Goldstein

by Troy J. Grice

  The nat riding along with Devin was a boyish looking fellow with a fringe of blond hair poking out around the edges of his shock helmet. His doe-ish eyes betrayed his best efforts to look fierce.

  Devin tried to concoct a scenario in his mind by which he could escape. There was no plausible means. His arms and legs were shackled. His brain was termination chipped. He was in a physically weakened state. The boy across from him appeared to be lacking confidence and experience but he was armed and undoubtedly well-trained. There was no hope. He was a dead man.

  Nevertheless, he imagined breaking loose. He envisioned stealing the nat’s sidearm and holding him at gunpoint- demanding the other nats open the door and set him loose. They would open the door but, of course, they would not set him free. They never turned armed assailants loose. So they would be frozen in a hopeless standoff. Eventually, a sniper would pick Devin off or he would simply give up out of frustration.

  It would have to end another way. With no chance of escape, he would have to finish it with a flurry. He would get the nats to open the door. Then he would start firing. He’d shoot at least one of them. The boy would struggle. He would shoot him point blank, too, right in the temple. The boy’s body would go limp and heavy and slip out of his grasp. With nothing left to risk, the others would open fire into the hold. Devin would die quickly, his body riddled with a thousand bullets...

  No. He wouldn’t become an animal. He was above that. He was human. The pointless killing would serve no purpose other than to confirm their judgment of him.

  He thought about the boy. He had a mother. He probably had a young wife and maybe and a small child. He probably desperately needed a job to feed his family and NaPol was probably his best option. Besides, the boy had never really done anything to him. He was not innocent. He was a willing cog in the totalitarian machine, but he was not guilty either, at least not to the extent that he deserved death by Devin’s hand.

  There would be no pointless killing. Pointless killing is murder. There would be no suicide, either. With rare exception, suicide has no purpose other than to elicit pity. Such an act would be undignified. Besides, what benefit would come from others pitying him if he was not around to acknowledge it? Perhaps that’s why people leave suicide notes— it’s their way of savoring their pity in advance, he concluded.

  Devin resigned himself to his fate. Even the fantasy of an escape had now been completely extinguished. His life was now nothing more than a battle for dignity. Could he maintain it during the torture sessions? Could he maintain it during a long, psychosis inducing confinement? Dignity, he decided, was his sole remaining life purpose.

  “What’s your name?” he asked the boy nat.

  “Shut your mouth,” answered the boy with unconvincing sternness.

  “How long have you been a nat…I mean, with National Police?”

  “Do you want to get yourself pulsed? Shut up.”

  “I’m just trying to be cordial. I’m not sure how long this ride will be. Is it long?

  “Six months.”

  “The ride is six months long?”

  “I’ve been in NaPol for six months.”

  “Do you have a family?”

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you. They said you’re a hypnotic manipulator.”

  “How would I manipulate you? Look at me.” Devin raised his shackled wrists for the nat to see.

  “Stop asking me questions.”

  “It’s a long drive to the airport, no?”

  “Forty five minutes. Now stop asking me questions or I’ll have to pulse you.”

  They drove for several minutes down the superhighway with their flashers blinking and alarms wailing. The ride was smoother on the highway. The boy produced his water bottle and took a drink. He caught Devin’s eye watching him. Grudgingly, he offered Devin the bottle.

  “Thank you,” Devin replied.

  “Look, I don’t know who you are or what they’re transferring you for,” explained the boy. “I don’t care to know, either. I’m just doing my job. So please don’t force me to get tactical on you.”

  “I will not force you to do anything. You have my word.”

  The truck decelerated and came to a stop. The driver blasted an obnoxious air horn to no avail. The rumbling engine idled. Devin tried to peek up the road out the slit windows but all he could see were backed up electros. The truck lurched forward and hit something. It lurched forward again and hit something again. Then it swerved onto the shoulder and picked up speed, passing an electro with a badly damaged rear end and a terrified driver with his hands submissively raised.

