Sleep State Interrupt

by Ted Weber

  Pel gave her the finger and stomped into the kitchen. “Dinner’s about ready.”

  Charles’s hosts ate dinner together a lot, like family. ‘Course Waylee and Kiyoko actually were family, and Pel was long term with Waylee. But Shakti and Dingo seemed just as hooked in.

  When his mom was still alive, she made the best lake trout. That shit was the bomb, even if it wasn’t actual trout. Crispy batter on the outside, extra tender on the inside, and every last bone pulled out.

  She’d pile macaroni salad and collards on the side—though he wasn’t fond of the greens. And she cooked sweet potato pie most Sundays.

  It was just him and his mom ‘til she passed and he had to move in with his gramma and aunt and all them cousins and neighborhood kids who didn’t have any place else to go. He heard some crazy ladies collected cats. His gramma collected kids. She could cook too, but you had to fight for a decent portion.

  Pel returned to the living room. “Come and get it. Your turn to do the dishes afterward, Dingo.”

  Dingo groaned.

  They stepped to the big wooden table in the dining room and grabbed plates and silverware. Their big-ass dog sat next to it with his tongue out, like he hadn’t just been fed ten minutes earlier.

  Charles held up when he saw the bowls of green spaghetti and fake meatballs on the table. They never served real meat. At least it was better than the slop in juvie. Charles busted past the others and pulled up a chair next to Kiyoko.

  Kiyoko smelled like cherry blossoms. She turned and smiled at him.

  His heart stopped beating.

  “How’s everything going?” she asked, then twirled some green noodles around her fork.

  “Uh, good, you know, I mean…” Should have practiced something to say.

  Kiyoko stuffed the noodles in her mouth. Charles waited for her to finish chewing, but then she turned to her sister. “I came up with a new bass riff for ‘Cowed to be an American.’”

  Charles decided to butt in. “Did you find anything out about that drone?”

  Heads turned.

  “Yeah,” Kiyoko said. “Thanks for reminding me.” She stabbed a meatless ball with her fork, but left it on her plate. “I uploaded the drone video to my social site and some discussion halls, and asked if anyone else had seen one. I tagged it as high priority on the B-Scene.”

  “What’s that?”

  Her eyebrows raised. “Baltimore social net. So I got some responses back, and it started a discussion thread.”

  “And?” Pel said.

  “They’ve been seen all over B’more past few days. And before that, since day one, them BPD mini-copters. Theory on the discussion thread is they’re looking for the juvie escapees, and there’s more than one drone out there, but no one knows how many.”

  “Thanks Sis,” Waylee said. “That’s good news.”

  Dingo leaned forward. “How is being the target of a massive search good?”

  “’Cause they’re unfocused. And they may have already cleared our area, which means we’re safe.”

  Charles nodded. Waylee was smart for an amateur.

  They returned to eating. Charles turned to Kiyoko. “You sure smacked down that Prince Vostok.”

  She smiled, one of those real smiles that nice people gave. “Thanks again for your help. It had to be done, and your burning oil played a big part.”

  “How much money did you win?”

  She looked away and pursed her lips. “Well, I had a lot of debts to pay off, and I gave Pel most of the rest. So enough to buy some stuff, but nowhere near what I need to get out of this place or expand my business, hire people or whatever.”

  Pel’s comlink—he didn’t wear his data glasses in the house—played some tune. He looked down. “News update.”

  “I’ll catch it when I’m done,” Shakti said.

  The others filed into the living room and Pel powered up the wall screen.

  Same newscaster. “It is now thought that the culprits were wearing masks.”

  “Geniuses,” Dingo said. “Only took them five days.”

  “One of the culprits was identified as the deceased television entertainer Dick Clark, longtime host of American Bandstand and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.” A sidebar appeared with Clark’s photo and biography, and links to more information.

  “Another culprit’s description matched Storm, a fictional character in a superhero series called X-Men, popular in BetterWorld simulations and games. Storm also appeared with the X-Men, a group of so-called mutants, in several movies and in old-time printed comic books.” More background info and links appeared.

