The Justar Journal: An AOI Thriller

by Brandt Legg

  “I’ve been exhausting myself trying to wring any truth out of your lies.”

  “Any kind of thinking must be exhausting for you. But I’ll tell you, trying to comprehend my intentions or thoughts might cause your brain to hemorrhage. Oh, but you have connections at PharmaForce. They’ll get you the right pill. Might even save your life.”

  “Last time,” Drast sighed. “What will it take to get her location?”

  “I have three bits of data to insert into that tired mind of yours, Polis Drast. For starters, she wasn’t where you think she was last night, and I suggest you rethink your position about events outside the Pacyfik mattering to you. She has more power than you might believe . . .”

  “How could she?” Drast asked. “Even if she is alive, she is only a myth.”

  “You poor, dear man.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I will give you my demands tomorrow. If you can meet them, I shall provide her exact location, down to the square-meter.”

  Chapter 32

  Deuce Lipton watched the KEL of the library, as well as several other feeds not available to the AOI monitoring system. For more than fifteen years he had been slowly hijacking KEL feeds. The process required incredibly complex programs, total access to AOI systems, and patience, all of which he had.

  His crew would begin arriving at the library in a matter of minutes, and while he had committed more than a hundred people to the operation, fewer than a quarter would be able to work inside the building. They would straggle in over the next few hours disguised as plumbers, technicians, delivery people, and patrons.

  The day, so far, was going according to plan. The World Premier had shocked the entire planet, and especially the A-Council, by his sudden resignation, thus delaying the expected CAAP announcement. With Deuce’s access to KEL, and the even more powerful tools of direct satellite surveillance, including the ‘silver bullet,’ as he called his covert Eysen monitoring, he had enough secrets to easily persuade someone like the WP to resign.

  A man so corrupt, whom in an age with no real accountability through media, might have ignored Deuce, but Deuce had things on people the WP cared about. Ultimately, the same tactic had convinced the Vice Premier that he should not back CAAP either. However, the A-Council would not take the defeat indefinitely, for even those on the Council who had only reluctantly backed Lance Miner’s latest scheme, agreed on one basic tenet of the A-Council’s By-Laws: the Council must always prevail.

  Today’s bold maneuvers had been risky, and they would buy him only a few months at best. But he only needed a matter of months. After that, CAAP would be the least of the Aylantik governments concerns.

  As Deuce watched the happenings at the library in real-time, another VM showed an AOI report on PAWN. He almost smiled at the irony of the name, because in recent days he’d felt locked in a chess match with Lance Miner, the A-Council, Blaise Cortez, and a revolutionary woman he knew too little about. In truth, Miner and Deuce had been locked in a duel since birth, but the minutes were ticking down toward checkmate, and he was less sure than ever that it would be his king standing at the end.

  He saw Chelle and Vida together in a reference room. They seemed to wind up in each other’s company often. These two women worried him, unpredictable and influential in their own ways. Each could affect the outcome, and anyone with that power needed to be watched and possibly “ended.” Because of the Eysen stations in the room, he could hear the conversation.

  “Have you thought more about it?” Chelle asked as she pulled an old volume of pre-Banoff prison poetry she’d been trying to locate.

  “Yeah, and you’ve made me question my decision, but I still need the money.”

  “There are other ways to get money.”

  “No way I know of to get that kind of money fast.”

  “There are.”

  “They can’t be legal,” Vida said, moving a small stack of books onto a cart.

  “Don’t kid yourself. When society is this out of whack nothing is legal, least of all the laws which govern us into submission.”

  “Kind of a harsh view.”

  “Hardly.” Deuce noticed Chelle’s fists were clenched. “They know everything we look at on the Field, they know how long we’re looking, everything we read, everywhere we go, whom we talk to, what we say, whom we love, and what our weaknesses are. Someone is listening to us this very minute, do you realize that?”

  Deuce actually jerked away from the VM and looked over his shoulder.

  “If they were listening to everything in the library, wouldn’t we all be in jail right now?” Vida asked.

  “It isn’t just the AOI who listens, and the government doesn’t always have to arrest a so-called criminal to punish them.”

  Deuce was growing more worried about Chelle with each passing, tension-filled second.

  “What would I have to do?” Vida asked slowly. “For the money I mean?”

  “Keep a secret, memorize a few lines, deliver them at the right time, and then answer some questions. Like being an actress.”

  “Sounds easy enough. And for this acting job. . . how many digis will I receive?”

  “Fifty thousand.”

  Vida stared at Chelle, mouth agape. “It sounded easy, but for that kind of money it must be dangerous. Why so much?”

  “Because it is hard.”

  “And dangerous? I deliver a few lines and get enough money to change my future?”

  “It’s not dangerous, but it’s important. That’s why the money seems a lot. Those few lines won’t just change your future, they’ll change the world.”

  Vida started to laugh, but then saw Chelle’s serious expression.

  “And what are those lines?” Deuce wondered from his San Francisco office. “And to whom is she to deliver them?”