  They exited the highway onto an arterial street. Then they turned left then right, driving for a minute or so and then stopping again. The sirens switched off. The boy nat was whispering into his headset and then listening intently with wide, darting eyes.

  “What happened?” Devin asked.

  “Big accident on the highway. Some truck tipped over. Haz-waz everywhere. We’re not allowed to stop with a class four anti-pat in transport. Apparently you have motivated and dangerous friends. Sit tight. We’ll be moving again any second.”

  The truck started moving. It turned and picked up speed. The sirens came back on as they drove for several minutes through the empty store fronts of some urban commercial district.

  “Consider this an extra few minutes of freedom,” the nat remarked.

  “I don’t know about ‘freedom’,” Devin replied rubbing his wrists where the nylon restraints had dug in. “But I will say that you’re the first nat that’s treated me with any civility since I got here. I guess that’s worth something.”

  A red light started flashing in the hold. The boy nat held his earpiece. The sirens turned off.

  “What’s going on, now?” Devin asked.

  “Sensors going off…detecting something…radio transmitters…jammers, maybe.” The truck slowed. “The sensors go off all the time. Don’t worry. Sit tight. Just taking precautions.”

  The boy’s assurances were betrayed by his widened eyes and the sweat beads forming on his brow. He seemed fidgety and anxious. He started patting at his pockets as if he was looking for something. Then he readied his sidearm by taking the safety off. The truck accelerated. “Sometimes it’s best just to get through the zone.”

  “The zone?”

  “You know, ‘uncovered pops’— areas with unfriendlies who black out the surveillance. We’re a little blind out here so we turn our sensors up to eleven just to be safe.” The sirens blared again. The truck accelerated. The kid winked at Devin. “See, I told you. Just a false al…”

  BOOM!

  The truck flew into the air and came down with a spectacular crash landing on its side. The boy fell onto Devin. The hold instantly filled with white, choking smoke. Devin couldn’t hear anything as the concussion knocked out his hearing. The smoke thickened. It was complete white out. Then a flash of bright light in the haze, like a spark or a flame. Then it was white again, then another flash. He could hear himself breathing. The squealing alarms of the truck pierced the smoke from somewhere inside hold. Devin was not sure if he was upside down. Then it wasn’t squealing alarms, anymore, it was ringing in his ears. He heard thumping like drumbeats, sensing the sound more than hearing it. No, it wasn’t his ears ringing, it was the alarms. The screeching sounds became clearer.

  “Move! Move!” he shouted to himself but he couldn’t move. His arms and his legs were useless, paralyzed. He tried but it was as if they were submerged in tar. The boy was motionless on top of him. Was he unconscious? Was he dead? Devin couldn’t tell. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe it isn’t real, he thought. “Wake up!” He shouted.

  It was no dream.

  The cloud of white smoke dissipated. He could see an alarm flashing red on the rippled steel wall of the transport. The boy was still motionless on top of him. He could see sunlight above the boy’s shoulder but he couldn’t move him out of the way.

  There were more drumbeats but they were crisp
er than before as his hearing was coming back. The beats were gunfire! Yes, there were bullets ripping through the air all around. One bullet clanked against the crumpled steel wall of the transport hold sending off an arc of sparks. Another whizzed past above. There was another explosion and he could feel the heat of the fireball on his face.

  “Get up! Get Up!” he shouted at his body but he couldn’t move. He struggled. Then he could move a little. His leg, yes his leg, he could move his leg! His leg shackles had broken loose, somehow. He slid his leg out from under the boy. His arm, yes he could move it. He used his good arm to drag his paralyzed arm from under the boy. The boy rolled off into the smoke. “Should I try to wake him? No, leave him. No way to tell if he’s dead. Get out”, he shouted to himself.

  There was fire. It was getting hot on his left side. The nat was between him and the fire. It had to be cooking him, melting his polyester uniform into his skin. Black smoke poured into the hold.

