by Cody Sisco
Elena looked skeptical. “Wasn’t that risky, though? I mean, especially for you?”
“I came to the conclusion that it was riskier not to try anything that might help.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s fine.”
They continued eating in silence.
As they finished their meal, a young man with dark skin and darker, close-buzzed hair walked to their booth and sat down. He stared at Victor through black, square-rimmed eyeglasses. “You made it. Good. Who the hell is she?” he asked.
“This is Elena.”
Elena nodded in Ozie’s direction.
He ignored her. “I told you not to bring anyone.”
“She’s helping me. Helping us, if you and I are going to be working together.” Victor kept his voice level, hoping Ozie wouldn’t make it a bigger deal than it was. “Look, Ozie, I’ve had enough running around in the dark. I want to know what you know.”
“Fine, but she can’t stay,” Ozie said.
Elena’s jaw dropped, and she put her hands around the edge of the table as if to overturn it.
“Ellie,” Victor pleaded. “Do you mind if—”
“Yeah, I got it.” She slid out of the booth with her beer. “I’ll be in the chill room, racking up a tab for you. Save the cake for me when it comes. All of it.” Her glare slipped off Ozie without any perceptible effect.
When she was gone, Ozie leaned forward and said, “Give me the Bose-Drive.”
“Tell me what’s going on first.”
Ozie smiled. “I heard from Pearl.”
Victor stiffened. Ozie had always liked to press Victor’s buttons by making up stories. Once he’d told Victor that Samuel Miller had broken out of a Class One facility. Victor had nearly fallen out of his chair in the university cafeteria, and Ozie had laughed and hooted until tears streamed down his black cheeks. Was Pearl okay, or was Ozie pulling his leg? Victor placed his hands on the table to keep them from shaking.
“Is she okay?” Victor asked.
“They let her go.”
That was a relief.
Ozie continued, “After she paid them 5,000 AUD. But we don’t think it’s safe for her in SeCa anymore. She’ll be here in a week.”
“The couple that took her—who are they?” Victor asked.
Ozie crossed his arms, always the type to resent a question he couldn’t answer. “I’m still figuring that out,” Ozie said, fidgeting in his seat.
Victor looked at Ozie more closely. He hadn’t changed much in five years. A little less hair at his temples. Fuller in the face, but just as slim around his waist. Though he looked anxious, eyes flicking around the cafe, Victor believed he could trust him. “Do you think they killed my granfa?”
Ozie stared at Victor and shook his head. “No. They’re thugs. Totally different problem.”
“How do you know?”
“Because 5,000 AUD is a ridiculously insignificant sum of money. They’re small time. Killing Jefferson Eastmore—that’s huge. Consider the stakes.”
Victor waited for him to elaborate.
“Our opponent is much craftier than those two.” Ozie leaned on his elbows. “Here’s what I know. Near as I can tell, the diagnostic protocols for mirror resonance syndrome will be standard throughout the American Union within five years. Throughout the civilized world within ten. Globally within twenty.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Motive,” Ozie said. “Jefferson was holding everything up. His pilot projects for Class Two ranches raised questions about the effectiveness of Personil. He advocated cognitive-behavioral therapies, herbalism, and brainhacking as alternatives. He wanted to do away with the Classification Commission’s system. His ideas weren’t popular—too radical, some would say. Once he was gone, no one else questioned the system.”
Victor sat back and crossed his arms. “You promised me information if I brought you the data. This is all just speculation.”
Ozie smiled, showing his canines. “Speculation is important. For example, what would have happened if Abraham Lincoln was killed that night in the theater instead of his wife?”
Victor rolled his eyes. Ozie was trying to push his buttons again. “What does this have to do with anything?”
Ozie sighed. Behind his black-rimmed glasses, his eyelids drooped; the lower slivers were deep red, like a hound dog’s. Even his plaid shirt, which billowed around his thin frame, looked tired and faded. “I’m trying to make a point. Humor me. What if Abe Lincoln was killed instead of Mary?”
Victor shrugged. “Probably the same stuff. The Union would have used that as an excuse to crush the South even more.”