  “You better tell me what I have to say,” Vida said, “before I decide. I mean selling my bearing-rights may be something I regret one day, but it isn’t dangerous.” The system was so rigid that even with a second child, twins were not permitted. All pregnancies were monitored in the earliest stages and triplets or more were absolutely illegal.

  “Good girl,” Deuce said out loud to himself. “Let’s hear this.” He double-checked what he already knew, that there was no way the AOI could be hearing this conversation.

  “I can’t tell you everything yet,” Chelle said, looking around the room. “Some things need to happen first, but I’ll tell you this.” She leaned close to Vida’s ear and began whispering.

  “Come on!” Deuce yelled at the VM. He couldn’t hear anything.

  Vida’s eyes widened. “I had no idea,” she said quietly, pained by the disclosure.

  “So you see,” Chelle said, pulling away from Vida after a few moments of whispers, “you won’t be in danger, but he is. And your words will be the thing that saves him.”

  “But how do I know?”

  “Know what?” Chelle asked.

  “How do I know that you’re the one I should trust?”

  Chelle smiled and put a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. “Because, my dear, before this conversation you didn’t even know there were those involved who could not be trusted. If you couldn’t trust me, why would I have told you?”

  “I guess you’re right,” Vida said, smiling with an expression more of relief than of happiness. “But it’s a big deal. I had no idea.”

  “I know. You thought we were just saving the last books made of paper from the flames. But now you understand. The fire will take far more than our history, the thoughts, and ideas of great minds . . . If the books are burned, we don’t just lose words, we lose the truth.”

  Chapter 33

  A courier delivered a message to Nelson and then waited. Nelson found Runit pulling books in the vast fiction section.

  “Novels hold more contentious ideas and contemplate far more truth than nonfiction,” Runit said, looking up from a thick volume as he saw Nelson enter the aisle.

  �
�That’s why there are so damned many of them on the list. We never could have found them all without the DesTIn program,” Nelson said.

  “Neither would the AOI.”

  Nelson nodded. “I don’t like to think about that too much. But I have good news . . . the cavalry has arrived.”

  Runit looked at him questioningly, even warily.

  “Don’t worry, old friend. The richest man in the world has not forsaken us.” Nelson smiled. “Deuce Lipton has sent twenty-two people to help us finish this task.”

  “How does he plan to slip them past KEL and the AOI?” he asked, looking around for Chelle, who usually expertly fielded such questions.

  “He’s smarter than we are. The courier who delivered this is one of his people. He’ll do some tinkering with the KEL and the others will stream in as plumbers, techs, pizza guys, bringing real pizza I hope, and other assorted folks, including ordinary patrons.”

  “Sounds risky.”

  “I don’t know how else we’ll be able to do it,” Nelson said gravely.

  The remainder of the day was a blur of activity and stress the likes of which Runit had never known. If an AOI official had come into the library, they would have all been shot on the spot. KEL micro-infinite-definition 3-D-ready cameras were tampered with, replaced, and blocked in risky and suspicious ways. As near as Runit could tell, only half a dozen real patrons showed up that day, but it was impossible to be sure. One of them asked him why the place was so busy.

  “We’re involved in a major reorganization and book sharing program with the university,” the librarian heard himself saying in his most official voice. It seemed to satisfy the person, but he still believed his arrest and execution were imminent. Runit muttered the words of Proust to himself as the person walked away. “If we are to make reality endurable, we must all nourish a fantasy or two.”

  Runit wandered into the library’s basement to check the progress, and maybe to get lost. Nelson, working a strapper, glanced up as he saw Runit approach.

  “Did you know Ray Bradbury wrote the initial manuscript of Fahrenheit 451 in the basement of a library?” Nelson asked as if they’d been in the middle of a conversation.

  “Really?” Runit welcomed the distraction.

  “He was poor and lived in a tiny house at the time. With the distraction of his kids, he needed a place to work. The library at the University of California in Los Angeles had a room in the basement with rows of a couple of dozen Underwood and Remington typewriters, which they rented for ten cents per half-hour. They actually had timers. So Bradbury pounded out the words as fast as he could type and finished the first draft in about nine days. In between, he would take breaks and wander around the library.”

  “Wow. I knew he loved libraries, but now it all makes even more sense.”

  “That was almost one hundred fifty years ago,” Nelson said. “But it feels kind of like we’ve come full circle with old Ray.”

  “Bradbury once said, ‘Without the library, you have no civilization.’ I guess we’re about to find out.”

  Later, Chelle brought Runit some dinner and he allowed himself a deep breath. All the activity had raised the temperature inside the building, and Chelle appeared in a tight black tank top and dark jeans. She handed him a wrapped sandwich. He recognized it as being one from his favorite deli around the corner. He peeled back the brown paper and smiled at his standard BLT with extra pickles on the side.

  “How’d you know?” he asked, flattered she’d gone to the trouble to get his favorite.

  “I saw it on an AOI report,” Chelle said casually.

  “What?” Runit stepped beck, not appreciating the humor.

  Chelle laughed. “Vida told me.”

  “Oh.” He felt foolish. “You asked?”

  “You’re too stressed. The last thing we need is for the last librarian to have a heart attack.”

