Allie's War Season Three

by JC Andrijeski

  Jon was too busy trying to make out the text on the antique-looking screen, ignoring the flashing pictures and movies until he could get the gist of what the words were saying.

  "SAN FRANCISCO HOSPITAL PLAGUE...HUNDREDS KILLED..." Jon muttered, reading off the machine. "...FEARS OF SPREADING VIRUS." He looked at Dorje, feeling something in his chest go numb. "Jesus."

  "They already found cases outside the hospital where it started," the guard added, his voice still holding that tense, charged note. "...I guess they put the quarantine into effect pretty fast...within 12 hours of the first case...but not fast enough. I don't know how you could keep people from walking in and out with it anyway, big hospital like that. They had a staff change before they realized what was happening..."

  He walked closer to Jon, raising the monitor somewhat and turning so Jon could read it over his shoulder. Jon couldn't help noticing how old the device was, the same kind most people carried prior to headsets and now implants.

  "...They found three more cases at one of the other hospitals," the guard added. "Also in the Marina District, which is way across town..."

  "Do they have any idea what it is?" Jon said. "Where it came from?"

  The guard shook his head, giving Jon another once over, before catching Dorje's annoyed look and averting his gaze.

  "No," he said, flushing a little. "...No, they have no idea. But I guess it kills people really fast." He sounded more openly worried when he added, "...I have a lot of friends over there. I've tried calling a few of them, but I guess the networks are on blackout for local news since this hit the international feeds..." Looking up at Jon, he gave Dorje another surreptitious glance before adding, "They're afraid of a panic, of people trying to leave, probably. Some of the non-networks are even saying that SCARB is talking about closing down the city..."

  "SCARB?" Jon said, his voice sharpening. "What does SCARB have to do with it?"

  The man looked caught, as if he'd said more than he meant.

  But Jon already understood.

  "The black market feeds," Jon said. He held up a reassuring hand, shaking his head to indicate he didn't care. "It's okay, man," Jon said. "I'm from SF...I just want to know what's going on. My family's there..."

  The man's expression relaxed somewhat, but he continued to look nervous. Glancing at Dorje, he finally added in a lower voice, moving closer to Jon,

  "Yeah, well...those other feeds?" he said conspiratorially. "Those ones you mentioned? They're saying it might have been a terrorist attack, man. They said there's evidence that some group of renegade seers did it. They also said the disease only kills humans..."

  Jon glanced at Dorje, and could see from the seer's blurred irises that he was already in either the Barrier or the virtual setting of his headset...or more likely, both. He was probably looking at the seer black market feeds and/or talking to Balidor. Jon had no doubt they were already in process of checking if the stories linked somehow to that crazy thing Chandre had done, blowing up that lab in Hayward the previous year.

  Not like Jon disagreed with what Chandre had done.

  He'd been there for that demonstration of the human-killer virus in Hong Kong. He remembered how fast those bodies fell, and what they looked like afterwards. It had been scary as hell...more like a weapon than any virus he'd ever seen, including during his brief stint as an EMT. At the time, he'd assumed it was some kind of poison gas, but after they examined samples, Dorje told Jon that it had been a virus in some hyper-concentrated form, delivered to provide the most dramatic impact possible.

  "People are going to freak out about this..." he muttered.

  He didn't realize he'd said it aloud until Dorje gave him a grim look and the human guard answered him.

  "They already are, man. They already are..."

  Dorje's eyes seemed to reflect the same.

  But the doors to the library were opening, so Jon shoved his hands into his pockets, following along with the others as they entered the high-ceilinged foyer.

  ANY COMPLICATIONS JON had been expecting in terms of the the library errand itself never materialized. Maybe because all of Jon's worry transferred onto the news of the virus in San Francisco, he got the impression he came across more as impatient than anything else, first in asking for assistance getting down to the basement and then accessing the storage areas to use the ancient pre-computer computer.

  They got permission easily enough.