  Pel looked at Dingo and Waylee. “See, you should have worn anonymous masks like me and M-pat.”

  “The other two have not been identified,” the newscaster continued, “but it is suspected they wore masks as well. If you have any information, please contact the police immediately.” Voice and text links followed, along with a reminder about the $100,000 reward.

  Pel paused the feed. “Charles, anything about this on BPD traffic?”

  “I’ll check.” He didn’t have a comlink so would have to jump into the immersion suit later.

  Shakti entered and sat next to Waylee. The broadcast resumed. “We have now an interview with one of Lee’s prison mates.”

  Out of all the ape-like ass plugs, they picked the worst—Botis. “Yeah, I knew that boy Charles.” Botis swaggered, showing off his grill. “I can’t believe you ain’t caught that chunky little bedwetter yet.”

  Charles’s skin burned. Turn it off.

  “Bedwetter?” the interviewer said.

  “Yeah, used to cry for his dead mommy and wet his bed every night.”

  The lies shrank him to the size of a pea. “That’s a lie!” He glanced at Kiyoko, afraid she might believe it. “I never…”

  Kiyoko looked back, frowning. “I can’t believe they’d air something like that.”

  Pel paused the feed again. “It’s just a mindfuck. MediaCorp and the government do it all the time. Don’t worry about it.”

  Charles fought for breath. “Don’t worry about it? That’s your advice when he lies about me in front of everyone?”

  Dingo smacked his right hand with his left fist. “I see a news studio in need of an EMP bomb.”

  He cared at least.

  “Enough with the EMP bombs, Dingo,” Waylee said. She looked at Charles. “Pel’s right, it’s just Authority fucking with you.”

  Pel forwarded to the end of the interview. It was followed by a link, “Click here for the interview in its entirety.”

  The broadcaster returned. “What do you think? Is Charles Marvin Lee a threat to America? Or just a harmless child? We’ll tabulate the results.”

  A poll link appeared below.

  Waylee shook her head. “The news profession continues its downward slide.”

  “There’s an option to write your own comments,” Kiyoko said, looking at her comlink. She swiped her fingers across its screen.

  “Maybe we should get people to vote ‘harmless child,’” Pel said. “If the feds think he’s harmless, maybe they’ll spend less time looking for him.”

  “No way,” Dingo said. “Boy’s honor’s at stake.” He turned the backs of his hands toward Charles. The tattooed eyes glared at him. “‘Sides, all we’ve done, you’d better be a stone-hearted bad-ass motherfucker.”

  Charles couldn’t stay in the room. He ran up the stairs, fighting to keep tears from leaking out and embarrassing him further. He bypassed the immersion suit, just throwing on the helmet and gloves.

  First thing was to watch the whole interview with Botis, no matter how awful it might be.

  The shit-tard douche nozzle bumped himself up, like he was all that, and put down Charles with all kinds of lies. He’d pay for that.

  He went to the poll next. It was no doubt a rush job – the comment box had no filter against command sequences. He pasted in codes that broke past the poll’s external shell and brough
t up a files directory. Sweetness!

  He found some Botis-related files and deleted every one of them. Then he inserted a worm that would go through all the station’s files, replicate itself, and delete everything else.

  A security program immediately attacked and neutralized the worm.

  Underestimated them. He started deleting files manually, anything that might contain Botis video.

  A red alert message popped up in front of him. “Intrusion detected.”

  Fuck. What was he being attacked with? His defense program didn’t recognize it.

  He tapped the disconnect icon. Nothing happened. He couldn’t exit.

  Charles cut off the suit power. Blackness and silence. Like he’d killed himself. He pulled off the helmet, disabled the wireless signal, then powered it back on in safe mode.

  The intruder program was still there, but at least it couldn’t communicate with the outside. He varied his defense parameters to wall it off. A green message popped up. “Threat contained.”

