Three Days in April

by Edward Ashton

  He keeps fumbling with the ice dispenser. Cubes are scattered all over the floor around him.

  “Look,” he says finally, “I’m sorry I hit you. Just go away, okay?”

  I walk over to him. His hand is swollen, and purpling up nicely. I take the bag and nudge him aside. I fill it with ice, tie it off, and hand it to him. He winces as he presses the ice to the back of his hand.

  “So,” I say. “I’m guessing that’s the first time you’ve ever punched somebody?”

  He hesitates, then nods. He won’t meet my eyes.

  “Just for future reference,” I say, “everything between the eyebrows and the crown is pretty much a no-­go zone for that sort of thing. That’s especially true for someone like me, but you’d probably have broken your hand on a standard Homo sap skull there too.”

  He shrugs. His eyes stay pinned to the floor. I feel like I’m talking to a giant toddler.

  “You know you’re gonna need to get those fingers set, right?”

  I reach for his hand, but he pulls it away.

  “I know,” he says. “But I’m the only one who showed up for the afternoon shift. I can’t leave the store until the night guy gets here at eight.”

  I roll my eyes.

  “That’s very conscientious of you. Sounds like you’ve read the Employee Handbook. Does it have anything to say about customer punching? Maybe with an emphasis on girl-­customer punching?”

  That gets him to look at me, at least.

  “I said I was sorry. It’s not like I actually hurt you.”

  I smile.

  “That’s true. Still doesn’t answer my question, though. What, exactly, is your problem with me?”

  He looks away again.

  “Haven’t you been monitoring the feeds?”

  I shake my head.

  “Not really. I’ve been asleep most of the afternoon.”

  He scowls, but doesn’t lift his eyes up from the floor. I’m almost starting to feel sorry for him.

  “They’re all saying that not everyone actually died from the plague,” he says. “Only the Altered. All the Homo saps were still alive when they dropped the bombs.”

  I have to stop to think about that. The one person I know for sure survived is as unmodified as they come. Elise doesn’t even carry a phone with her half the time. And while I have my doubts about Tariq, he’s always claimed to be one-­hundred-­percent natural as well.

  “Okay,” I say finally. “Suppose I accept that. How do we go from there to you punching me in the head?”

  “Well,” he says. “This is the start, isn’t it? Somebody figured out a way to take out the Altered—­all of them. And the Altered who run NatSec killed every normal human in Hagerstown to keep it from getting out.”

  This is the start, isn’t it? I’m still thinking about that question when I get home.

  “House,” I say. “Search for posts on public feeds. Time frame: noon today onward. Key phrase: This is the start. Associate with: UnAltered Movement. Associate with: Hagerstown.”

  My house avatar pops up on the living-­room wallscreen. She looks like a cartoon robot today, complete with shiny silver skin and a funnel for a hat.

  “Do I have to, Terry? I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “You have to. And what do you mean, you’re busy? For shit’s sake, you’re an avatar.”

  She pouts, and turns half away.

  “Yeah? Well avatars have lives too, you know.”

  “No,” I say. “They don’t. At least other ­people’s don’t. Now run the search.”

  “Please?”

  I sigh.

  “Please.”

  The robot freezes while the system grinds on the search for a while.

  “Two results,” she says finally.

  Then a few seconds later, “Correction: no results.”

  I stare at her. She’s smirking.

  “Correction?” I say finally. “You’ve never said ‘correction’ before. What does that mean?”

  She shrugs.

  “Two results were downloaded. Both were redacted prior to display.”

  “Redacted? You mean the authors withdrew them?”

  “No,” she says. “They were deleted from your servers.”

  I head for the bathroom, dropping clothes as I go.

  “Deleted? By who?”

  “Unknown.”

  “How does that happen? Aren’t you secured?”

  She pops up on the bathroom screen and gives me an apologetic smile.

  “Our system contains a number of mandatory commercial and government back doors,” she says. “I can’t tell which of them was used to execute the redactions.”

  I step into the shower and turn on the water. I now have to consider the strong possibility that Mr. Jolly Fucking Pirate has a better-­secured network access than I do. I also have to consider that those posts were almost certainly redacted by NatSec—­which means that by conducting that search, I probably flagged myself to a NatSec sniffer.

  “Hey,” House says. “While I’m thinking about it, Dimitri called for you while you were out.”

  “Really?” I ask. “What did he want?”

  “He wanted to know if you have a sister.”

  My heart thumps hard in my chest.

  “Did he say why?”

  “Not really. He just asked if you were related to Elise Freberg. Seemed kind of worked up about it, actually.”

  That can’t be good.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said I wasn’t authorized to give out personal information about you, even to super-­sexy secret-­agent men. He didn’t seem amused.”

  I rinse the sweat off of my skin and out of my hair; then I stand in the water for another few minutes with my eyes closed, thinking. Why would Dimitri be asking about Elise?

  Don’t assume. We’ve got an uncommon last name, and at a minimum she’d have been on the list of victims. It’s possible he saw her name somewhere, and he’s just showing concern.

