by Sam A. Patel
Pace and Chimpo have already released and are running up the tracks into the tunnel. Dexter hangs on a bit longer before he releases and lands perfectly on a single tie.
“You did it, Jack,” he calls up.
“Yeah,” I reply, still unable to make my hands let go of the wall.
Dexter sees this and realizes I might need a minute to gather myself, so he hops onto the concrete blocks and takes off after the others. But just before he enters the tunnel, Dexter jumps straight up into the air—pirouettes 180 degrees—lands in step and continues his forward progress walking backwards. “I’ve got a load to run. They’re heading over to the wall at Riverfront Park. You remember the way, right?”
I doubt if he can see my nod, but I do. There isn’t a single inch of Free City subway tunnels we haven’t trekked. I know them all like the back of my hand. We all do. But Dex can see that I’m a little shaken up, so he double checks to be sure. “Yeah, I’m right behind them,” I say.
At this, Dexter spins around and disappears into the tunnel.
Finally I release off the wall and spin 180 degrees to land. But unlike Dexter, my feet don’t land on a crosstie; they land in the grimy flood channel between the rails. My head is so buzzed that the ground doesn’t even feel real. My heart is still racing. I take a moment to shake out my hands and feet. It helps. Then I start up the tracks after the others.
Because I’m in the flood channel I can’t see over the edge of the platform, which is why he seems to come out of nowhere—the well-built blonde kid in his late teens or early twenties, dressed all in black, who jumps off the platform and lands on the tracks between me and the tunnel.
I halt. The first thing I notice is the way he lands. Flat on his feet, letting the impact bend his knees instead of the other way around. I know at once he’s not a traceur. If he intends to chase me then he doesn’t stand a chance. He’s bigger than me—that’s a fact—but the fact that he’s bigger than me doesn’t mean anything at this point. I’m too light on my toes. I’ll be up the stairs and over the gantry before he’s even pulled himself back onto the platform…if that’s what this is.
He doesn’t move.
Now I wonder. Who is this guy, and why is he standing in my way?
From the platform above, I hear a scrape of hard-soled shoes approach, until the white-haired man in the dark trench coat and matching hat towers over me. I’m sure I haven’t seen him before. I would know it if I had. For a moment I just stand there looking between him and the blonde kid, cautious enough to be on my guard but not enough to bolt.
The man speaks. “Would you care to come up or shall I come down?”
This I can do. In one continuous motion I hop onto the track rail and one-hand myself onto the platform. Shaking the grime off my hands, I watch the blonde kid do the same. That’s when I reconsider. I guess the way he moves isn’t so clumsy, it just seems that way to me.
“That’s Bigsby,” says the man. “Don’t mind him.”
I don’t mind him. In my head I’ve already navigated two lanes out—one to the upper deck and the other into the tunnel. Just in case.
“My name is Cyril.” He reaches into his pocket for a sterling silver business card holder and ejects one. It rolls out crisp. He hands it to me.
The card is a beautifully textured ivory. There isn’t much by way of information, just a few lines embossed in gold and a topaz-blue 3D barcode hologram in the lower right corner.
ARCADIAN TRANSPORTS
when security is the only option
Cyril Murphy, Agent
Arcadian Transports. I could hardly believe it. And not just because they’re the best firm out there; these guys had proven themselves nearly impossible to find. You can’t even reach them. They have no known office, no address. They don’t even have a telephone number. All they have is one very simple portal on the aggrenet. That’s their only means of contact, and it’s entirely one way. If you need their services, you send them a message detailing the job. If they’re interested, they call you back. That’s all. A bunch of hackers once tried to track them down by backtracing their portal but only ended up getting pinballed off all the proxies until they landed at a live show in some strip club in Little Ukraine.
I could just hear Dexter laughing in my head. A bunch of hackers?
Alright, it wasn’t a bunch of hackers, it was me. I did it. Dex asked me to do it, and that was where we ended up before I broke off the backtrace. Ever since I’ve known him, running for Arcadian Transports has been Dex’s dream job. The trouble was the way it works; you don’t seek out Arcadian to become one of their runners. They have to come to you.
“I don’t have to ask if you’re familiar with our firm,” says Cyril.
I’m not sure if this is a statement or a question. “I know who you are,” I reply.
“Very good. You know who we are, and you know what we do, so let’s get down to brass tacks. I’ve been following you very closely, Jack. Your times at the Open last month were quite impressive; your lanes through the course very clever.”
Cyril was talking about the Free City Open PK Exhibition that we participated in a month earlier. “If you’re going by those numbers then Dexter Drake is the person you’re looking for. His skillset far exceeds mine.”
Cyril kind of smirks. At least I think that’s what it is. “I think you know that’s not true. Trust me, we know all about Dexter Drake. He may have a few more moves than you on the run, but you’re just the kind of person we’re looking for. You’re smart. Quick on your feet. Highly intelligent. Very capable. We could use someone like you on the sneakernet. Consider this an offer, Jack. I want you to come run for us.”
