"Of course, Rebecca."
Her heart cracked. First came the pain, then came the release as tears tore free in a storm of pain, loss and friendship found. She fell into Cody's arms and buried her face in his shoulder.
He rubbed her back. "We love you, Rebecca."
"Too much," she murmured. "It has all been too much."
"I know."
She held him until her sobs subsided. Then with the barest breath she whispered to him the secret she'd been hoarding all this time giving Cody the password. He nodded and held her eyes for a long moment. Finally he released her.
Andy came immediately to her side and put his arms around her. "You okay, Bec?"
She sniffed and nodded.
"We can travel to Mammoth Cave as early as tomorrow if you're up to it, Bec."
She looked into his eyes as she held him. Mammoth Cave—the culmination of twenty years. How many people had died? She was more than ready to end it. "I'm ready."
"Before the pair of you get cozy and x-rated, let me show you one more thing," Cody said. His bright smile returned. He grabbed a set of PODs from a nearby workstation, but didn't place them on his head. Instead he held them in his hands. "I've been experimenting with synaptic memory of late. It's amazing how it parallels Bit-torrent logic. For years we tried to figure out how thoughts processed, how memories were retrieved. Little did we know the answer had been staring us in the face since the turn of the century. We'd discovered the secret to the logic on our own, our brains giving us the outline. Nailing that down was the hardest. I mean, you can't just upload memory without a construct, a template so to speak." He placed the PODs on his head and nodded to a dark green square about the size of an old world toaster sitting on a table in the corner. "That is the result of my experiments."
"What are you talking about?" Andy asked. "I don't remember you ever mentioning this."
"We all have our pet projects," Cody said, turning to Rebecca. "Remember when I said I knew what was killing everyone?"
She nodded.
"Here is where I find out if I was right." He smiled once more, then turned on the PODs.
Five seconds passed as they stared at each other. Just as Rebecca and Andy were about to say something, Cody was hit by an unseen jolt. His body buckled then lurched upright. His hands went out to automatically steady himself and shattered one of the windows. Tools sailed across the floor as he flopped onto a table. To Rebecca's utter horror blood began to pool into his eyes. He fell to the floor, his arms and legs doing a frantic drumbeat against the floor. A workstation tumbled to the ground, sparking as it exploded, sending polymers ricocheting against the walls. Less than five seconds later Cody's body stilled. The only movement remaining was the smoke that wafted gently from his open mouth.
Chapter 19
All hell broke loose.
Ack Acks descended upon them, first knocking them to the floor, then manhandling them into a standing position. Three men and a woman gripped Rebecca. Four men gripped Andy. She barely noticed. She couldn't stop staring at Cody. Clearly he'd known he would die, so why had he done it? Anger began to bubble through her disbelief. Did he know about Olga? What an amazingly tactless way to kill yourself.
She stared at his face, where there once was such a beautiful smile. He'd held so much life in that expression, and now his cheeks were scarred by electric burns from the POD as they had virtually exploded on his face. Blackened sockets replaced his eyes. Smoke still curled from his lips.
In the corner, a squad of Ack Acks struggled to put out a fire. Like a Chinese fire drill, they jumbled and jostled, each stomping and beating at the flames with broken lengths of polymer, their hands, and anything else they could grab. Finally an Ack Ack dressed in a red jumpsuit pushed them aside and used an old-fashioned fire extinguisher on the flames.
Within seconds the fire was out. Nothing remained except the stink of burned flesh and the toxic fumes of charbroiled computer parts. But this, too, went away as the air came on and sucked the haze into an overhead air duct.
Finally the Ack Acks turned on Rebecca and Andy. Fifty faces folded into angry masks as hate-filled eyes judged and juried. They all began to speak at once in their crazy Ack Ack way. They were a mob, and like a mob, they pushed Rebecca and Andy from the room. She fought them, lashing out with her feet and hands. Sometimes she'd score a hit and the hands would fall away, but there were always more to grasp her. They drove them through the large room in which she'd awoke, out a long narrow hallway, then into a smaller room dominated by a singularly immense being.