  It’s also possible that he’s seen the video that killbot supposedly shot of her, and he knows she wasn’t actually a victim. If that were true, though, I’d probably be in a tiny room in an undisclosed location right now.

  I turn off the water and reach for the towels.

  “House,” I say. “Can you repeat the most recent search?”

  “Sure,” she says. “Not sure what the point is, though.”

  “Can you download any results, and then immediately cut all external access?”

  She shrugs again.

  “I can try.”

  “Please do so.”

  I walk into the bedroom. House produced a pile of clean clothes while I was gone. For the first time in two days, I actually have fresh panties and a bra.

  “House. Results?”

  “No results.”

  Huh.

  “No feeds were found?”

  “Not exactly,” she says. “One appropriate feed was found. It was redacted three seconds after download.”

  “Did you cut external access after download?”

  “I did. Access was reestablished, and the feed was redacted.”

  Son of a bitch.

  I pull on a pair of shorts and a soft cotton shirt and head for the kitchen, where I open the fridge and pull out a hunk of turkey breast and a slice of ham. After a little consideration, I grab a ­couple slices of provolone cheese to wrap them in. There’s not much in my refrigerator that doesn’t come from an animal in one way or another. It’s pretty well established, now that there are at least a few of us around, that Neanderthals need a lot more protein in our diet than Homo saps, but we’re not actually one-­hundred-­percent carnivorous.

  My dad thought we were when I was little, tho
ugh, and I really got used to the diet.

  I take my snack into the living room, drop onto the sofa and prop my feet up on the coffee table that Anders tried so hard to destroy on Saturday night. It’s more than a little frustrating that I can’t download anything related to my conversation with Mr. Pirate. It’s also distressing that NatSec can apparently barge into my servers whenever they want to. There’s too much going on that I don’t understand.

  I bet Dimitri understands.

  Based on my conversation with House, it’s possible that he understands a lot more than I’d like him to. Probably not a good idea to start ducking him now, though.

  “House,” I say. “Direct contact. Dimitri.”

  I expect to get the bear, but a few seconds later Dimitri’s face appears on the living-­room wallscreen. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a week.

  “Terry,” he says. “I am happy to see that you are well.”

  I smile.

  “I wish I could say the same. You look tired, Dimitri.”

  He grimaces.

  “Yesterday was hard. Today has been harder. What can I do for you?”

  I try to make my smile apologetic.

  “I have some questions.”

  His expression softens.

  “Ask. You know I can make no promises, but I will tell you what I can.”

  Let’s work into this slowly.

  “First,” I say, “a lot of the public feeds I’ve tried to access today have been redacted. These are just open-­source jawing, not the kind of things that NatSec usually worries about. Any idea why?”

  He rubs his face with both hands.

  “You are probably not aware of this, but certain organizations are attempting to use what happened yesterday to stir up public unrest. Tensions are high enough already without any fanning of the flames.”

  Yeah. That, I already knew.

  “What organizations,” I ask, “and what kind of unrest? A guy just punched me in the head in a doughnut shop, and said it was because of stuff that was floating around the public feeds.”

  He sighs.

  “Are you familiar with the UnAltered Movement?”

  I shake my head.

  “Politics isn’t my thing.”

  Dimitri scowls.

  “The UnAltered are a quasi-­religious group which preaches the sanctity of the body and the sanctity of the genome. They condemn both genetic and mechanical augmentation. Some branches claim that the so-­called Altered have no souls.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I think I’ve heard of these guys. They’re a cult, right? Like the Satanist Temple, or the Church of Cthulhu?”

  “No,” Dimitri says. “Unfortunately, the UnAltered are no longer a fringe group, and they are no longer a joke. Over the past five years, their numbers have doubled, and doubled, and doubled again. There are enough of them now to be a serious danger, if they choose to make themselves so.”

  His face is an expressionless mask now, and I feel a shiver run from the back of my neck to the base of my spine. I may not know exactly what Dimitri does for a living, but I know enough to know that I really, really wouldn’t want him to think of me as a serious danger. Dimitri thinks of himself as a sheepdog, faithfully guarding the flock. And if he decides that you’re a wolf?

  “Okay,” I say finally. “So what does this have to do with Hagerstown?”

  He looks down, then back up, and I can almost see him trying to decide how much to tell me.

  “This is not widely known,” he says. “We do not wish this to be widely known. But certain among the UnAltered are claiming that the actions in Hagerstown yesterday—­both the plague and the airstrikes—­were the first blows in the war between Altered and UnAltered.”

  I laugh. Dimitri does not join in.

  “Wait,” I say. “You’re serious? You think someone’s trying to start a war between us and the Homo saps?”

  “It does not matter what I think,” Dimitri says. “If the UnAltered believe it, it has the potential to become a self-­fulfilling prophecy.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I can understand why you’d want to keep a lid on that. But it seems right now like pretty much everything anyone is saying about Hagerstown is being redacted. I actually had a ­couple of files pulled off of my servers this afternoon. Does NatSec really have that kind of authority?”