  “Where are they? Why aren’t they coming to finish us off? I have to get out now! Where are the nats? Why aren’t they returning fire? Why aren’t they dragging us out?”

  He tried to shove himself up with his weakened legs. He couldn’t. He was starting to choke. The heat was increasing. It was burning his left leg. The ray of sunlight above was filling in with smoke. He couldn’t see anything. His lungs burned.

  Just then, a set of hands grabbed him by the front of his shirt and, with a succession of eight or nine violent yanks, pulled him out of the wreckage. Whoever it was dragged him onto the concrete and into an alleyway. There was more gunfire zipping past. It was cool in the alley.

  “Get the boy. There’s a boy in there. He’s burning. He might be alive,” Devin pleaded as he caught his breath. “The boy! We’ve got to save the boy. We’ve got to go back.” He blinked and rubbed the soot from his eyes. Everything was blurry. There was a face looking down on him. It came into focus. He couldn’t believe…it couldn’t be.

  “Forget him. He’s dead,” explained Ramielle.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ramielle turned off the silent motor of her electro. The two of them were tucked safely in the shadows of a parking garage.

  “Don’t lose that jammer. We don’t want them dialing in on us or switching you off,” Ramielle ordered.

  A groggy Devin rubbed his eyes with his still handcuffed hands.

  “What about the cameras?”

  “It’s uncovered pops here. All the feeds are scrambled or dark,” Ramielle explained as she helped Devin from the electro. He shuffled along with her into a dimly lit elevator. She swiped her false-multi and pushed thirteen. The shaky lift ratcheted its way upwards.

  The door opened to a dimly lit hallway leading to her room. The words ‘Hotel Amerikano’ were scribbled in marking pen across the wall. She unlocked the door with a swipe and the two disappeared into a sparsely furnished apartment.

  “Lay down here. Let me see about getting those cuffs off.” She darted off then returned with bolt cutters and a butcher knife. With two snips, the unwieldy cutters chopped through the surprisingly tough silksteel nylon connectors. She began sawing at the cuffs with the knife.

  “Is this your apartment?” Devin asked barely able to stay awake.

  “No. It’s a safe house. They said it’ll take them at least twenty four hours to track us down here.”

  “Who said th…” Devin fell asleep mid sentence.

  Ramielle made sure the jamming device stayed by his head by propping it up on the worn arm of the sofa. It didn’t need to remain too close as the range was ten meters or so, but placing it there made her feel more at ease for him. She didn’t want to take any chances. She continued sawing through the cuffs.

  #

  Devin awoke to a black cat licking his hand. “What time is it?” he asked, realizing that his wrists and ankles were free of the bindings.

  Ramielle was watching holovision and eating a sandwich. “Ten thirty. You’ve been asleep a long time. I had to keep checking on you to make sure they didn’t log your brain off.”

  “I see you got my cuffs off. Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t easy. It took a couple hours of sawing. Here, have a sandwich.”

  Devin took half of her sandwich. “Did I make the news?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself. You don’t even exist. The haz-waz spill made it, though. And the insurrection of course. And the senseless and arbitrary killing of nats by anti-patriot terrorists.”

  “Insurrection?”

  “Apparently your little transport drove over an explosive device.”

  “Who set it?”

  “Freemerica says it was Christian zealots or maybe they said it was Muslim fanatics, I forget.”

  “So I’m pretty lucky, I guess.”

  “…Or maybe it was anarcho-capitalists!” she added sarcastically. “Whatever the case, you were almost blown to bits, nearly shot up, then almost burned alive so I’d say you’re pretty lucky. Good thing I was there to save you, Devin. You’re lucky to have a girl like me around.”

  “Thanks again. What were you doing there?”

  “Hmm. Let’s say that you have friends looking out for you— Powerful, anarcho-capitalist friends if you know what I mean.”

  “Goldstein?”

  “Know a guy named Roth Smith?”

  “Roth!”

  “He contacted me a few weeks ago. He said he was worried about you because you hadn’t called and your multi had nat agents poking around in it. Then he said he hacked their database and found out everything.”