The first word that came to mind was Frankenstein.
So tall.
So impressive.
So not human.
Something else didn't go unnoticed. When the mob entered the room, it was as if a switch had been turned off. The silence was so complete that she could hear the Deacon breathing—the sound like the pendulous piston of a powerful and predatory machine.
He stood seven feet. Only his torso was visible. His lower legs disappeared at the thighs into a tracked propulsion unit. The curved front of the casement boasted lights and LEDs with cascading code. The slender, multi-wheeled tracks positioned where his feet should have been were six feet long and reminded Rebecca more of something found on a tractor. Tubes perforated his bare chest, redistributing red and yellow liquids. His skin was painfully white, not something that she believed could have occurred naturally. Another LED had been set in the center of his chest. He had no arms. Instead, impossibly thin, polymer, skeletal appendages protruded from his shoulders and ended with wickedly-taloned hands which, even as she watched, opened and closed with menace. Like some of the other Ack Acks she'd seen, the Deacon's lower face had been covered with a curved metal plate, leaving only his nose and eyes visible beneath a black skullcap. The white skin of his face, like the skin of his torso, looked more dead than alive. The word ghoul came to mind and Rebecca shuddered as she transposed the idea of the supernatural life-stealer onto this cyborg thing before her.
With his head tilted slightly upwards, he stared down his long nose at her with an expression of both curiosity and unquestionable authority.
The Ack Acks pushed her and Andy forward and forced them to their knees. One spoke for the others.
"They killed Brother Larkins, Most Holy. He is dead and his laboratory is destroyed."
The words killed and destroyed pulsed through the crowd. Some whispered, some shouted, all with unmitigated hatred.
Both skeletal arms shot out towards Rebecca and Andy. He managed to dodge, but she wasn't fast enough and the claw gripped the top of her head. She could feel the tips of the talons pressing against her, all but breaking the skin with the strength of the grip. Andy dove out of the way twice, but was kicked back into the space in front of the Deacon by the mob of Ack Acks. He tried to dodge a third time, but the arm struck him on the side of the head, sending him to the floor unconscious. The taloned-hand found him and gripped his skull as the other gripped Rebecca's.
"You have killed Larkins?" boomed a voice that came both from the deacon and from speakers secreted throughout the room.
Then the crowd moved aside as two Ack Acks brought Cody's body into the room and deposited it across the tracks of the Ack Ack Deacon. The great figure peered down at the body before him, then pinned Rebecca with a look of such fury that she was forced to close her eyes. The Deacon lifted her from the floor. She peeked through half-closed slits and saw that she'd been brought to eye level. From the mirror-sheened face plate, she saw her own terrified visage staring back at her. Blood trickled down her scalp as the talons dug in.
"Why did you kill Brother Larkins?"
"I didn't kill him," she managed to stutter.
"Then why is he dead? If you didn't kill him, then what happened?"
She thought to deny it once again, but knew he'd respond the same way. How was she to make this thing understand that she didn't kill Cody?
"We came to ask for his help," she began, hopi
ng to figure out what to say if given enough time.
"We?"
"Andy Hoke and myself. I am Rebecca Mines. You may have known my brother, David Mines."
Code flashed across the LED on his chest. He stared at her a moment longer, the silence dragging on as the pain from the taloned-grip in her head increasing. "Others have died in the way Cody died. You are dangerous, Rebecca Mines. You did not kill them but you are the trigger."
A trigger? Was she the cause?
"You were released from—yesss," the Deacon interrupted himself drawing out the word like a snake. "You are Velvet Dogma."
"I am," she managed to say through the haze of pain that was building in her head.
He stared at her for a while longer. It was then she realized that he was accessing information. He had no POD. He had no computer. She understood immediately that he didn't need one. As the quasi-religious leader of the Ack Acks he'd transformed his body into a living computer.
