The Liberty Box Trilogy

by C. A. Gray

  I cracked my eyelids open just a little, and glanced around. He sat behind me, staring at me after all, and smiling.

  “Pretty good for a first time,” he told me.

  “No it wasn’t. I’m awful.”

  He shook his head. “Controlling your mind is a discipline. You can’t just use willpower and think that’s enough; you have to train it. You’ve been sitting there for probably twenty minutes already. Most beginners start to squirm after five, or even less. I promise, you’re doing well.” He stood up and moved toward the fish carcasses. “Come on, let’s head back. We can keep our eyes peeled for some root vegetables growing along the way back to camp.”

  When Jackson and I returned, the hunters were back. Will, Jean, and Nick all stood in a little circle, speaking to one another in low voices. I saw Will look up at us and narrow his eyes. Jackson caught it, and I felt him give me a look. I shrunk back a little.

  “You never told him, did you,” he murmured under his breath.

  I shook my head.

  “You need to tell him, Kate.”

  “He’ll forbid it if I tell him!”

  “Sneaking behind his back is not the solution to that.”

  “Well, I’m sorry if I’m not as perfect as you are!” I snapped. I saw him recoil just a bit, and instantly regretted it. I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re right, it’s not my place to preach. You can do what you want in your relationship. But I respect Will, and I don’t want him thinking of me as an enemy.” He gestured to the little camp fire where Molly had prepared breakfast. “Come on, I’ll show you how to prepare the fish if you want. I can’t see how he’d object if we’re in plain sight of everyone.”

  You don’t know Will, I thought. But I followed him.

  Jackson gutted the fish, but left the skins on. He skewered one on a stick and began to roast it over the fire.

  “You watch for the scales to char,” he told me. “Then you can pull the skin away and just pick out the meat with your fingers, see?”

  We passed around the fish to the others when they were done cooking, skewer and all, and Molly laid her satchel of nuts and berries open in the middle of the little circle we formed. Will sat beside me. I determined to say nothing unless he did, but of course that didn’t take long.

  “Had a nice little fishing lesson, huh?”

  “Yep.” I shoved some fish into my mouth.

  There was a long pause. Old me would have immediately jumped in and tried to smooth things over, and I knew that was what he was waiting for. But I just sat there in stubborn silence. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

  Finally, Will said in a low voice, “I don’t want you spending time with him.”

  “He’s a fisherman,” I shot back. “And the best hunter here, and the only one who can really train us to control our minds when we get back on the grid—”

  “—And none of that matters because you’re not going back on the grid,” Will finished through gritted teeth. “Nor do you need to learn to fish, or to hunt, Kate. I will take care of you, like I have always done—”

  “What if I want to contribute?” I hissed. “What if for once in my life I want to develop a useful skill, other than looking pretty and smiling at a camera?”

  “I don’t care what you want, I am telling you that you’re not allowed to—”

  “Allowed?” I cut him off, my eyes flashing. “Allowed? I’m sorry, do you think you own me?”

  I thought we’d kept our voices down, but I suddenly realized that most of the rest of the group had grown quiet, watching us. I bit my lip and turned away from Will, closing my eyes. I pictured the stream where Jackson and I had caught the fish.

  Focus on your breath, Kate. Listen to the sounds of the wind, to the birds…

  “So, Will, any progress?” Molly asked loudly.

  Will glared at her at first, but then took a deep breath, allowing the subject change. “Remember how I told you about the code I wrote that interrupted the control center signals?” She nodded. “I was gonna go back on the grid and do the same thing for increasing intervals of time. Well, it turns out there are a few complications with that plan.”

  “Like what?” Molly asked. I could see the others relax visibly, now that Will and I were no longer at each other’s throats. I glanced at Jackson, and saw him watching me with an expression I could not read.

  “Well, there’s the obvious issue of getting access,” Will told Molly. “At the time I wrote the code, I was actually on the government compound and had a working password with high security clearance. I didn’t have to hack into anything. I guarantee they disabled my username and password as soon as I didn’t report for work, but even if they didn’t, the only way for me to get in to their system directly from out here is through a portal.”