Ozie held up a finger. “But maybe not. Abe went bat shit over Mary. It wasn’t politics that led him to destroy what was left of Southern culture. It was vendetta. He persecuted the Confederate’s leaders. He provided restitution to the slaves out of the lands confiscated from white elites. He gave Yankee politicians and companies free rein to remake the South.”
“This is irrelevant.”
“It’s not! It led directly to the Repartition, and without the Repartition, SeCa would be nothing, another neglected territory of the United States. You Eastmores would probably still be mucking around some Mississippi River tributary. It didn’t have to be this way.” Ozie leaned forward, his eyes wide. “Or take the archduke of Austria. The continental war that led to unified Europe started because of another failed assassination attempt. Do you think that’s a coincidence?”
Victor gulped his beer. Avoiding Ozie’s crazy eyes, he said, “You’re saying that the attempted assassinations of the archduke of Wherever, Europe in the 1910s and President Lincoln, which happened decades earlier, are related? That’s insane.”
Ozie puffed out his chest and lifted his chin. “I’m not saying they’re directly related, but they are part of a pattern. History is not just policies and demographics. Sure, those matter. After the War of the Atlantic, Europe demanded reparations, which drained the U.S. treasury and paved the way for the Repartition. We all know that. But sometimes it’s the individuals who can make a difference: Lincoln, the archduke. And now, here’s the really good stuff.”
Ozie paused. He looked around as if checking to see that they weren’t being watched. The lights of the café blinked all around them. Loud, clanging music filled the dining hall. Diners appeared preoccupied with conversations and playing with bits of tech lying around. Victor watched his old friend and wondered if he’d lost his grip on sanity.
Ozie continued, “Mía Barrias, after Carmichael—she made a difference. If Mía had died, if she hadn’t lived to tell everyone how horrible Samuel Miller’s acts were, spreading the word like gospel, maybe we wouldn’t have the Classification system. She wouldn’t have made it her life’s mission to get all of us locked up. We’d all be running free, and Samuel Miller would be an anomaly, the only person with MRS, not the first of many. Individuals make a difference. That’s my point. Jefferson Eastmore would have made a difference. That’s why he had to die, so he couldn’t stop whatever they had planned. I know it.”
I know it—that single phrase activated all of Victor’s doubt. How many times had he said those same words himself while referring to a blatant fantasy?
Victor rubbed his face and sighed, saying, “You’re speculating. The feeling I had that he was murdered, your conspiracy, the people following me—we don’t know how they fit together.” Victor pushed back his shoulders. “We need facts to figure this out. Hard evidence.”
He took the mason jar holding a piece of his granfa’s tongue from his bag and put it on the table. “We need to get this to a lab. They need to run tests to find polonium and to sequence the DNA to prove it’s his.”
Ozie looked at the jar with wide eyes and licked his lips. “Can do. It’s safe with me.” He placed the mason jar on the seat next to him, and then he grinned. “I’m glad you’re here. You know how it is. You and I can stretch a line of reasoning to the bre
aking point, but together we can keep each other honest. Really, Vic, I know I can’t do this alone. I tried feeding information to the police, the SeCa attorney in chief, the governor-general’s office—none of them responded. They don’t take me seriously. The stuff I found on the Mesh isn’t court-admissible. I’m trying to feed them enough to start their own investigation, but there’s no sign of them taking the bait. We’re on our own. That’s where the Bose-Drive comes in.”
“How so?”
“Gene-Us was and now BioScan is the only company that can run the genetic part of the test for MRS. Why is that? What are they hiding? We’ve got to stop them.”
Victor leaned back. He didn’t want to hear any more of Ozie’s theories for now. He was tired and worried about where Elena had gotten to. He said, “BioScan isn’t hiding anything. For all I know, you’re trying to hurt my family’s company for no good reason.”
Ozie poked the table. “This is about ending the Classification Commission by finding out what we really are. Don’t you want that?”
Victor sighed. “You and me, people like us, maybe we are a threat. It doesn’t take much to get us talking conspiracies and making plans that we shouldn’t be making.”