  The power cord on the thing made Jon nervous. It looked like one of those antique bundles of wires wrapped in horse-hair or some equivalent, with duct tape patching on the worn areas. He half-expected it to start smoking when the library staffer plugged it into the wall, but instead the hulking machine lurched into a kind of life, humming along by the window where it had been stored on a low platform, likely to keep it from getting damp.

  The machine didn't look quite how Jon had expected. He'd been imagining something like the very early human computers, the ones with big steering wheels in front and tiny black and white screens and reel to reel tapes. He'd imagined a data processor that took up half a warehouse...in fact, he'd really been expecting something similar to what Allie described to him they'd found during the hit on the Registry mainframe in Brazil.

  Only smaller maybe...and less scary.

  But the machine in front of him reminded Jon more of old organics he'd seen pictures of in history books on World War I and World War II.

  Looking at it more closely, it occurred to him that of course it must have organic parts. For one thing, just about every seer-built and invented machine did have organic parts of one kind or another...it was generally how seers were able to program them, in that they primarily used their aleimi to communicate with the data, not keyboards or some other physical interface.

  For another, it was the only way they likely could have created a computer of any kind at that time, given the low-level tech of the ordinary, non-organic machinery.

  It also explained how the thing didn't communicate via binary language, and thus wasn't compatible with human-built machines. Using a machine that spoke an entirely different meta-language had to be better than any encryption-based code a human could think up.

  Dorje had explained to him once how most organics communicated with binary, but more as a form of translation. When seers spoke to organics, for example, they didn't think in binary, but in what they called "composite" thoughts...thoughts that held meaning, intent and often information (diagrams, instructions, spatial reasoning, even mathematical formulae) all in a single, dense pulse. They would send these pre-language pulses to the machines, which the machines then interacted with more like any sentient being might.

  It was how seers who didn't speak the same language could communicate just fine in the Barrier...they spoke outside of language, using the building-blocks that occurred prior to the actual translation of thought and reasoning into a particular language.

  It was also the reason seers tended to pick up languages so easily.

  That and their long lives...and their photographic memories.

  Jon sighed, hands on his hips. He couldn't help wondering again how he could ever be expected to keep up with all of this.

  Dorje nudged him, smiling faintly. "Don't be stupid."

  "That's the problem, cousin," Jon sighed. "What you ask may not be possible."

  Dorje laughed at that, smacking him on the shoulder before walking directly up to the stone age organic. "You underestimate yourself, Jon," he commented, crouching down in front of the machine. "You have a real knack for this stuff...far more than you know..."

  The library staffer continued to stand by the door, one hand on the handle, as if not sure if she could leave. Giving her a smile, Jon nodded and waved her off.

  "No worries," he told her with a smile. "We've got it from here."

  The woman looked relieved. Jon figured he and Dorje were probably keeping her from her regular job, whatever that was exactly.

  "Okay," she said, smiling bac
k. "I'm right outside if you need me."

  She closed the door behind her and Jon felt his shoulders relax.

  Getting in here really had been easy. A lot easier than he would have expected, even if the data key they were using hadn't been stolen from a high-security bank vault a few hours earlier.

  "Jon," Dorje warned him softly.

  Jon nodded, shifting that information out of his mind.

  By then, Dorje had looked all over the organic and now hunkered over the flat top panel, his eyes concentrated. The organic stood at about waist height and had smooth, stone-like skin, like some of the smaller, more compact machines Jon had seen demonstrated for bomb detonation and defusion back at Seertown. It still had that faint greenish sheen, like modern organics, but darker than what he saw on more recent variations, more gray than the emerald green to which he'd grown accustomed.

  Overall, it made him think of a somewhat overly symmetrical boulder...or maybe a featureless animal squatting on four legs. He saw a few key-like depressions in different parts of the hulking shape, and a glass-like container to one side, just below a long, narrow slot on top. All in all, the machine reminded Jon most of one of those massive copier/printer behemoths from his first few office jobs in San Francisco, the machines that eventually got replaced by built-ins and wall panels a few years later.

