Data Runner
Page 24
“Even taking over the world.”
“Even taking over the world.”
“And when Genie was the CSO of Grumwell, she found out about the doctrine.”
“She did.”
“And she wanted no part of it?”
Martin shakes his head. “If it was that simple, she could have just quit, walked away, and been done with it. But the thing about Genie, and certainly the reason I fell for her the first time I ever met her, is that she has a fire inside her. When she has a passion for something, there is nothing in the world that can stop her from pursuing it. Genie couldn’t just walk away. She couldn’t just stand by and let it all happen. But she couldn’t put you in danger either, so after I scrubbed her identity, Genie did the hardest thing she ever had to do in her life. She kissed you goodbye and went off to form the Outliers.”
At once I recall Red Tail’s story. “Genevive Bonillia is the gypsy woman who marched into the squatter settlements to form the resistance.”
Martin nods. “It’s a Castilian name, but the roots are Romani. Her family truncated it when they immigrated to North America from the Eastern Eurozone, so when it came time to give her a new identity, we just reverted back to the old one.”
“So, I’m part gypsy?”
“The correct term is Romani,” says Martin. “And yes, that’s the other half of the blood pumping through your veins.”
I’m stunned. Genie. Genevive. The Outliers. They’re all the same. Just like Martin, Moreau, and Morlock.
“I want you to know something,” Martin continues. “She did it for you. For all of us. She left so that we could all have a better future. On the surface, the Outliers may seem like just another protest group fighting for rights to things now owned by private enterprise, things like the water we drink and the air that we breathe, but deep down they are so much more. The Outliers are an uprising. A revolution. They are the all-out resistance to the Grumwell Doctrine, and their goal is to bring back the constitution of the Old-50. A true government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Only this time we won’t make the mistake of allowing the corporations to disguise themselves as people and usurp the whole thing.”
“And how does Morlock fit into all of this?”
“That was my idea. I couldn’t let Genevive fight this battle all on her own, but I couldn’t put you in danger either. Then one night I was reading you to sleep with The Time Machine and I came up with the idea of creating a singular beast made up of millions of individuals. People just like you and me. A beast that will continue to grow no matter how many nodes they stamp out. A beast that will spread itself around the entire globe. That is the digital resistance.”
I think I understand. “Genevive Bonillia does it with boots on the ground, Moreau does it with little bits of zeroes and ones.”
“Precisely.”
“And she’s still out there doing it?”
“For security reasons she stays hidden, but just like Moreau and Morlock, Genevive Bonillia leads the Outliers from within.” Martin moves the switch aside and gets started on another piece of equipment. “So how did it go with Hermes Agency?”
“As expected.” Back when Dexter was running for them, they would have given anything to get me on board. Now they won’t even touch me. No one will. “You really have no idea why Tolan did that?”
“I told you before, that’s the way Miles operates. He will never drag you kicking and screaming, he’ll simply remove all other options until you have no choice but to go to him. I don’t know what his game is at the moment, but for now he’s ensuring that all roads lead to Grumwell…for both of us.”
Martin is right about one thing. Whatever his game is, Miles Tolan has certainly backed me into a corner. I had already decided to keep running with Arcadian for a year or two to save up the money for NEIT. Now even that’s not on the table anymore. I suppose I could still eke out a living proofing code, but after everything I had seen and done, after running the sneakernet, could I really resign myself to being Bartleby the Scrivener? The answer is as simple as looking at my parents. Martin could never do that, and apparently neither could Genie, so I guess that sort of mind-numbing task work just isn’t in my DNA. I need something bigger.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Zeno’s Paradox lately,” I tell Martin.
“Which one?” he says. “There are nine of them.”
“Nine?”
“Yes, although most are restatements of the same principle, so reductively there are really only three.”
“I’m talking about the one where you’re running for some goal, and before you can reach it, you first have to get halfway there. And before you can do that, you first have to get a quarter of the way there. Etcetera, etcetera.”
“The dichotomy paradox,” says Martin.
“Right. Anyway, I was thinking. The paradox is designed to show that a finite distance can never be crossed because it can be bisected infinitely. So no matter how far you travel, you’re never more than halfway there, thus ensuring that you’re never more than halfway to your goal. But the whole idea is really contingent upon the subject standing still the whole time, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if you stand there looking at all those half-distances you have to cross and keep adding them up in your mind, then of course any effort to achieve your goal would seem futile. I don’t know, Martin, I think in a way the paradox is supposed to represent life. Every goal in life is unachievable if you just stand there focusing on the distance between you and it. But once you start moving, once you start crossing all those half-distances, picking up speed as they get smaller and smaller, you just do it. You set your mind to chasing down your goal and put yourself in motion. Let the math take care of itself.”
“It does.”
“What does?”
“The math. It does take care of itself. If you just apply a little bit of calculus, you see that the series one over two to the nth converges to zero.”
“Right,” I say realizing that Martin has just proven my point. “Because calculus is the mathematics of movement. The paradox only exists when you’re standing still in Euclidean space. But once you start running and apply the mathematics of change, suddenly this insurmountable distance gets crushed under the curve of motion. It’s like, the solution to the paradox isn’t some complex mathematical proof—it’s just to put one foot in front of the other and get moving, and that movement will carry you to the goal before you even realize the math says no.”
“That’s a very interesting perspective,” says Martin, “but how does it apply to your current predicament?”
“It applies because that’s what I have to do. No matter how far the goal may seem, no matter how much space there is in front of me, I just have to put one foot forward and start moving. And once I do that, I have to keep moving. Keep moving, keep going, using the momentum to my advantage. And I guess the distance will take care of itself.”
Martin stops what he’s doing. He knows I’m about to lay something on him. “And what’s the goal here, Jack?”
“Mr. Chupick already said that he would fix my attendance record so I wouldn’t have to go through the motions of showing up anymore. But the truth is, school isn’t just about showing up anymore. I have a commitment to the Dragons. With Dexter away and Pace gone, I’m afraid the club will fall apart without me. And the school could use my help fixing up the place. The whole town could. So maybe I’ll work with Mr. Chupick for a while getting things back to normal. And while I’m doing that, maybe do some coursework through the university aggrenet portals. I may not get the grade or the credit, but it’s like you said, knowledge is the shared intellectual property of all who seek it.”
“And after that?” Martin asks suspiciously.
After everything I’ve learned, there is no stopping me now. I can’t just stand here staring at the distance between us knowing what I know. I can
only move forward. And for me moving forward means only one thing. “I want to find her.”
He raises his eyebrows. “You can’t be serious.” But he can see that I am. Martin taps the table twice like he wants another card. “Jack, I think you need to stop and think about this for a second.”
But stopping is exactly what I don’t want to do, even for a second. Stopping will only make it seem too far away, too difficult, too insurmountable. Stopping will only make it seem futile because it’s only when we stop that we realize we’re never more than halfway there. So now I need to move.
When I first started on the undernet there was one thing that drove me more than anything—looking for Moreau—and I didn’t stop until I found him. Even if he did turn out to be Martin, and the distance between us was zero the entire time, I found him. Now I need to find the other person I have always wondered about, the one who is little more than a distant memory.
“I’m serious,” I tell him, and the way I say it makes it perfectly clear that I am not seeking his permission.
Martin may think I am the same person I was before, but I’m not. Even if I’m not running data for Arcadian anymore, I am still a bird. I will always be a bird. That ink is permanent. And as a bird, the time has come for me to leave the nest.
“I’m going to find her, Martin. I’m going to find my mother.”
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