  He looks less tired now, and more irritated.

  “NatSec has a mandate to protect the ­people, and to maintain public order. The right of conspiracy theorists to spout foolishness in public is the least of our concerns at the moment.”

  “No worries about the First Amendment, huh?”

  His eyes harden.

  “This is not protected speech, Terry. This is yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

  I know this is pushing it, but I need to find out how honest he’ll be with me.

  “Okay,” I say. “How about this: a lot of folks are saying they’ve seen video feeds of survivors moving around Hagerstown yesterday afternoon. Any truth to that?”

  That touches a nerve.

  “There were no survivors, Terry. Acting Director Dey made this very clear in his statement before the bombing.”

  “But the feeds . . .”

  “There are no feeds such as you have described. Anyone who says he has seen these is a liar.” He looks down at his hands, then back up at the screen. “This is beginning to feel like an interview, Terry. Have you become a reporter now?”

  He looks genuinely angry. Time to back down.

  “No, Dimitri. I’m not a reporter. I was just hoping you could help me understand what’s happening.”

  He rubs his face again, and runs his hands back through his hair. “I am sorry,” he says. “I become unpleasant when I do not sleep. I know this is frightening. Please trust that we are doing what we can to control the situation.”

  “I know, Dimitri. I do trust you. Try to get some sleep.”

  “I will try. Good-­bye, Terry.”

  “Good-­bye, Dimitri. Disconnect.”

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that Dimitri can’t tell me the truth. I’m not sure exactly what his relationship with NatSec is, but even if he’s just a freelance contractor, they’d have him fitted with internal monitors. It’s also possible that he really believes that the truth in this case needs to be suppressed, and that he would have lied to me even if he didn’t have to.

  It’s also possible that he’s right.

  It occurs to me as I’m walking back to the kitchen for a water bottle that he didn’t say anything about Elise. I honestly don’t know if that should make me more nervous, or less.

  I spend the next two hours vacillating between boredom and frustration. No matter what combination of search terms I try, I can’t get anything from either the professional media or the private nets that doesn’t back up the NatSec version of what happened to Hagerstown. I do finally get a hit from my current-­events sniffer, though. It’s from DC. A girl was found beaten unconscious in Rock Creek Park. She’d been jogging. She wasn’t robbed, wasn’t sexually abused. Just beaten to a pulp and left bleeding on the path.

  She was a Pretty.

  I’m thinking about following this up, when the wallscreen dings.

  “Anders Jensen is at the door,” says House.

  My heart jumps. What the hell is wrong with me?

  “Open.”

  I hear the door unlatch and swing open, and Anders steps into the room. He smiles when he sees me.

  “Hey,” he says. “I know I said I’d ping you, but I have to walk right past here to get home from Hopkins. Okay if I stop by?”

  “Come in,” I say. “Have a seat. Try not to trip over the table this time.”

  He’s wearing khakis and a dress shirt. He hardly looks sweat-­drenched at all. Apparently a tall, skinny mo
use-­man bleeds off heat better than a short, bowling-­ball-­shaped Neanderthal girl.

  “You look pretty wound up,” he says. He sits down beside me, not touching, but not on the other side of the couch, either—­midway between lover and visiting third cousin. “What have you been doing?”

  “It’s been a busy afternoon,” I say. “I found out that a guy I’ve been friends with for almost three years is perfectly comfortable looking me in the eye and lying. I found out that NatSec can pull whatever they want off of my servers whenever they want to, even if I order a complete disconnect from the networks. I found out that there are a whole lot of ­people trying to blame what happened yesterday on the Engineered. Oh, and I got punched in the head by the doughnut guy at the Jolly Pirate. So yeah, a good day all around.”

  “Wait,” he says. “Somebody punched you at the Jolly Pirate? My Jolly Pirate?”

  “Yeah. The guy behind the counter.”

  “Who, Joey? Skinny guy with a goatee?”

  “That’s the one.”

  He looks like he’s trying to decide whether to be angry or confused.

  “Why would Joey punch you? Did you do something to him? Joey’s a nice guy. He always stuffs an extra doughnut in the box when I get a dozen.”

  I shake my head.

  “They all do that, Anders. For everyone. It’s called a baker’s dozen.”

  He looks crestfallen. I have to stifle a laugh.

  “Oh,” he says. “Still, why would he punch you in the head? He never does that to me.”

  I giggle. That’s weird. I never giggle.

  “First,” I say, “he wouldn’t be able to reach your head. Second, he doesn’t seem like the type who would have the balls to punch another guy. And third, he punched me in the head because I’m Engineered, and the Engineered killed all the normal humans in Hagerstown for some reason.”

  He’s definitely confused now.

  “But . . . I’m Engineered. I got a doughnut from him on my way to class. He didn’t even give me a dirty look.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “you’re Engineered. But nobody would know that unless they saw you escape from a cat. It’s pretty obvious for me.”

  He gives me a half smile. That had better not be pity.