The Dark Intercept

by Julia Keller

  But the place is empty. He’s angry and he’s disappointed. The next time he sees that guy—the guy who took his money and said he’d get the word out and deliver a big crowd—he’s going to take a swing at him. Ogden might not have a right leg, but he’s got a right hook. A mean one.

  “Are you Ogden Crowley?”

  He’s just risen from his seat and is about to storm out—as best a man with a bad leg can do, anyway, on the storming-out front—when he hears the voice. A woman’s voice.

  He turns around.

  The red hair. That’s what he notices first. How could he not? It’s a soft wavy maze of hair, a complex arrangement of curls. But she’s not vain about it. He can tell. In fact, she flips it carelessly over her shoulders, as if she’s a little tired of it, and really intends to have it cut as soon as she gets the time.

  She is not a frivolous person. Somehow he can tell that, too.

  “Yeah,” he says warily, because he’s aloof with everybody. His shattered leg has made him this way. “That’s me.”

  “I came to hear your speech.”

  “There’s not going to be any speech.” He lets his bitterness show in his voice. “Nobody’s here, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I’m here.”

  And so, because he’s so intrigued with and inspired by her, he stands in the dingy basement and he gives his speech. He gives it in front of all those empty rows. He doesn’t care. She’s sitting there. She listens intently as he describes the world and where it has gone wrong. He talks about the Water Wars, and the First and the Second Mineral Wars, and how everything will end unless they act now. They must build it now.

  He doesn’t hold back. He raises his voice and he swings his arms over his head. He is passionate. He is scolding. They are running out of time. They have to escape this world. And build a new one.

  At the end, she claps for him. She has been listening fiercely. He loves that. He thinks he loves her, too. Already.

  “So,” he says. “You agree with me, yes? We need to build a new Earth?”

  She laughs. “Absolutely not!” she says, shaking her head. “We need to stay right here and deal with our problems—not peel off the top layer of people and go somewhere else and start over. I think you’re one hundred percent wrong!”

  Now he knows for sure that he loves her. He relishes a good argument, and he appreciates people who speak their minds.

  Just as they are about to climb the steps back to the first floor, she kisses him.

  She kisses him

  She kisses him

  She kisses him

  Violet could sense the agony of what her father was feeling: He could not turn away from that memory. He felt the kiss. He feels that kiss.

  He couldn’t not feel it. It was there, waiting for him, no matter what he did. And it was excruciating, it was unbearable—because each time he feels that kiss, he is reminded anew that she is gone forever.

  She’s not coming back.

  He will never see her again, his beautiful Lucretia.

  The truth of that is like a burn. Like a scalding, forever burn. Each time the kiss blooms in his memory, he is stung and branded and shredded all over again.

  * * *

  Violet knew what he was feeling because she had felt something very similar during her Intercept experience.

  The pain spiraled through him. It was worse than the agony in his leg—far, far worse.

  For some people, Violet now knew, the Intercept plucked out the worst, most painful memory from their archive and deployed it back into their brain.

  For others, the Intercept plucked out the best memory—the happiest time, a time that would never, ever return—and deployed it back into their brain. That was a far worse torture.

  Because it was wonderful. And because it was gone.

  Her father was sobbing. Ogden Crowley, president of New Earth, the most powerful man on two worlds, was sobbing. Sobbing like a little boy.

  Violet knew he couldn’t help himself. If his mind turned one way—he feels that kiss. If his mind turned another way—he still feels the kiss. The kiss that will never come again. It is lost for all eternity, just as Lucretia is lost. His wife, his soul mate, is lost. He is alone. Utterly, crushingly alone.

  His sobs were louder now. Violet couldn’t see him in the dark room, but she could imagine the tears on his face, wetting his chin and then his collar. Dampening his shirtfront.

  “Please,” he said, in a gasping, croaking voice. “Please. Please. No more.”

  If they would just stop cramming the images into his brain, he could recover his emotional poise. If only they would show some mercy and …

  “Stop the feed,” Ogden cried out.

  “No,” the man said. “Not until you agree to dismantle the Intercept. Permanently.”

  “Please,” he said. He was begging them. He wasn’t strong anymore. “Please.”

  Violet could feel the intensity of her father’s anguish, a searing, impossibly intense pain that pummeled him. A pain that, unless she could figure out what to do, was going to kill him.

  * * *

  The hood was abruptly slipped back over her head. Violet was so surprised that she had no time to call out her father’s name. She was being carried—carried away from her father, away from any chance she would have to help him—from one dark room into another dark room, and then another one after that.

  “No! No!” Violet yelled. Her words were muffled through the material of the hood. “No, no, no! I want to stay with him! Please!”

  There was no response. There was only the swaying rhythm of the chair’s movement through space and time, as they separated her from her father. Would she ever see him again? Violet had no idea. Even forming the question caused a sickening terror to rise up in her heart.

  At last they stopped. The chair was quickly lowered to the ground.

  Violet heard the snick of hinges as a door opened. The air changed; she was outside now. Cool wind reached her cheeks through the hood. She was shoved into the side door of the vehicle that had brought them here—wherever “here” was.