  “What’s a portal?” asked Violet.

  “It’s a page on the net with its own address,” Will told her, and continued speaking to Molly. “I can still use it now with someone else’s working credentials, though—and I sort of anticipated a situation like this, so I swiped my colleague’s when he wasn’t looking. But that will only work if he hasn’t changed his password yet, and we change them once a month for security. Not all on the same schedule either. So if he hasn’t done it yet, he will soon. That’s part of why there’s a rush—if I’m going to do this, I have to do it fast. And we’re not even in Beckenshire yet. I might just have to stop somewhere along the way, go back on the grid, and find a netscreen. But if the control centers ID me while I’m there…”

  “I thought you told me you could make metal cages to protect your brainwaves or whatever,” I muttered to him.

  Will sighed. “Yeah, but there are two problems with that. One is that we don’t have the materials to build them yet, and even that will require a raid on the grid to gather them, or else we’d have to wait until we get to Beckenshire to raid the empty houses there. And if we’re going to do the raid for supplies, why not just have me go back and code the sequel injection instead, and I’ll take my chances? We’d be taking the same risk either way.”

  “You mentioned multiple complications. What are the other problems?” Jackson asked.

  Will narrowed his eyes at him, and then looked back at Molly, as if she’d asked the question. “The other problem with the faraday cages, the metal cages Kate mentioned, is if we cover just our heads, and not our faces and our eyes, some of the brainwaves will inevitably still escape. So if we go that route, we have to hope that our brainwaves will be attenuated enough that they'll be under the detection threshold for the control centers. And that’s a risk—we won’t know if it works until we try it.”

  “So if you’re wrong, people die?” demanded Molly, turning a fierce look on Nick. “Hell no. What are the other options?”

  “Well, it wouldn’t mean we’d die necessarily,” Nick placated her, “just that agents would show up. Then we’d just have to hope Jackson trained us well enough to resist them.”

  Everyone turned to look at Jackson at this, who raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

  “Besides, at this point we’re talking about a raid without even the faraday cages, at least once, since we’d have to go on the grid for supplies to make them,” said Will. “And if my colleague Hank changed his password already, the best I can do is embed my code into an innocent-looking message and send it to him in a comm. If he opens the comm, the code might execute. If he doesn’t…” Will shrugged. “And if he already knows I’m a traitor, why would he open it?”

  “Why don’t I send it then?” asked Jean. “He doesn’t know me.”

  Will pursed his lips and thought about this. “That could work.” He shoved a piece of fish in his mouth.

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “If you can find a connected net screen, and if he hasn’t changed his password, and if he opens the comm, then it might execute?”

  Will nodded. “That’s about the siz
e of it. But it even gets more complicated than that. Even if, one way or the other, I manage to successfully disrupt the signals at regular intervals, they’ll figure out pretty quick that their signals aren’t sending—I’d estimate within 24 hours. After that, the Potentate will have technical teams on it day and night to try to fix the problem—nothing will be higher priority. I’d buy us maybe 48 hours at best. And that’s if everything goes perfectly.” He sighed.

  Brian, on Will’s other side, leaned in and summarized for me. “So it’s not a long-term strategy. I suggested reprogramming the messages the control center sends out entirely, but Will didn’t like that idea…”

  “No, it’s a great idea, I just don’t know how to do it,” Will told him, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “I never found out how the control centers send out messages, all I found out was how to disrupt them. If I could get back in there for a good day or two I might be able to figure it out, but at this point they’d kill me long before I had the chance!”

  “I have an idea,” I said.

  The entire group’s hushed mini-conversations stopped at exactly that moment, and I felt everyone staring at me. I looked around self-consciously, and said, “I told Jackson and Alec this idea once before. But…” I glanced at Will, setting my jaw. “Everyone in the Republic knows and trusts me. So if we’ve only got 24-48 hours of signal disruption to work with, we should capitalize on that. When people are already asking questions, I should go in and… somehow hijack the air waves.” I glanced at Brian and said, “Maybe we can’t reprogram the control center signals to tell people the truth. But I could do it directly.”