  Jon watched as Dorje examined the smooth, flat top of the machine by that long slot. His dark eyes remained narrow as they flickered over the featureless surface.

  Jon figured he must be scanning for the correct portal for the key.

  A few seconds later, his face showed that 'ah-ha' look.

  Then Dorje was squatting in front of the thing once more, fingering a depression on the front panel that looked like a knot-hole in a tree.

  Dorje clicked his fingers for Jon to hand over the data key.

  Pulling it out of his shirt pocket, Jon passed it over. He stood over Dorje's shoulder, watching as the seer fit the sharper end into the slightly discolored slot once he got it positioned. Straightening an instant later, Dorje peered at the smooth, flat top of the thing once again. It occurred to Jon then that the slot feeding off to one side might be for paper, especially since it aimed towards that glass, bucket-like container attached on the same end.

  "Even Balidor is saying so now," Dorje added, as if there had been been no lag in their conversation. He hit a slightly raised button not far from the paper-sized slot, turning to wink at Jon. His smile turned faintly mischievous.

  "...You notice he's testing you out on more ops, don't you?" the seer said.

  Jon lifted an eyebrow, giving Dorje a scornful look.

  "Please," he said. "I'm here to play the thirty-five-year-old student while you push people into believing we need this dinosaur for research..."

  "Yeah. Right." Dorje snorted.

  "He's probably just humoring Allie, anyway."

  At this, Dorje's smile faded. His eyes turned sharper once more.

  "I'm being completely serious, Jon," he said, his voice carrying a faint edge. "Balidor told me the other day that you are one of those assets we can no longer afford to 'severely under-utilize.' His words, Jon. Not mine." He continued to study Jon's face, that faint edge in his voice still audible. "...I would get used to coming out with us a lot more often from now on, cousin. The rest of us were annoyed it took him this long to figure that out, if you want the truth. Allie especially, yes...but only because she's known you for longer. She's been bugging him for months to give you a job, but it is not sentiment, cousin. She is much more of a strategist than you credit her. She is like Dehgoies in that. Practical to the bone."

  Jon folded his arms, not answering.

  He knew that about Allie, actually.

  Especially lately.

  For some reason, Dorje's words made him uncomfortable anyway, even as he thought about how Allie had changed again since they got her out of Beijing. Having so much of her light entwined in Revik's seemed to exaggerate those more strategic tendencies even more, and then she'd been trained as an infiltrator under the Lao Hu, too.

  Revik himself seemed to assess everyone that way, no matter how he felt about them personally. Jon wondered if that was part of what made them compatible, or if it was another one of those instances where they were rubbing off on each other in various ways.

  It took Jon another few seconds to admit to himself that part of his discomfort came from the fact that he'd gotten pretty used to flying under the radar with the majority of seers. He kind of liked his status as the guy everyone forgot about. It meant they often said a lot more in front of him than they might have otherwise. If they grew aware of him enough to begin censoring their conversations, it might make him feel more out of the loop, not less.

  It also meant his days of doing whatever the hell he wanted might come to an end.

  Dorje laughed, clapping him on the shoulder.

  "Get used to it, cousin. Balidor's even talking about assigning you your own team...finding more humans for us to ally with...partly to test you in a leadership role. He wants Allie and Revik to train you more on shielding and mind control, so they can include you in higher-level ops..." When Jon gave him another incredulous look, Dorje shrugged, one-handed. "...That might have been Dehgoies' idea. He's been pushing for more diversification in operations. I don't know if he and Allie are planning those things together these days...but I suspect they are."

  Jon snorted, shaking his head again.

  Trust Allie to oversell him. Now she had Revik doing it, too.

  "It is not overselling," Dorje said, now sounding genuinely annoyed. "Gods, Jon. Are you not listening to me at all? You have no idea how irritating that is..."