  More time passed. Violet was too disoriented to get a sense of distance or direction. When the vehicle braked hard, she was thrown up against the back of the front seat. She wanted to cry out from the pain in her shoulder, but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing they’d hurt her.

  No way, she thought. I’m tougher than all of you put together. And I’ll be back for you. You just wait.

  Next thing she knew, she was hauled out and thrown down. Someone yanked off her hood. She landed on her side.

  She struggled to stand. The vehicle had roared away; she heard it take the corner at a high rate of speed, its tires shrieking and its engine shifting into another gear.

  Violet looked around, exhausted and confused. She thought she might throw up. Her body ached. Her head was spinning. She didn’t know where she was. All she knew was that it was still night.

  And her father was still a prisoner.

  27

  The Sensenbrenner-Cooley Code Derivative v. the Pforzheimer Equivalent

  Each workstation in Protocol Hall was supposed to hold two people. Three at the outside.

  Right now this particular one contained five people—Violet, Danny, Reznik, Shura, and Chief Callahan—and the word overstuffed would not have been an inaccurate description. Adding to their sense of being crammed into a tiny lidless box was the fact that they were not a quiet, orderly group of five people. They were an active, agitated, excessively bossy group of five people, five people who constantly interrupted one another with questions and suggestions and proposals and counterproposals, and very nearly poked one another in the eye when they pointed at the computer screen, and shouted and then apologized and shouted again.

  They were five people desperately determined to track down the whereabouts of Ogden Crowley. And then further determined to figure out why the Intercept—which seemed to be working fine everywhere e
lse on New Earth—had suffered an inexplicable blackout at the crucial moment when the president was seized from his home.

  “Try the Pforzheimer Equivalent,” Violet suggested to Reznik. He was the only one sitting down. The others were hovering behind his chair, barely able to contain themselves. Reznik had taken point on the computer work, running through a series of tests to make sure the Intercept was back online, functioning properly. And to see if it could provide any help in locating Ogden Crowley.

  “Already did it,” he said.

  “And the Brady-Selden Curve analysis?”

  Reznik twisted around in his seat and gave Violet a scathing look. She interpreted it easily: Are you serious?

  “Did it,” he said. Violet could tell that he was trying not to be insulted by her last several suggestions for ways to test the Intercept—suggestions that were basic, obvious, and that he’d performed right at the outset, to no avail, and which she knew full well he’d already tried, because she had, after all, been standing right here watching him do so.

  He didn’t snap at her, though, the way he ordinarily would have. Violet knew why. Because he felt sorry for her. Anybody who got a good look at her would feel sorry for her.

  She hadn’t gone home yet to shower or change her clothes. Hence she was a mess. Her clothes were ripped. Her hair was a nightmare. And her face, courtesy of all the bruises, looked like one of the rags Shura used to clean her brushes—a lurid, splotchy combination of red and yellow and purple.

  After being abandoned on that dark street, Violet had walked for over an hour until a car went by. She flagged it down and used the driver’s console to call Shura. Shura arrived in minutes in a police car driven by Chief Callahan.

  As soon as Violet had answered their questions about the ordeal, she had a question of her own, for Shura: “How’s your mom?” The answer was reassuring: Anna Lu had regained consciousness. She had no memory of the assault, but it looked as if she would recover.

  And now they were all here, huddled in the workstation at Protocol Hall, in search of President Crowley—and answers.

  “How about the Sensenbrenner-Cooley Code Derivative?” Violet said. She was nervous, and she was speaking so fast that she didn’t put enough space between her words and that was why it sounded like she’d said “sensenbrennercooleycodederivative,” which did not make sense. But Rez, she knew, could understand and he was the only one she cared about right now. “That way,” she added, “you could use the vector coordinates from the—”

  “Violet. Hey—Violet,” Reznik interjected. In contrast to her agitated speech, he spoke slowly and carefully. Violet realized that he was trying to settle her down. “I’ve done all those things. You know I have.”

  She did. She did know that. Reznik was very smart, and he knew computers backward and forward, inside and out. He’d taught her most of what she knew about the Intercept. But Violet was frantic right now, and so worried about her father that she thought she might jump right out of her skin. Giving orders to Reznik—trying to come up with something he’d forgotten or overlooked, some new angle, some way to get a clue about where they’d taken her father—was her only outlet right now for the tension she felt. And the fear.

  Violet took a deep breath, trying to center herself. She looked around. She could only turn her head, not her body, because the last time she’d tried to move her position she had ended up stepping on Shura’s toe and elbowing Callahan in the ribs. But she needed a quick break from staring at Reznik’s screen, so she shifted her gaze to the large farm of cubicles that surrounded them.

  A general alarm had been issued throughout New Earth about the kidnapping, and most people were huddled in their homes, but those who worked in this facility were still on the job. They had to be. No matter what, the Intercept had to keep functioning. No one could imagine life—orderly life—without it.

  Callahan was growing impatient. “I’ve got twelve divisions out searching for President Crowley and for the criminals who took him. My guys are turning New Earth upside down. Tell me why this computer crap matters so much.”