  I saw Brenda Halfpenny and Nelson Armstrong nodding with approval. Alec did as well. Jackson looked worried.

  “No,” said Will shortly. “Out of the question.”

  “Why?” I demanded.

  He gave me a penetrating look. “I already told you why, Kate.”

  “Then tell us,” called Brenda. “Because I think that sounds like a great idea.”

  Will glared at her, but smoothly changed the subject. “Ultimately the hunters all agree that our strategy needs to be waking people up in the Republic little by little. All at once will lead to anarchy, and we don’t want that again.”

  “So that’s the remaining problem,” said Nick. “How to do that. At the moment all we’ve got is Will’s code, and the faraday cage idea. Neither is perfect.”

  “Why can’t we have Will disrupt the signals and Kate hijack the airwaves at the same time?” asked Brenda. “Wouldn’t that give the best chance of getting people to listen?”

  Will sighed. “That’s not happening because I can’t be in two places at once, and I don't think any of the rest of you know much about any kind of technology, if I’m not mistaken. Except you, Jean, and I don’t think you’re big on broadcasting, right?” She widened her eyes at having been called out, and shrugged, shaking her head. Will went on, “That’s what I thought. And Kate couldn’t do a broadcast without me, that’s for sure.”

  “Charlie could help me,” I told Will under my breath. “He’s a whiz at electronics.”

  “Yeah well, Charlie isn’t here right now, is he?” Will snapped.

  I gritted my teeth, and made a vow to myself right there.

  Charlie wasn’t here right now, no. So I’d just have to go and get him.

  Chapter 8: Jackson

  After Will’s dissertation on possible approaches, it was Nick who finally summarized the plan for us. He bit his lip, looking around with a hesitant expression, like he knew what he was about to say would not be popular.

  “So it sounds like we can’t afford to wait on executing Will’s plan until we get to Beckenshire, then. Either we need to send a team back on the grid for materials to make the faraday cages now, make them, and send Will and Jean and company back in with some extra hunters for protection… or else the team goes in with Will now, with no faraday cages at all.” Molly opened her mouth to protest, and Nick held up his hand to cut her off. “I vote for the former, I agree,” he said, as if she’d already spoken her argument. He glanced at Will and Jean and said, “I have no idea how much time you two will need, but we definitely can’t risk Will’s brainwaves being detected. And chances are you’d need more than two hours, am I right?”

  “Definitely,” Will nodded. Jean gave a short laugh, like the question was absurd.

  “All right then,” said Nick.

  “So what are faraday cages exactly?” I asked. “I didn’t follow that.”

  “Will?” said Nick. “You want to explain?”

  The little muscle in Will’s jaw tightened as he looked at me. When he spoke, his voice was toneless. “We need to strip copper wire from lamps because it’s the most flexible, and we should also get some yarn, knitting needles, and latex bathing caps if we can find them, or any kind of flexible plastic if we can’t.”

  I waited for him to explain all this further, but evidently he was done with me. Finally, I prompted, “And what will all of those materials do for us, exactly?”

  After a pause in which Will said nothing, Kate rolled her eyes at him and answered, “The copper wire can conduct electricity. So it should prevent the control centers from being able to detect our brainwaves, because thoughts are electromagnetic energy.” Here she glanced at Will, as if for approval. “We’re supposed to interweave the copper into the yarn and knit hats or ski masks to cover our heads, if I understood correctly.”

  “And the latex?” I asked.

  “It’s insulation.” Kate glanced at Will again.

  He shrugged at her and said irritably, “There’s no ‘we,’ Kate. But keep going, that’s accurate so far.”