I’m bothered by the way they so easily dismiss Dexter. If they’ve been following my traces then they know I’ve gotten pretty good at it, maybe even real good, but not as good as Dexter. Plus he has the fighting skills to boot. Or maybe that’s just the thing they don’t want. If your only training is in flight, then fight is never an option. So maybe Dexter’s ability to choose is actually working against him. Regardless, there is a much bigger issue here than that. Tracing the sneakernet? That is a very steep curve of calculated risk.
“Don’t answer yet,” says Cyril. “Go home and think about it. Remember, a year or two of this could pay your way through school. You were supposed to be enrolled at the New England Institute of Technology by now, weren’t you?”
I nod. Silver lining aside, it still burns that I’m not.
“You still could.”
The words are like honey to my ears. How could I not be tempted by such an offer? “How would I get in touch with you?” I ask.
“The card’s tagged. Scan it and I’ll find you.”
“Scan it where?”
“Anywhere,” he replies. “It’s a trigger code. The scanner will report back an error on the local system, but the code will pipe out to the aggrenet and do what it’s been designed to do.”
I look down at the shiny hologram in wonder. Writing a trigger code is easy. Writing a trigger code that is completely undetectable, that’s the hard part. That’s top-level national security type stuff. “How do you slip the data stream past the packet-switching monitors?” I ask.
This time I see it more clearly. Cyril actually smirks. “Smart kid,” he says.
Cyril turns and heads toward the stairs. Bigsby takes a moment to fix on me with his cold, slate blue eyes. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about him I just don’t like.
“Nice talking to you,” I say as he turns to follow.
This seems to amuse Cyril. “He doesn’t say much, but Bigsby is one hell of a runner.”
Right, I think. I’ll be the judge of that.
I return to the card. Arcadian Transports. The name alone reminds me of all the time and effort I spent trying to track these guys down for Dexter. All to no avail. Now it’s all right here in the palm of my hand.
“Why so hard
to locate?” I ask.
Cyril answers over his shoulder. “They can’t compromise what they can’t find, Jack.”
4
Later that night, legs shredded and arms dangling like rubber, I make my way home from the bus station after a long day of training. Tonight, I’m not thinking about that. I have other things to think about. I know that running the sneakernet is crazy, but I can’t stop thinking about what Cyril said about making enough money to pay for school. The worst part about having to leave the magnet academy was that I lost access to all the proprietary grants and scholarships that would have paid my way through college. Without those awards, the best schools weren’t even on the table anymore. My plan was to work three or four years after graduation to save up for it. But if I go with Cyril’s offer, I could earn the same amount in one or two. But—is it worth two years of risk to save two years of my life? To be honest, I’m not really sure. But I would be running. Running, even if it’s running from danger, has to beat sitting on my ass for ten hours a day variable-checking the sloppy code of mediocre programmers. Just the thought of it makes me cringe. If ever there was a digital-age analogue to Bartleby the scrivener, that has to be it.
The stop sign at the end of the block glows octagonal red as a pair of headlights approaches from behind. Ordinarily, a slow approach at this time of night would have me bouncing on my toes, but this one comes with a familiar squeal that I know all too well. I let the beat-up pickup truck pull up alongside me.
“Hello, Jack,” smiles the old teacher through his Santa Claus beard. It’s Mr. Chupick, my faculty advisor.
“Hey, Mr. Chupick.”
“Can I give you a ride?”
“If it isn’t out of your way.”
Mr. Chupick shoots his thumb at the giant water tank mounted to the flatbed that still has some slosh to it. “Hop in,” he says, “I’m just running the rest of the water around town.”
Mr. Chupick lives on a small farm on the outskirts of town. He grows some produce and maintains some livestock, but mostly he draws water from his well and supplies it to those around town who can’t afford the hookup to TerraAqua. If he sounds like a nice man, that’s because he is, but make no mistake. Beneath his pleasant exterior he is also a tough man, and he can do almost anything. Whenever Mrs. Bach’s car wouldn’t start, he was always the one who got it going. When three pallets of sheetrock donated to the elementary school were left collecting dust because there was no money to hire a contractor to do the job, it was Mr. Chupick who went in on the weekends to put it up. That is something that has always impressed me about him, how good he is with his hands. I’m good with my hands when it comes to electronics—wires, transistors, antennas, that sort of thing. Mr. Chupick is good with his hands when it comes to the stuff that really matters, the stuff that people can’t live without. I know about things that can change the world; the stuff he knows could rebuild it from scratch.
I get in and yank the door closed behind me. “So where’s the water going tonight?”
“The food trucks. They could use a topping off.”
I suppose it’s irony that Mr. Chupick says this just as we pass three boarded-up storefronts that all used to be restaurants.
Like many towns across North America, Brentwood was once a decent suburb that tried to become an affluent suburb by selling its energy rights. And just like many other towns across North America, things went very bad very quickly. In Brentwood, it wasn’t mercury in the dirt or dioxin in the air, it was a major hydrofracking mishap that caused a slurry of chemicals and natural gas to poison the town’s water supply. Just like that. One day you had the cleanest spring water coming out of your tap, the next you could set a match to it and light the stream on fire. No joke, people could actually set their taps on fire. After that, many of the former residents left town, mostly because they could afford to leave. They took their settlement checks and moved into gated communities further upstate, and Brentwood became just another halfway suburb for people whose former residences were out in the squatter settlements. People who previously could only ever dream of living in a suburb like Brentwood. But now that the local water was toxic, who else could ever hope to live there?