She went back over the moments before Cody's death. She'd told him the password, then he'd established a downlink with the POD. Almost the moment he turned it on, he died, his body spasming because of what? The program, that's why. Velvet Dogma. She had killed him, but not intentionally. Everything suddenly synched. The password had been her college nickname that only a very few close friends knew. She'd planned on changing it eventually, but when they'd arrested her, she was still in the experimental phases of the program. So like anyone, she'd picked a phrase that she knew she'd remember. At least it wasn't her pet's name or her birth date. But there were a select group who knew the password—Olga Pavarnik, Thelma Jones, and Ernie Wright. She didn't know the fate of the others, but Olga had died in front of her.
How did the POD work? She knew that they used sub-vocalized commands. She also knew that information could be accessed in pure silence, which could only mean that a direct neural connection was established. And if a person allowed the ID access to their brain, then anything could be downloaded. Velvet Dogma had become an immense program. Andy had called it a beast. She'd seen the size and number of the servers in Mammoth Cave that had been arranged to contain the program. No way could a brain contain such a program. When downloaded, it was like a switch that couldn't be turned off as it filled a container, in this case the brain, to the point of bursting.
"I know," she murmured. "I am the trigger."
The Deacon glanced at her once, then returned to the ID.
"Put us down, Deacon." She put as much command in her voice as she could muster.
His eyes snapped to her. They were filled with a mixture of rage and anger. "Cody was working with you. He hid that from me." He raised Andy up until he was beside her. Andy groaned, but his eyes remained closed. "I do not like this Velvet Dogma," continued the Deacon. "I do not think that it is worthy of the ID. A program like this could destroy the ID. This is something that must not happen."
What she was about to do was the reinvention of foolishness. She glanced quickly at Andy who seemed unconscious. She had to trust that he was, because what she about to do could kill him too.
"Velvet Dogma must be destroyed!" boomed the voice of the Deacon. "You are the trigger and you must be destroyed!"
"But I am a person. I am human."
"In order to save the ID, you will die. Nothing is more important than the ID."
Just what she thought he'd say. The Ack Acks placed the sanctity of the computer above the well-being of human kind. Rebecca and Andy had but once chance. She felt the pressure begin to mount on her skull as the Deacon squeezed. She opened her mouth and whispered, "Rebecca Mines. Velvet Dogma. Becca Bunny."
She watched as the Deacon's eyes widened. The room was suddenly filled with a high-pitched whine loud enough to send the mob to their knees, their hands over their ears. Then she and Andy fell. Their landings were cushioned by the Ack Acks. She managed to stand, grab Andy and pull him across the floor to the door. He struggled back to reality, the shrieking something that would wake the dead. She couldn't help looking back at the scene of pain and misery she'd created.
The Deacon's skeletal arms were flailing. The tracks beneath him were moving back and forth as he slammed into the wall, crushing Ack Acks everywhere. Those who survived the physical threat of the Deacon had been crushed by Velvet Dogma. Each of them probably held a bit of information for the Deacon and were uplinked to him at all times like Bit-torrent humans. This open link was killing them.
For a brief moment Rebecca felt sorry for what she'd done, but then, she pushed the feeling aside—these people had wanted to kill her just moments ago. She'd done what was necessary to survive.
"Come on. Let's go," Andy said shakily.
The Deacon seemed to be getting itself under control. Perhaps he'd manage to shut off the flow of data. If anyone could that maybe it was this computer-human amalgam.
"We have to get one thing first." Rebecca ran back the way they'd come from Cody's lab with Andy close behind her. She'd remembered what he'd said earlier about his experiments, and she had an inkling of understanding about what he'd meant. She had to get that box. Something told her it would be critical to their success. Cody couldn't have been crazy enough to kill himself for nothing.
Chapter 20
They exited the underworld at the corner of Robertson and Pickford. Where once hundred-year old trees, graduated lawns and modest four bedroom homes had been, now the district had been laid bare, something left undone by the crews who'd cleaned up after the Tsunamis. There weren't even slappery-dashed apartments like she'd seen on Sunset. From the highway to Pico Boulevard, it was nothing more than a slum.