Ozie’s face bunched up. “You’re wrong. We are the victims of medical malpractice. All those people taking Personil. The facilities. The ranches. It’s a twisted system.”
“I am not my diagnosis, Ozie. I’m broken, but I’m still a person. I wish I were normal—I do. But whether I’ve got a medical condition or I’m the victim of social stigma, it’s the same thing. I have to live the life I was born to. You do too.”
“No. You’re wrong. I’ve seen the alternative. It’s what Pearl and I were working on together.”
“What alternative?” Victor asked.
“You and I aren’t broken. We are gifted.”
“I wish I believed that.”
“We are,” Ozie said. “We just need the right environment and the right tools. Pearl and I are making an alternative possible. I move her herbs to clients in the O.W.S., and she distributes my brainhacking equipment in SeCa. But we can’t let the Classification Commission off the hook. We have to end it.” Ozie massaged the back of his neck with both hands, his fingers digging under the collar of his shirt. “You did get the sequences from BioScan, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, I have them.” Victor removed the Bose-Drive from his bag and held it above the table.
Ozie reached out his arms to take it.
Victor pulled the device back. “If you want this, you have to do something for me first.”
“I saved your—”
“Look, I listened to your theories. Now you listen to mine. Granfa Jeff gave me the data egg. I have no idea what’s inside, but it might be the cure, or it might be the name of the murderer. It could explain everything.” Victor took out the oblong, black data egg and set it on the table. When it started to roll away, he put it on his dinner plate next to the remaining sandwich crusts. “I want you to open it.”
Ozie looked at the data egg, raised one eyebrow, and frowned at Victor, shaking his head.
“Impossible,” he said.
Chapter 24
I created this register because events in both worlds seemed to fit a twisted-braid pattern. I thought by studying them I could help find a way for Victor and me to return home.
—Robbie Eastmore’s Register of Resonant Earth Discrepancies
Organized Western States
4 March 1991
“You have to hack it,” Victor pleaded. “Whatever Granfa Jeff wanted me to know is on there. If you open it, I’ll give you the BioScan data.”
Ozie took the coal-black data egg into his hands. “It hasn’t hatched yet?”
Victor gritted his teeth. It was a device, nonorganic. They shouldn’t talk about it like it was alive. What mattered was getting it open. “No.”
Ozie handed back the egg. “Then I can’t help you.”
“Why?”
Ozie held up a fist and raised his fingers one by one as he said, “Piezoelectrically powered.” One finger up. “The battery is the data storage matrix”—another finger—“which is quantum encrypted”—and another—“and locked by your biosignatures,” Ozie said, holding up four fingers. “This is the best black box that can be made. I can’t open it. It’s too secure.”
Victor took the egg in his hand. Did it feel cold? “You seem awfully sure about that.”
“Have you not figured it out? Laws, but you can be dense sometimes. I gave this to Jefferson. Modded it in a dozen ways that he asked for.”
Victor flinched. Was Ozie pulling his leg? No, he looked serious with his pouty mouth and hang-dog eyes. He and Granfa Jeff had colluded to lock away the old man’s secrets, and Ozie was only now revealing this. Why?
Victor had a sudden flash of fear. “Did you cover it with polonium as well?”
Ozie reared back. “What? No! Victor, I’m a good guy. Jefferson learned about what I do through Pearl, and he came to me with a long list of things that he wanted tech-wise. The egg isn’t just a storage device. Put it near your head.”
Victor chided himself for suspecting Ozie. He held the egg to his forehead, feeling foolish. Then he thought about the hostess’s piercings and decided he could do pretty much anything in the O.W.S. and it would seem normal by comparison.
“How do you feel?” Ozie asked.
“The same.”
“Humph.”
“What should I be feeling?”
“The data egg holds a copy of your brainwave schema along with adaptive biofeedback software and a bunch of Dirac transceivers. It’s a brain hack, same as mine, and it’s been working on you for months.”
“What!?” Victor dropped the data egg on the table.
