tells me to, as long as my friends remain safe.”
“We’ll take Sarah off convoy duty because it’s too dangerous,” Julee said as she stood up. “So, do we have a deal Liam?”
He got up and took her hand. “Yes, we do.”
*****
Liam left the institute without an army escort, but he suspected that he was followed. The rain had ceased, leaving the streets peaceful and quiet. The blocks passed in silence other than the clicking of his plastic boot heels on the still damp sidewalk. There was a lot to think about, but the meeting with Julee had drained his mental resources and all he wanted to do was mindlessly stroll along.
He hesitated outside the Last Lantern, then went inside on a whim. Maybe an ale would calm his nerves and somehow help make sense of the shit storm he had willingly walked into. He ordered a stout ale at the bar and took a long sip; damn, it tasted good.
Carolyn abruptly appeared at his side. “Looks like you had a rough trip south.”
It was interesting that she admitted knowing where he had gone. “Nah, it wasn’t bad. Almost everybody made it back ok.” He took another sip of ale and made a decision. “I should tell you something, my name really isn’t Jack Jones. I’m Liam Collins, and I worked at the University in Flatiron.”
Carolyn straightened up on her barstool. “Really? I had no idea.”
He watched the attractive woman closely; she was a skilled liar. “Yeah, they picked me up at the motor-pool and brought me to the tech center; it looks like I’ll be working there from now on.”
“Well… that’s great news, isn’t it? I mean, you’ll be out of the heat, and maybe they’ll give you a nicer place to live.” Carolyn paused. “Did your friends, I mean Keith and Sarah, do they know who you really are?”
“No, they have no idea. I met them on the walk down here from Flatiron City. Guess I’ll have to find a way to break it to them… and hope they don’t get too mad.”
*****
His apartment was empty when Liam returned home; he hesitated a moment as panic flooded his mind, but then returned to the hall and knocked on the door to Rose and Lisa’s room.
Keith answered, and grinned. “You made it!”
“Yeah, but everyone in the government knows that I’m Liam now.”
Rose slowly walked toward him. “They know?”
“They only know about me. And I’ve got a new job at the tech center.” He went to his sister and pulled her into a hug. “It’s ok, you’re safe,” he whispered in her ear.
*****
The next morning, Ron met him in the tech center lobby. The muscular and tanned man shook his hand vigorously. “What the hell did you think you were doin’?” Ron asked. “We need you here.”
Liam shrugged in response, feeling unsure of what to say to the man whose betrayal had destroyed a city and killed thousands. “Where do I work, and what do you want me to do?”
“Ok, sure,” Ron replied excitedly. “Let’s go upstairs; we can talk there.”
They rode the elevator to the third-floor, and Ron led him through a set of fortified steel doors into a large room filled with shoulder high partitions. He heard rustling sounds and realized that other workers were hidden within the cubicle maze. It was a bland space colored in gray and blue hues, but it had a sweeping view of the city and the western mountains through floor to ceiling windows that spanned the entire rear wall. Liam smiled when he noticed that a glass door led outside to a wide balcony. “Nice place,” he said.
“Only the best!” Ron seemed energized, almost manic in his movements. “There’s coffee… real coffee available down the hall in our breakroom. There’s also tea if you prefer. I’ve given you a desk by the window so you can enjoy the view, but we can’t back off much. What we’re workin’ on is critical Liam… critical.” As he spoke Ron had led him to his workstation, which consisted of just a wide shelf and a computer that was at least 20 years old.
“Old equipment,” Liam said. “That won’t work for the navigation system Julee wants me to design.”
“The schedule’s tight Liam. We’re workin’ on somethin’ that’ll change the world… no, change the entire future of mankind. But we got a deadline, so there’s no time or resources available for fancy new computers.”
“Ron, I’m telling you that it won’t work. I need a quantum computer, like the one I designed in Flatiron.” He pointed to the machine on the counter. “That thing isn’t much more than a doorstop, I doubt it will do anything beyond basic math. If you want to send probes to Trappist-1 and not have them end up inside a blackhole, I’ll need better equipment.”
“There’s no need Liam. In my department we do more with less, and the work is almost done anyway, all you need to do is some bug-fixes and solve a few problems.”
Liam smiled and shrugged. “Ok, I’ll do whatever you say.” He knew very well that what Ron claimed was impossible, and considered how he could turn his boss’s incompetence into an advantage.
*****
The programming code he was asked to debug was even more primitive than expected. Trying to solve a 12-dimensional problem with 3-dimensional thinking was simply not going to work. Still though, Liam played the role of a drone and did as he was told. To destroy the government’s plans, all he needed to do was step aside and watch them fail on their own.
He didn’t believe Julee’s story about sending more probes to Trappist-1; undoubtedly the real goal was to send people there. The Socialists wanted to get away from the Tribes and find a new home, but he wondered how many they intended to send; probably not many by the look of things. It took a tremendous amount of energy to shift the frequency of even a tiny mass so that it could enter N-Space, and the fusion reactors he had driven down to Yuma were inadequate for anything bigger than a large truck. But maybe he wasn’t seeing the whole picture, there might already be a thousand tiny ships in orbit powered by Ron’s reactors for all he knew.