Not the slums of America, no sir. Here was a slum from India. Rebecca noticed immediately that theirs was the only white face in sight. The multi-octaved Hindi combined with the more guttural Marathi made for a sing-song barrage of unintelligible commands almost as painful and disorienting as the shriek of the Ack Ack Deacon.
Andy had managed to regain his senses and led Rebecca through the teaming masses that grasped and groped them as they passed. Finally, he was forced to stop. He brought her close then held up his hands. They'd gone a block, but wouldn't get any farther unless Andy could bridge the language gap and make himself understood.
Two Sikhs in purple turbans barred their way, their massive arms across barrel chests as threatening as holstered pistols. They wore trousers and boots beneath yellow tunics that reached mid-thigh. An Indian wearing a white turban stepped between them and approached Andy. He was dressed similarly to the bigger men, but boasted a maroon tunic instead. The crowd shushed enough to hear what was said.
"What would you be doing in our slum? This is our place and not for your kind."
"We'd be happy to leave," said Andy, as if he'd just found the one sane person. "Just show us the exit and we'll be gone."
"But we cannot do that, sir. You've shared our hospitality and must make payment before you go."
"Shared in your hospitality?"
"We have very good hospitality. That you must admit. We are known for it. You are happy now. Happy is not free."
"I guess not." Andy shook his head and glanced to Rebecca. "And what if we don't have the money to pay for this hospitality that you have most righteously shared?"
"Ah, you are in the understanding of our ways, I see. If you cannot pay, you must remain a guest with us until you can pay. Our hospitality is famous. Some have liked it so much they have never left."
"Let me talk to my friend a moment, Mister..."
"You may call me Darshan Pringle."
"Give us a moment, Darshan Pringle."
The man stepped back and held up his hands.
Andy walked to Rebecca and leaned into her as he whispered. "I wish something normal would happen to us. All this excitement is getting to me."
"What are we going to do?" She glanced at Pringle who waved at her beaming a lascivious grin.
"We need to pay them some money, but I don't have any paper and the ID is being watched."
>
"So what. Give him my money. Or at least tell them how to get it."
He looked at her quizzically.
"Look at this place. It'll take the police hours to track him down, by then he'll be gone and so will we. What do we care? It's not like I'm ever going to spend that tainted money anyway."
Andy grinned. "You're becoming quite the desperado, you know?"
"You and me like Butch and Sundance in Bolivia." She remembered the scene in the Paul Newman-Robert Redford movie like it was yesterday. She'd loved that movie right up until the end.
"Yeah," he said smiling.
Clearly he hadn't seen the film, so Rebecca reminded him. "There was no happy ending. They were surrounded by the Bolivian Army and ran out shooting. They died in a blaze of glory."
"Oh." His smile fell. "Blazes of glory are bad."
"Very bad."
"So we're gonna give them your account number and access code?"
"Yep." He turned to leave, but she grabbed him by the shoulder before he could take two steps. "See if you can get a little more out of it than their imaginary hospitality. I'd love a change of clothes and a shower. I feel like I've been dragged through the bowels of hell."
He nodded and strolled back to the Indian. They conversed for several moments, then the Indian bowed and pointed towards the big men, who obliquely moved out of the way. Andy beckoned for Rebecca to follow. After a half-hour circuitous route through the one-story slum, they found themselves in front of a ten foot by ten foot cardboard and veneer box with only a ragged piece of cloth covering the entrance.
The Sikh made a grand sweeping gesture with his arms and bent at the waist as if he were showing a palatial estate, then turned and bounded away, the two large Sikhs struggling to keep up with him.
Andy held the curtain aside and Rebecca stepped inside. He followed and let the cloth fall shut behind them. Sunlight struggled through the fabric, resulting in a dim glow that barely allowed them to see. Along the far wall was a slim mattress meant for one person. On the right hand wall were several pots and a single chair. On a table along the left hand wall was a single gas burner, a five gallon can of water and a tea service. Rebecca checked and was pleased to find it complete with sugar and oolong tea.
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