Ozie stopped it from rolling off the edge of the table. “It does three things: minimizes resonant episodes—you should find it harder to go blank now compared to before. Or maybe if you’re off Personil the effect cancels out. Two, the egg obscures scanners, specifically those used during the reclassification appointment. Thirdly, it’s a data repository. Jefferson had me walk him through how to record messages on it and set a trigger for it to open.”
Ozie held up the data egg, and Victor took it back. He asked, “What kind of trigger?”
“He wouldn’t say. He seemed paranoid at the time, but then . . . Look, this model could respond to brain waves, audio cues, pressure patterns. Bodily fluids too. But there’s no way of knowing what will trigger it. Keep it with you, sleep with it under your pillow. Hell, sing to it, that might work too.”
“Could you try to hack it anyway?” Victor asked.
Ozie’s eyes lit up. “Well, maybe if you did something for me.”
Victor crammed the data egg back in his pocket. Ozie had once tricked Victor into creating a science project for him. It won second place, and Ozie took all the credit. He knew how to push Victor’s buttons to get what he wanted. But Victor had grown in the past few years, and he knew when someone was taking advantage of him. “I’m done running errands for you. Tosh was right.”
Ozie glanced sideways and lowered his voice, “Who’s Tosh?” he asked. “Another person you’ve told too much?”
Victor felt heat building in his face and had the urge to split his friend’s lip with his fist. “Someone who will beat you senseless if you screw us over. He wants to find out what happened to my granfa almost as much as I do.”
“You need to do better at keeping secrets. I saved your ass, Victor,” Ozie hissed. “If you hadn’t left SeCa like I told you to, you’d be in a facility by now. Or worse.”
Ozie was getting a rise out of him as usual, the manipulative bastard.
Victor said, “You didn’t do me any favors. My family could have saved me. I could have hired a bodyguard, instead of exiling myself to rendezvous with a conspiracy-obsessed data troller.”
Ozie pounded a fist on the table. “You were losing it!”
A few of the other
patrons looked over. Victor’s heart thumped in his chest, ready to erupt. “We’re amping each other up,” he said, feeling his hold on consciousness slipping toward blankspace.
“I know that!” Ozie snapped. “We need to calm down. Do what you have to do. Use the egg.” He tapped on the table, and a robot came over and delivered a brainhacking cap. It looked like a ceramic bowl with raised ridges and nodules dotting the surface. Ozie grabbed the cap, looking like a stimhead desperate for a fix.
Victor dug in his bag, searching for a fumewort tincture. Same as always; whenever he and Ozie got to talking, they started yelling and pulling each other’s triggers. Hello, Mr. Resonant Episode, can’t say I’m glad to see you again soon. Why don’t you piss off? Victor found a vial, uncorked its forest-green cap, and swallowed. The liquid burned going down. He closed his eyes, focusing on the sensation. Warmth spread from his throat. An acid-green haze appeared behind his closed eyelids.
Victor lowered his head and brought the egg to his ear. After a few moments he felt calmer, his mind clearing. Whether it was the egg, the fumewort, both or neither, he had no idea.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Ozie wearing a ceramic cap on his head.
Victor laughed. “You look—”
“Don’t,” Ozie warned.
Victor smiled. “I was going to say, ‘calmer,’ as in, ‘You look calmer already.’”
Ozie nodded and the ceramic cap didn’t budge. They stayed quiet for a few minutes. Ozie closed his eyes, face intent as if he were listening to music only he could hear.
A question that had been worming its way through Victor’s brain broke the surface.
“Have you heard of a drug that mimics our condition? Aura? It’s a kind of stim.”
Ozie’s eyes popped open. “I’ve read dark grid rumors, but the idea is ridiculous,” Ozie said. “Who would want to take a drug like that?”
“Elena did. She said it felt like her senses were sharpened. Synesthesia. Euphoria, too, for a while.”
“Are you saying you think stims are related to mirror—”
“I don’t know what I’m saying!” Victor shifted in his seat. He put his hand in his bag and ran his fingers down the side of a fumewort vial. He should double up his dose, but his supplies were running low. He said, “I hate not knowing what’s going on. It makes me question everything. This time the reclassification doctor used a scanning chair. It made my symptoms worse, briefly. Almost like they were trying to destabilize me.”