  Time to assess the damage. He looked and looked, but couldn’t find anything wrong. Maybe he was missing something. He generated a core dump so he could examine the virus code, see what it had been doing.

  Strange. The virus had essentially self-destructed, maybe when he quarantined it. Sections of memory had been overwritten with random garbage. He examined recent changes to the disk drive and solid state cache. Same thing, small stretches of random bits. He definitely needed a better defense program.

  Charles thought about telling Pel and the others, but they’d be disappointed in him. He was supposed to be a pro, but somehow he’d gotten infected. Well, it was gone now, and no damage done.

  Still, he picked through the core dump systematically, running a translation and recognition program and hoping the virus had left some trace on one of the threads. Ah! He found something alien, something that didn’t belong. Something that issued interrupts and called another process.

  His defense program hadn’t recognized the virus code. Next step would be Comnet searches and the Collective forums. Except that would give him away, saying, “yo, I just got infected with your virus, and here’s where you can find me.”

  Instead, he downloaded the latest update of every virus database out there.

  The fragment didn’t match anything known. Must be a custom job. Special, just for him.

  What if it was the feds, and they’d traced his location? Charles ran a program to display all the information that had been passed to and from his immersion helmet, along with its timestamp.

  Nothing after the infection. It looked like his location was still disguised. And no new ports opened. He must have neutralized the virus before it could do its work.

  12

  Monday

  Waylee

  “Kiyoko saw a Homeland drone again last night,” Pel said from the other side of the dining room table. “One of the Watchers.”

  Waylee put her coffee down. “And again you didn’t tell me?”

  He took a bite of jelly-slathered toast and shrugged.

  Her stomach clenched, then her fists. “Don’t just shrug me off, you rude motherfucker.”

  Pel put his toast down. His eyes narrowed. “We’re on the same side, you know.”

  Waylee turned away, trying to still the rage that she knew was inappropriate. She focused on the adjacent window, but the drawn curtains, their red color faded, brought gloom rather than peace.

  It was just the two of them at the table. As always, Charles was up in the game room, immersed in the Comnet. Shakti had gone to work at the print shop, the weekend over. Dingo only worked part time in the afternoons, but was out backing M-pat on a domestic dispute of some sort.

  Domestic dispute. Without M-pat’s anger management strategies and communication lessons, she and Pel wouldn’t have lasted so long. Truth was, she adored Pel and couldn’t imagine surviving without him.

  Waylee looked back at her boyfriend. She should defuse the tension. “Sorry. We’re not even close to ready for this fundraiser. It’s gnawing at me.”

  He nodded. “I set you off. And I’ll wake you up next time.”

  “So where’d she see the Watcher?”

  “Here by the house, when she came home. It flew off when she waved, but didn’t go far.”

  “It was right here?” Now she had a reason to be angry. “And you didn’t think that was important?”

  He sighed. “I’m telling you now, aren’t I?”

  Jackass. “I thought they were done snooping around our neighborhood.”

  “Kiyoko said it must have a thing for her. Joking, I assume, but I can’t always tell with her.” He gulped the rest of his coffee.

  She glanced at her comlink. Ten in the morning. Her sister would be asleep at least two more hours. “What time was that?”

  “Kind of early for her. Around three. Said she got bored.”

  “I’ll go wake her up in a few and get the details. I can’t believe you two didn’t think this was important.”

  Pel rolled his eyes and resumed eating.

  He never gave in, even when he was wrong. “You’ve got no right to make decisions for me,” she said.

  He threw down his toast. “Look. These drones can sort of see through walls, but people are just silhouettes. I looked it up. No way they’d recognize Charles. Especially when he’s in the game room with the steel sheeting.”

  “Well, Dr. Knows-it-all, they wouldn’t be back without a reason.”

  From upstairs, Charles shouted, “Hey, anyone here?” He sounded panicked.

  Waylee jumped up, knocking her chair to the floor. She ran for the stairs, Pel following. “What is it?”

  Charles stumbled down the stairs into the living room, data gloves on and VR helmet tucked under one arm. “Picked up radio traffic—I’ve been monitoring BPD’s radio communications…”

  “And?”