  “Define ‘everything’.”

  “It seems NaPol was disappointed in their interrogation progress.”

  Devin smiled.

  “How did Roth find you?”

  “You must have told him about me at some point. What did you tell him, Devin? Did you tell him that you’re in love with the badass bitch of your dreams?”

  “Please.”

  Ramielle went into the kitchen area. “Must have been my hacker’s license,” she revealed, coming clean. “He probably spent a whopping twenty whole seconds tracking me down. He was very interested in your whereabouts, Devin. He paid me a retainer.”

  “Paid you?”

  “Paid me a lot, a shitload of Reagans. You know, ten thousand dollar bills. All he asked for was that I agree to do something when he asked. He said you might not come out of the fed center but I had to be ready just in case, ready to drop everything at his command. He’d make me go by there three or four times a day, too. Then yesterday he calls me in the morning and says that they’re gonna move you and that I had to be at such and such intersection at such and such time and this and that and stay in the alley and that you would be in a black transport and when it got blown up I was to drag you into my car and bring you here. So here we are.”

  “How could he know where we’d be?”

  “I imagine the haz-waz spill, the insurgency, the explosives, all of it was part of their plan. They know everything about NaPol. They can send false radio signals to scare the nats off of certain roads and such. I bet your Goldstein friends practically drove your damn transport right into the ambush themselves. I even think that the Muslims were paid to provide cover, or maybe it was the Christians, I don’t know. Funny thing is those wackos sure do like taking out nats. They may hate each other, but that is nothing compared to their hatred of NaPol.

  So I parked out on and alley off FDR Boulevard and waited. And sure enough, I see your truck rolling down the street real slow. Then kaboom! Roth called and said you were inside and to go get you out. I didn’t want to do it because I was scared but he said they wouldn’t shoot me and that all I had to do was make sure you got out and bring you here.”

  “So what now?”

  “We gotta go.”

  “Go where?”

  “To Alaska. NaPol’s connected me to you so I can’t stay here. We’ve got to go soon because they’ll track us down here in a few hours. Here, Roth sent this for you.” She han
ded Devin a small case.

  Devin opened it. Inside there were two new multis. One had his name written on it on a sticky note. The other was Ramielle’s. After the multi scanned his thumbprint and booted up, Roth’s face appeared.

  “Hello, Devin. Long time no see,” greeted Roth’s chubby face. “I’m very happy that you made it out of that fed center. We are all very glad to hear it. Your escape would not have been possible if not for your friend. She is very brave and did a great job. We were hoping that we wouldn’t need to send in a professional extraction team. Gangbangers can be very unreliable.

  If you are listening to this then Ramielle has activated a small device that I sent down along with these multis. Please keep it on you at all times. It jams your brain chip transmissions to NaPol and overrides the termination sequence. You should be safe. If it didn’t work then you wouldn’t be listening to me right now.”

  Your friend Brooks has pulled your interrogation down from their servers. The Council knows that you’ve made The Delivery and they are very pleased. Kudos on standing up to those thugs as well. I couldn’t have imagined it being delivered any better. We are streaming it to the internet worldwide. NaPol keeps trying to take it down but it’s metastasized on the net. You are a celebrity, Devin, just not in the mainstream media sort of way. Everyone just loves how you blew smoke in that old nat’s face at the end.

  Here’s the deal, you’ve been pardoned by the Council but you must get back home without delay. Goldstein thinks the Liberation Event is a go any day now. You can bet NaPol will be putting a lot of resources onto you. They want you neutralized before they attack.

  We’ve made arrangements to smuggle you back to the Colony. There are instructions included in this multi. There is a truck driver who will bring you two to Fairbanks. You have to meet him at the Appian Truck Stop at 2:00PM today. This is what he looks like. He’ll go by the name ‘Bear’. All the arrangements have been made at Brook’s expense. Good luck!” Roth’s face disappeared.