  "What?" Jon said. "What's irritating?"

  "The 'poor human' thing. The only one who still believes that crap is you."

  "...along with about a million seers," Jon muttered.

  "None of whom know you at all," Dorje shot back, even more angrily. "You'd better snap out of it, Jon, because you're going to get yourself killed if you play weak in an op...or you'll get one of us killed. You don't see Allie doing that shit anymore, do you...?"

  Jon gave an incredulous laugh.

  "She doesn't do that anymore because she's a seer, Dorj," he said, rolling his eyes. "Not only that, she's Elaerian...and telekinetic. Not only is she a seer, she's some kind of..." He gestured vaguely with one hand. "...I don't know...super seer. Or seer superhero..."

  Dorje rolled his eyes back in that same, exaggerated seer fashion.

  "She was raised human," he said, his voice uncompromising. "She used to play the same 'poor me' game...but she has stopped. She knows it is crap, so she stopped doing it. Further, she now knows that while playing ignorant might protect either of you in the human world, in our world, it is dangerous. It is also disingenuous. No one likes a liar, Jon. No one follows a liar, either...and we need a leader for the humans. You are our best candidate right now."

  "What about Cass?"

  Dorje gave him a dismissive look. "Even if she were here, Cass is not suitable for this. You know that as well as I do. She is a great fighter...she would work well on your team. But she does not have your diplomacy. She also doesn't pretend to be humble like you do...but she is too reckless to lead. She is too quick to fight. Too quick to push others to fight, too..."

  Jon stared at him for a minute, unable to think of a response to that, either.

  He knew the seer must have hit some kind of mark though, since he could feel his face warming, even more than the stuffy storage room could explain.

  "You need to suck it up, Jon," Dorje said, making a flourishing gesture with one hand. "...Grow up. We can't wait for you anymore. We need you...you have a skill set we need. You do not have the luxury to pretend you don't have it anymore. Not now."

  "Fine," he muttered.

  "Especially now," Dorje added. "If that disease is being deployed, we have no time left, Jon. We have waited too long as it is to recruit among the humans..."r />
  "I said fine...I heard you."

  Dorje bit his lip, but didn't answer.

  Sighing, Jon folded his arms, unconsciously mimicking the pose of the shorter seer. "I did hear you, Dorj...and I'll make an effort, okay? I mean it. And I'll hit Allie up for the sight lessons. Or whoever they want me with..."

  Dorje nodded, once.

  "Good," was all he said.

  Seemingly the instant he said it, the machine erupted into a higher-pitched sound...right before it began spitting a long coil of paper out of the slot near the top. Both of them watched as the single sheet curled neatly into the glass box, fattening a long, rolled cylinder as it continued to feed out of the organic machine. Again, Jon was reminded more of an animal than anything mechanical...like a squat toad vomiting out some portion of its lunch.

  "Nice visual," Dorje commented, grimacing.

  "Of course, you could just not read my mind all the time..." Jon muttered.

  "And you could think quieter if you don't want me to hear things..." Dorje grumbled back, squeezing his own chest with folded arms. "You are my lover, Jon. Of course I am going to be in your light. Of course I am going to hear things you don't shield from me...it is a part of sharing light." He frowned at Jon, his voice holding more emotion that time. "I don't know why it bothers you so much. I thought you liked sharing light with me. Or would you prefer it only happen during sex...not while you are with me outside of bed...?"

  Jon sighed again. That time, he'd managed to hurt the seer's feelings.

  He also realized he was lashing out, partly because he was worried about that disease in San Francisco, and partly from feeling like a scolded schoolboy when Dorje lectured him about acting like a leader instead of playing the martyr. He couldn't always help feeling at a disadvantage in their world. His own boyfriend was something like 200 plus years older than he was. And whether they shared light or not, it meant something different to each of them, and it gave Dorje a lot more insight into Jon than the reverse.