  “They’ve got at least ten cars headed to our address from Headquarters and the Southwest District. Plus a group from Homeland, coming from FBI headquarters off the beltway.”

  Fuck. The colors faded from the room.

  “Our address?” Pel said. “You’re sure?” His voice sounded distant.

  Charles recited their address correctly. “I wasn’t sure what your house number was when I was listening, but it sounded bad so I looked it up.”

  Fuck. Waylee’s knees gave out, and her body sagged to the floor. “Pel…”

  “Goddamn it, Waylee.” He reached under her armpits and yanked her up. “Call Shakti and warn her. Charles, how long ‘til they get here?”

  Charles seemed to shrink. “Got me. They’re trying to arrive all together though.”

  “Fifteen minutes if we’re lucky,” Pel said. “Get all your shit together. Everything. Your clothes, your pillow, your toothbrush, everything you’ve touched. Throw it on your bedsheets and roll it all up in a ball and bring it down here.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re getting out of here and so are all traces of you. Keep the gloves on. Give me the helmet.”

  Charles passed him the helmet and ran back up the stairs.

  Waylee fought the anguish descending over her like a fog. Later. Come back later. I don’t have time for you now.

  Pel pulled his comlink out of a front jeans pocket. “Dingo, emergency.”

  “’Sup, bro?” came Dingo’s voice. From the angle, Waylee couldn’t tell if he was on video or not.

  “Cops are on their way here. Lots of ‘em. We’re getting out of here.”

  “On my way over.” The volume dropped a little. “Chief, emergency. We’ve gotta get over to the band house.”

  “No, no,” Pel said. “You should get out of here.”

  “I’m on the way, bro.”

  Pel stuffed the comlink back in his pocket. “I’m getting my data cubes and shit.” He ran up the stairs.

  “Shakti,” Waylee told her comlink. It dialed her number.

  Shakti’s smiling face appeared on t
he screen. “Hi Waylee. What is it?” Her eyebrows rose. “Something wrong?”

  Her face must be broadcasting agony. “Everything’s… Shakti, the cops are on their way. Don’t come home. Go now, go to our rendezvous spot.”

  Shakti’s eyes widened. “You’re… I can’t go now, I’m in the middle of work…”

  “You’ve gotta go right now.” Oh no, Kiyoko. Waylee clicked off and ran up the stairs. She spotted Pel in the game room, throwing stuff into the big canvas duffel bag he’d bought.

  Kiyoko’s door was unlocked. Inside, she stood trapped in her cylindrical cage, a black phantom waving cyborg arms.

  Waylee tripped over something – the damn cat – and sprawled onto the floor. The cat howled, and darted under the bed.

  Kiyoko didn’t seem to notice. Waylee scrambled to her feet and knocked on her sister’s helmet. “Kiyoko! Get out of there!”

  Kiyoko put out a hand in a stop gesture.

  “It’s an emergency!” Waylee looked for a power button. Seeing none, she ran to the wall outlet and yanked out all the electrical cords.

  Kiyoko pulled off her helmet, her face furious.

  “What the hell is wrong with you, you fucking freak?”

  Waylee stifled the urge to slap her. “Cops are coming. We’ve gotta go.”

  “What?”

  Waylee started releasing the immersion suit from its cage, twisting the quick-release fittings along the arms, legs, and torso. She’d seen Pel and Dingo do it a thousand times. “I told you we might have to run.”

  “You know, I was in the middle of something.”

  She had unhooked half the support fibers. They drooped like dead tentacles from the black frame.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Harboring a fugitive?”

  “Then get him out of here.”

  “We are. You’ve gotta come with us.” She cast off the last of the tentacles.

  “Why?” Kiyoko crossed her arms. “Besides, Princesses don’t run.”

  Waylee fought an overwhelming urge to scream. She only half succeeded. “For fuck’s sake, you’re not a fucking princess! You’re just a deluded little girl who can’t deal with real life.”