  “This ‘computer crap,’ as you put it,” Reznik said, sounding testy and resentful at having to interrupt his mental calculations to speak to a lesser mind, “is the key to everything.” He turned to Violet. “Let’s go over this again. Put in the descriptors for everything you remember about what happened tonight. Heavy on the details. I can run another keyword program and see if we get any matches for previous incidents.”

  He leaned to one side. Violet bent over and started typing on his keyboard.

  While she did that, Callahan touched Danny’s sleeve. “This is highly irregular. I want to make sure you understand that. Your friendship with Violet means you should recuse yourself from the investigation. But frankly, I need you.” She narrowed her eyes. “And I’m still angry about your repeated trips to Old Earth. Disobeying direct orders. None of that has been forgotten. Are we clear?”

  “Clear, ma’am,” Danny said. “Right now, I’m just trying to help find Violet’s dad.”

  Violet, of course, was listening to this conversation, as was everyone else in the small cubicle. Eavesdropping was a given. And under any other circumstances, the moment might have been awkward: hearing a boss reprimanding an employee. But such was the nature of the emergency that nobody squirmed, nobody coughed, nobody pretended to find something fascinating to look at so that they wouldn’t have to look at Danny or the chief.

  “Okay,” Violet said. She stood up straight again, relinquishing the keyboard to Reznik. “That’s it. Everything I can remember.”

  He nodded. He punched some keys, frowned, and punched a few more keys. Orange symbols kinked across his screen.

  They waited.

  “I’m glad they let you go,” Shura said. “But I don’t really get why they did.”

  Violet shrugged. “Best guess? It’s Dad they wanted. Not me. I was just a liability. One more problem to deal with. They probably didn’t even know I’d be home last night. Just an accident.”

  She took a moment to glance at Danny, wondering what was going on in his mind. She didn’t believe he had anything to do with her father’s kidnapping—but he knew more than he was saying.

  He knew what was written in that red notebook.

  Moments later Reznik sighed a deep, frustrated sigh. He swept a hand toward the computer. The symbols had stopped moving. They were quiet now. They’d done their job, revealed all that they were capable of revealing. Which was not enough.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Or least nothing we didn’t know before.”

  “The earlier vandalism perpetrated by the Rebels,” Callahan said. “Surely you can cross-check the police reports against—”

  “Did it,” Reznik snapped.

  “How about checking the frequency of the deployment of the Intercept for the past twenty-four hours?” Danny said. “Maybe it’ll show if someone on the inside tried to interfere with the—”

  “Did it.”

  “Or,” Shura said, “you could test the—”

  “Did it. Did it. I did it all.” Reznik was annoyed. He had been annoyed for a while, to be sure, but only Violet knew that, because she had worked with him for so long. He was fairly good at hiding his annoyance. Now, though, he was letting it show. These people did not appreciate the fact that he was doing his best—and that there was nothing they might think of that he hadn’t already thought of.

  There had been times in the past when Violet disliked his arrogance, but tonight, she realized that she counted on Reznik’s arrogance. His expertise and his arrogance were sort of the same thing. She felt a surge of affection for him, an appreciation, and that was followed shortly by sadness because she would never feel about him the way he felt about her.

  The only person she felt that way about was Danny.

  She glanced over at him. Danny was frowning, and his face had its shut-down, closed-for-business look that he got when he was thinking hard.

  The wo
rkstation had grown quiet. No one moved. Violet vastly preferred the way it had been before—a too-loud, too-close, uncomfortable but oddly consoling circus of strong personalities and competing opinions, a free-for-all of concerned people doing their best—to this ominous and depressing calm.

  “Okay,” Danny said, breaking the silence. “It looks like we’re not going to be able to track down the kidnappers with the usual police methods. They’re just not working.”

  Violet looked at Callahan. The chief had stiffened a bit when Danny made his point, but there was no arguing with it.

  “And that being the case,” Danny went on, “I think we need to review what we already know. So that we can come at this from another angle.”

  “What do you mean?” Shura said.

  “Well, we’ve been trying to figure out where they took Violet’s dad. Maybe we should be focusing on why they took him.”

  “That’s easy,” Reznik said. “They hate the Intercept.”

  “Yeah,” Callahan added. “They want it to be dismantled.”

  “Fine,” Danny said. “But why? Why do they want that?”

  Reznik shrugged. “I’ve skimmed a few of their manifestos on the Internet. The most important one is called The Dark Intercept. It’s long and it’s actually pretty well-reasoned. They say the whole concept is barbaric. And wrong. They believe people’s emotions ought to be private—not government property. They shouldn’t be used against us. The manifesto brings up a lot of past stuff, like the American Revolutionary War back on Old Earth. It says that the Intercept ought to be called ‘the Dark Intercept’ because the system is based on fear. On the darkest parts of human beings. Not the good, positive stuff.”

  “We’ve tried to infiltrate them,” Callahan said, cutting into his story. “Get someone on the inside. Nothing works.”

  “Because they’re too smart?” Shura asked.

  “Because they’re too small,” Callahan answered. “It’s a very, very tiny faction. They don’t let in a lot of new members, as a security measure. So it’s been impossible to embed a spy. They all know each other too well.”