The work was easy, so much so that he spent most of his day sipping tea and enjoying the city view through the window. He corrected errors in the code and created a few new functions that might get the ships shifted into N-Space and go someplace, what he couldn’t do was predict where that would be. A month after he started working at the institute, Julee Garcia stopped by to check on him. “How’s everything going Liam?”
He shook his head and chuckled. “The computer system you’re using is too primitive to run the navigation calculations,” he replied. “I’m trying to get it set up to send your probes somewhere… but in this environment I can’t predict where that’ll be.”
Ron was hovering nearby. “Liam has everything he needs. He just has to innovate.”
“If you ask me to throw a rock and hit the moon, no matter how much I innovate, just using my arm won’t work,” Liam replied. “If you want to reach Trappist-1, give me the tools I need to make that happen.”
“Liam is sabotaging us,” Ron stated.
His boss’s accusation put his friends in danger. “No, in fact I’m not. What I’m doing is patching up some pretty horrific code. I’ve made a bunch of improvements, but this thing…” Liam tapped the side of his computer terminal. “This thing has the mind of a tick, and you’re asking me to teach it quantum mechanics.”
Julee nodded slowly. “Ok. You’ve solved this problem before, so I’m inclined to trust your judgement. There’s too much at stake to make a half effort. I still have to look at resources though, so do the best you can with what you have for now, and I’ll get back to you later.”
*****
Almost every night after work Liam went to the Last Lantern for dinner. Over the past weeks Carolyn had become increasingly friendly and would often dine with him. She was a beautiful woman but was of the type that usually didn’t hang around with computer geeks; but against his better judgement, and regardless of
his suspicions about her loyalties, he grew increasingly fond of her.
One night she asked, “What are you working on at the institute?”
He became instantly wary. “Just accounting stuff. Gotta make sure everyone gets enough of these great plastic boots!”
Carolyn laughed. “With your pay raise, I bet you have enough credits on your chip to buy better shoes.” After that she let the subject drop.
*****
Rose and Keith had moved into the third-floor area that Lisa had once used to service her johns. They sometimes stopped by the Lantern in the evening, but Liam kept his interaction with them friendly and casual. In public nothing was said of the project he was working on, or his plans to derail it. Those conversations were reserved for later in the evening when they all returned to their rooms.
They met him in the hallway one night just as he got home. “Got a sec?” Keith asked.
“More than that, I’ve got all night.” Liam led them into his room. “What’s up?”
“I got orders to lower morale in the city.” Keith sat down on an unused bed. “Any ideas?”
“Yeah, actually there’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now. Remember our orientation, when they told us about Mother’s Ears?”
“Most people call them snitch boxes,” Rose said.
He nodded. “Good name, and I think it’s about time we used them.”
“How?” Keith frowned.
Liam sat down on his bed and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Remember Mick, the Sergeant that captured us in Flatiron? All it took was my accusation to get him crucified.” He smiled. “Have your people drop messages in the snitch boxes that accuse officials and government workers of being tied in with the Tribes. Start slow though, because if it’s a landslide it’ll all be ignored.”
“Yeah, that might work,” Keith said. “They’re askin’ for more than that though; they want you to stop the Socialist’s plans to get away. The Tribes want ‘em all dead.”
“The ones running the tech center are doing a good job of that by themselves, so why bother?” He shrugged. “Their escape plans are bound to fail.”
“Yes, but what if their plan works and they get away?” Rose asked as she stood by the door.
“Ok, let’s pretend that a miracle happens and Ron’s system works,” Liam answered. “If they make it to Trappist-1 it might be a problem because Lucy found abandoned alien ruins there, and maybe they could find something to use as a weapon. But even then, there’s no way they could come back here because their navigation system is too primitive.”
Rose sat down next to Keith. “Yes, but what if they find alien spaceships that can bring them back here?”
“Yeah, that would be bad.” Liam frowned. “Ok, let me give it some thought and I’ll see what I can do.”
“I gotta admit that revenge is playin’ a big part in what the rebels want,” Keith said.
“Huh,” Liam grunted. “How’s that old saying go? Before seeking revenge on one, first dig two graves.”
*****
Months passed and Liam’s life became routine. Whatever equipment improvements Julee Garcia had hinted at during their brief meeting seemed to have been forgotten. That was fine though; his impression was that the rebels far outnumbered the Pike City military, so it was just a matter of time until the city was overrun. He worried a bit about the danger an invasion presented to his friends and himself, but there was nothing he could do to ward off the coming avalanche, so he did his best to not think too much about it.
One late night as he was leaving the Last Lantern, Carolyn stopped him at the door. “You going home?” she asked as she wrapped one arm around his waist.
“I’ve nowhere else to go.” Even though he was certain that Carolyn was working for the government, he had grown to like her a lot.