“There’s something I’ve always wondered about,” I ask Mr. Chupick, “how come your well wasn’t ruined in the disaster?”
“A lot of people wonder about that. The spill happened above the water table. It affected the reservoir and all the surface water, but mine is a deeper well that taps into an isolated pool of groundwater.”
“So how much water do you have down there?”
“That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question. The Blackburn Corps of Engineers came into Brentwood and did a complete topographical survey a few months ago. That would tell me the answer, but I can’t get them to release the results. If I could see those surveys, I would know exactly how much there is.”
“Why won’t they show them to you?”
“Because even though they’re contracted by the North American Alliance, they’re still a private company. There used to be this thing called freedom of information, but that went out with the bathwater once the corporations took over.”
“So how come you never joined the water collective?”
“Oh, they’ve tried. Ever since the disaster, the water collective has been after me to join. Sure, I could let TerraAqua take over the management of my water rights. They would come onto my property, cement up my well, drive a pump into the ground and turn it into a relay in their water system. In return, I would receive a monthly revenue from the collective. But who would that benefit? Right now, I draw the water myself and distribute it as I see fit. I don’t need TerraAqua to manage that.” Mr. Chupick steers the truck onto my street.
“Is that why you didn’t leave like everyone else?”
“I didn’t leave because this town is my home. After Mrs. Chupick passed away, I couldn’t see moving anywhere else. It may not be much, but all of my memories are in that little farmhouse.” We pull up to my house. “If you want to have a real sense of community, you have to marry a town like you marry a person. It’s for better or worse. Brentwood may have a sickness right now, but I vowed to stay in sickness and in health. Understand?”
“I do.” The Free City had a lot of things going for it, but a sense of community was never one of them. Even at the academy, being a year younger than all my classmates made it tough to have any real friends. Moving out to Brentwood was the first time in my life I had either, so I do understand where Mr. Chupick is coming from.
“Besides,” he says as he lifts the shifter into park, “where would I go?”
Where indeed. I thank him for the ride and throw the door closed behind me.
I hear Martin mumbling something in the living room. He does this sometimes when he’s trying to figure something out. Whatever it is, he can tell me about it in the morning. I grab the rotted banister and start upstairs but then stop for a moment to listen to some of Martin’s mumbling. I can’t make out the words but they sound unusually spastic.
What is it that has him so frazzled?
It’s only two steps to the landing but it hurts every inch of my body. Toes, knees, the balls of my feet, they’re all sore. I drag myself around the stairs and into the living room where Martin is pacing back and forth in a stylishly loose-fitting black suit with polished black shoes. His white shirt is unbuttoned at the neck. His unlinked cuffs dangle haphazardly from his jacket sleeves, and his hair is tied back cleanly. If James Bond were a nerd, he’d be Martin Baxter.
“Bollinger Bands,” he keeps saying. “Bollinger Bands.”
I have no idea what that means.
“It’s just Bollinger Bands applied to a card distribution.”
“How was the game?” I ask.
“You expect abnormalities in the data set, of course. You expect those abnormalities, but over time those abnormalities should be normalized by the moving average. The standard
deviations do allow for a margin of error.” He places his fingers on his lips and purses them. “I did everything right,” he says.
“Martin?” But he isn’t listening.
“I did everything right. I kept the count. I calculated everything, everything on the fly. I kept a forty-card moving average and bound it high and low with one standard deviation. That tells you your entry and exit points, right?”
“If you say so.” I barely grasp what he’s saying.
“I tracked it all. I knew exactly which way the table was trending. When it was trending up, I pressed up accordingly. When it started going the other way, I pressed back down. I split my tens exactly when I was supposed to, doubled when the numbers said to double, stayed when they said not to. Hit. Stick. Double. Split. I did everything right. Even on the insurance, which is normally a sucker bet, I knew precisely when the numbers favored hedging. I did everything right.” Martin turns to look at me. “I did everything right. The numbers were not wrong.” Now I can see the fear in his eyes. My stomach drops as Martin lifts his glasses off the bridge of his nose and pinches his sinuses. “Fifty thousand.”
“You owe the entire stake to the syndicate?”
“It was a zero-sum game,” says Martin. “All or nothing.”
He doesn’t need to say it. We both know what that means. This is exactly how the syndicate operates. First they get their hooks into you, then they own you. In general, you don’t ever want to owe the syndicate any amount of money, but I’ve seen people get in deeper over far less. Chimpo’s uncle once took a galvanized pipe to the kneecap over just a few grand, but that was only because Chimpo’s uncle had nothing else to offer, so when he couldn’t pay, they put him on disability and collected that. But not Martin. Martin is far too valuable for that. He’s someone they can exploit. Currency transfers, money laundering, wire fraud—all the things that would land Martin in prison if he got caught. “How long do we have?” I ask.