  “Thanks,” he said, raising the sandwich in a little toast. After finishing his first bite, he said, “That deli has been there since before the Banoff. It’s nice some things never change.”

  “This library has been here since long before the deli,” she said.

  That time he caught the irony.

  The first beverage truck rumbled to a stop against the loading dock’s heavy, black, rubber bumpers. Once they had Grandyn’s side platforms lined up well enough, the driver pushed a button, which raised all the panel doors. Then the chain began like a bucket brigade. It went with the bundles passing from one pair of hands to the next. Grandyn and three other TreeRunners worked the end of the line, a pair on each side of the truck. Grandyn threw a bundle to his buddy and tossed the next one into the cargo space. It took them a few minutes to get the pace figured out, but once they did they moved about four hundred books in sixty seconds, and had the first truck loaded in less than ten minutes.

  Runit, Nelson, and Chelle took a break near a second floor window to watch the first loaded truck roll out. Nelson checked his watch. “Looking good.”

  “We’ve just committed the crime,” Runit said. “Up until now we could have changed our minds, but now it’s too late to turn back.”

  “One day we’ll be celebrated as heroes,” Nelson said.

  Runit clutched his tightening stomach and stared as far down the darkened street as the beverage truck’s headlights allowed, searching for AOI agents, local cops, the grim reaper, anyone who might torgon up the plan, his life, and Grandyn’s future. But only a routine Portland evening was out there, at least as best he could tell.

  The drones – he didn’t have the faintest idea what they did – thinned out slightly at night. The lit directional signage and lane lines dimmed on most of the roadways. Shopping districts, which had come in and out of style and necessity during the past seventy years, were springing back to life. A few blocks away, Runit knew people were strolling in and out of posh and glitzy techie boutiques that attempted to capture what vintage shopping was once like. And he could smell the restaurants. Even in the era of delivered groceries and prepared meals, people still went out to eat and drink with friends and family.

  Turning to Chelle, Runit asked, “And what do you think? Are we doing the right thing? Are we heroes?”

  “They fired first,” she said coldly, then turned, grabbed a cart, and pushed it back into one of the aisles. “And we’re still way behind schedule. If we hope to get the rest of these precious books to safety, we need to be pulling.”

  Runit looked at Nelson questioningly.

  “Don’t take it personally,” Nelson said. “She takes everything personally.”

  Runit nodded, but remained confused.

  “Let’s go check on the boys,” Nelson said, fumbling for a bac. “It’ll give me an excuse to smoke a quick one.”

  As soon as they got there Runit quickly calculated that they would be able to do three runs per truck. The loading dock, thick with tension and books in the darkened evening, paradoxically also held a joyous, party-like atmosphere as a rebellious sense of expectancy surrounded the crew. The second truck, already half-loaded, sat ready to continue its noble mission. It was nineteen hundred hours, and as long as they were done before midnight there shouldn’t be much trouble with KEL, especially with the one key camera obscured.

  “Good job,” he said, smiling to Grandyn, who barely had a chance to acknowledge his dad in between bundles.

  “You heard about the World-Premier?” Nelson asked between drags.

  “Yeah. Surprised he resigned so close to the end of his term.”

  Nelson stared at the ground, contemplating his glowing bac as if thinking about whether or not to tell Runit something. Runit, too busy watching the loading, missed it, and the moment passed. “We’d better get back to work before my sister comes looking for us.”

  “Sometimes I think she’s mad at me, but I don’t know what I did,” Runit said, almost to himself.

  “She’s not mad at you, she’s mad at the world.” Nelson took a last drag and let the smoke come out o
f his nose. “Shoot, Runit, you’re the first guy she’s been nice to since her husband died. I’m pretty sure she likes you, and I’m damn sure you like her.”

  “I have to admit, I’m rather taken,” he said, a little embarrassed.

  “Just be careful,” Nelson said, making eye contact. “The timing couldn’t be worse.”

  “Because she’s still mourning?”

  “No. Because we’ve just started a revolution.”

  Chapter 34

  The trucks drove the round trip in just over half an hour. With a short time to park on each end, ten minutes to load, almost twenty to unload, they were looking at an hour and ten minutes per run. With the additional help of Deuce’s people it would still be tight, but for the first time they had confidence that everything would be out by the end of Sunday night.

  By twenty-two hundred Runit was feeling almost relaxed, or was it exhaustion? It had been only an hour since he stopped regularly checking out the windows for AOI agents. Nelson had been useless for almost as long, as his flask had been emptied and refilled from the spare liters he kept in his LEV, and then emptied again. Runit found him asleep on the floor of the young readers’ room.

  The plumber, who had been the first of Deuce’s people to arrive after the courier, ran into the room. “AOI agents are on the street.”

  Runit’s knees went weak, but he managed to remain standing. How could he get Grandyn out of there? “What are we supposed to do now?” he asked.

  “We must not panic,” the man said, seeing in Runit’s face that he was doing just that. “There’s only one patrol so far, and we’re trying to find out if it’s routine or pointed.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Are they focused on the library, or are they just in the neighborhood?”