“Not necessarily.” Carolyn smiled and added her second arm around his middle. “I’ve never met anyone like you Liam. Guys hit on me all the time, but not you. I can tell that you like me, and that you think I’m pretty, but you were content to just let our friendship grow.” She reached up and pulled him down to her level, then gently kissed him. “You may not have a snazzy pick-up line, but what you did sure worked. So, come home with me tonight.”
Liam smiled. “Playing hard to get was my plan from the start.”
Chapter 13: Gambit
He had discovered the network sniffer within his first week at the tech center and knew that his work was being monitored. It was a ham-handed kludge that was simple to circumvent, but other than the connection to the remote database that he used to send messages to Keith, he had nothing to hide. All his captors could see were countless bug-fixes and a few new functional objects that were work-arounds for the brain-dead code he had inherited. He was legitimately doing the best he could in the primitive environment, and until the computer platform was improved he could do no more.
One thing at work really bothered him though; a communication portal to Lucy sat unused in the corner of the room. Every time he walked past the terminal on his way to get a cup of tea he was strongly tempted to sit down and reestablish contact. What had she learned about the abandoned alien cities? Had she created more self-aware probes like herself? He also missed Lucy’s company, which at first seemed a little strange. Still though, she was a person and a friend, so why wouldn’t he want to speak with her again?
Within a week after their first night together, Carolyn invited him to move in with her. She lived in a nice area of the city in a pleasant home with dependable plumbing, which was a huge plus; it was also much closer to work. They got along well, their relationship was satisfying, and even though he didn’t trust her, living with a stunningly beautiful woman certainly had its benefits.
His life had become predictable and calm, and there was a certain relief that came from living a legitimate life without too much pretense. Every night after work he went to the Last Lantern where he socialized with some of the people he worked with; thankfully Ron was never there, either he considered himself too esteemed to associate with the lower classes, or he was worried about retribution from the survivors of Flatiron.
Keith, along with Rose in her guise as Sarah Smith, would frequently stop by the Lantern as well. Many times, they would all sit together and listen to music. Carolyn usually joined them and had even taken it upon herself to get to know Sarah better, and the two women appeared to get along. All his relationships were somewhat aboveboard, and yet he was still being spied upon at work. Maybe that was just what tyrannical governments did; but whatever suspicions they may have had were probably allayed, at least for the time being.
*****
He sat with his back to his workstation and stared sightlessly up at the ceiling. The computer lab was dehumidified, so it seemed cooler than the actual air temperature. The dry warmth that crept through the west-facing windows baked his body and felt luxurious. His mind wandered, and eventually settled on his relationship with Carolyn.
Using the palm chip and secret database for communication, Keith had recently told him that Carolyn was actually Chancellor Margret William’s niece. That had been a shock, and it complicated a lot of things because he was becoming increasingly attached to her. Dear Mother was obviously behind their relationship; the whole thing was a ruse, a way to spy on and control him, but what could he do about it? Was Mother’s scrutiny something he might use against her? The problem was that he couldn’t just turn his feelings for Carolyn off.
“So, this is what you do when the boss is away,” a nearby female voice said.
He quickly sat up and saw Julee Garcia standing close by. Not knowing what to say, he decided to fake it. “Actually, I’m trying to figure out how to calculate movement in N-Space on a computer that can only understand three-dimensional Euclidean geometry.”
Julee seemed a bit stymied by his reply. “Any luck?” she finally asked.
“I was hoping to programmatically layer several three-dimen
sional structures over each other, but the tolerances are unacceptable. If I use that method, the navigation endpoint could vary as much as a hundred lightyears, and if a correction were implemented at that endpoint the calculation could be off by another hundred light years. In theory you could get further and further away from where you want to go.” What he just told Julee was complete bullshit of course, but it sounded convincing and he hoped she’d fall for it.
“Oh,” Julee said. “That isn’t good, but maybe we can do something about it. Come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“I have a car waiting outside that will take us to the City Council Building.”
“A car?”
“You know, four wheeled transportation?” Julee raised one eyebrow and smiled. “We have a meeting with Mother and the City Council.”
His stomach tightened. “Am I in trouble?”
“Mother can be unpredictable at times, but I don’t think so. I was told that she just wants to speak with you about the navigation problem.” Julee narrowed her eyes slightly. “You might want to tone down the technical stuff though. Remember, you’ll be talking to politicians.”
*****
Liam had no idea what real palaces looked like, but he assumed that the People’s City Council Building was a close resemblance. Behind a wide courtyard the three-story stone building had arched windows, a red slate roof, and at the rear stood a high clock tower that soared far above the rest of the structure. He paused by a bronze statue of a smiling man wearing strange clothing with what seemed to be a leash around his neck.
“That’s Samuel, Margaret’s ex-husband. He died defending Denver when the Tribes attacked,” Julee said.
“Strange clothes,” he replied. “What’s that around his throat?”
“He used to enjoy wearing old-fashioned business suits.” Julee chuckled. “That’s a tie around his neck.” She steered him toward the building entrance. “Come on. You look like a tourist, let’s get inside.”