  She sighed, and narrowed her eyes at him, saying deliberately, “If we don’t either ground the metal somehow, which will be pretty hard while we’re wearing it, or insulate ourselves, then the metal should act like an antenna and actually amplify the government signal. So we’d be undetectable, but ultra-brainwashed. Or at least that’s what he figures.”

  “Thanks for that explanation, Kate,” said Nick, in the tense silence that followed. “How long will it take to knit the faraday cages once we have the materials?”

  “Depends on how many pairs of knitting needles we find,” Kate said. “It takes me probably about three hours to knit a hat, but I’m really fast. I used to knit all the time for relaxation. But if we’re all knitting at once and have enough materials, less than a day I think. Maybe even six hours, after I teach everybody? Depending on how many we need.”

  “We can’t all knit for six hours straight,” muttered Sam. “We’ll need breaks. That’s unreasonable.”

  “Sorry if you feel we’re demanding too much of your time,” Kate snapped at him.

  I watched Kate intently until she noticed and met my eyes.

  Calm down, I tried to tell her. I could do nothing about Sam, or Violet, or Will—but everybody’s emotions were getting out of hand, and if we didn’t deal with that, it would make any kind of group effort all but impossible. At least a few of us had to keep our heads. Kate blinked at me, but I saw her unclench her jaw and look away, embarrassed. She’d caught my meaning.

  I summarized, “Okay, so we need a team to raid any homes we find on the outskirts of the forest, then. I’ll go.”

  Nick shook his head at me. “Nope, you’re too recognizable, Jackson. We can’t risk the control centers picking up your brainwaves, either. Nor Will’s, nor Kate’s. But we need as many people as possible, other than you three, if we’ve got a hope of getting all the materials we need in under two hours.” He looked around. “Jean, you and Will need to stay behind and work on your plan, because by Kate’s estimation we should have enough cages for you to go in and do your thing by tomorrow night or the next morning at the latest. Jackson, you and Kate made a good team for lunch, why don’t you get us some dinner too? We’ll all be hungry by the time we get back.

  “Everyone else, we’re goin
g on the grid.”

  “What?” shrieked Violet. “I can’t go on the grid, I’m—” she looked down at her very pregnant belly. “I just… can’t!”

  “Violet stays behind,” growled Sam.

  “I can’t go on the grid either,” said Rachel, “I’ll just help Jackson and Kate with hunting…”

  “We need everyone’s help, in the most valuable activities. The more hands and eyes we have, the faster this will go, and the lower the risk of detection for all of us,” Nick announced, his tone clipped. “I hope I don’t have to remind you already that you took an oath to our cause. No arguments. Now come on, we’ve got no time to lose.”

  I saw Molly lift her chin just a little, her expression one of fierce resolution. I knew how much it cost Nick to volunteer even her for the raids—and I respected them both for it. He was willing to abide by the same rules he set for everyone else. That was the mark of a good leader.

  Kate and Will spoke heatedly, and Jean stood off to the side, shuffling her feet and pretending not to notice while she waited for Will’s attention. After a few minutes, Kate stormed away from him and toward me, her face flushed.

  I glanced at Will as she approached, and he shot me a look of daggers. Then I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “Don’t even,” she hissed. “Come on, let’s go. I need a weapon.”

  I chuckled in spite of myself. “For what, exactly?”

  Her eyes flashed at me, but she saw my expression and relented with a tiny smile.

  We picked up two bows and two quivers of arrows.

  “Why can’t I have one of those?” Kate asked, pointing at a .44 caliber.

  “Uhh…” I looked back at Nick and the rest of the group, still huddled up to strategize. “My guess is the raid team will need all the guns, just in case.”

  She gave me a terse nod, and picked up her bow and arrows, trudging off into the depths of the forest without waiting for me. She stared straight ahead, teeth gritted.

  I debated whether it was appropriate for me to invite her to talk, since Will already considered me a threat, and clearly he was the problem at the moment—did I really want to be the guy she confided in about her relationship? (I knew exactly what Uncle Patrick would have to say about that.)