The Remaking

by J. T. O'Connell

  When her father had it smuggled to her, the note he sent along said the best self-defense was to do your best to stay away from situations where it becomes necessary.

  It was good advice, and yet Megora was tailor-made for those who wanted to prey on others. Both the meddlesome government and a thriving criminal class had become every-day hassles. Having a gun didn't make her safe from muggings, though it might give her a fighting chance.

  Several blocks later, Sela dropped down to the level between the surface streets and the transportation deck. She navigated a cramped and musty set of corridors.

  This was one of the places where unseemly businesses operated, largely without any interference from the Guides, since the black markets catered to some of the Guides and paid off others.

  The Council was essentially oblivious to all of it. Having eyes everywhere only made their vision blurred and foggy.

  And not everything that went on was so bad. In some ways, the black markets made life affordable, helping people more than the Council would allow. Since so much had been made illegal, things that were a way of life just a decade earlier could be sold on the black market for huge profits.

  Of course there were also things that hadn't been legal in Sela's lifetime, and probably shouldn't be. Legality and morality never stopped enterprising people from selling off the books.

  And since the Council had piled up so many regulations, the Guides at best had a hopeless task; at worst one of appalling abuse. They could never hope to stomp out the black markets, and they wouldn't really want to either.

  Sela weaved through knots of buyers and sellers, past storefronts of dusty glass, grimy gutters, and buzzing lamps. Her destination was nestled behind a bakery, just a back door and a cluttered office tucked out of the way, hardly noticeable.

  Max Gaines sat, both smoking and chewing on a cigar, the air hazy with ash. Sela could only hope the front of the bakery was ventilated better. Even an unlicensed bakery should have cleanliness standards.

  She shook her head and greeted Gaines, wondering again what his real name was. No one used their real name down here. Max Gaines was a joke name that he had resolved to use until the Council took notice of him. If they ever did, he would adopt an all new ghosted identification.

  He greeted her with as much smoke as speech, "Good to see ya, Sela." Gaines had a strong voice, a bit phlegmy from the smoke, with a wheeze, but deep and rich. He had a scruffy, greying beard, and wrinkles packed around his eyes.

  Brushing her fingers over a seat, she sat down, looking at her knuckles. Just a dusting of ash. Gaines always kept the place neater than it looked. Part of his security was making his office look like a storage room packed with junk.

  All around, boxes were piled. Folding chairs leaned into one corner. Numerous computers sat silent, some disassembled, others collecting dust. The desk had two stacks of old books serving to hold up a dozen tablets leaning against each other.

  That always made her laugh a little inside. When she had been young, Sela remembered that books needed bookends. Now, Gaines was using them as bookends for devices you could use for reading. Although so few people bothered to read anymore, between the hours of entertainment and drudgery.

  Sela folded her hands in her lap, crossing her legs to hide the fact that she still wasn't completely comfortable. Gaines was trustworthy. She knew that to her bones.

  Still, it was the whole situation. Sela had been hiding from the Guides for months, living on ghost time. Her father had begun to rebel before he sent her away, though she had no idea what he was doing anymore. She hoped he was still fighting. There had been no messages from him in a long time.

  There was no place to truly relax in Megora. Even in her apartment, she felt alien and on edge, like the Guides might blast through the door the minute she let her guard down. If they did come to arrest her, there wasn't much she could do about it, if she couldn't get to her backup card first.

  As with everyone else in the area, Gaines made sure to constantly sweep the surrounding air of swarms, nanoscopic machines that coalesced into thin, vaporous associations. Swarms could report rudimentary data back to Council Intelligence.

  A swarm of significant size could relay audio recordings to CI servers that would sift them. No video though, since it was too information rich. Good anti-swarm security was more expensive than ghost time.

  Yet even with all the security in place, Gaines seldom spoke explicitly about the business at hand. He finished sending an e-mail and then turned to her, "You finally go get to that thing I sent you to get?"

  It had taken a while for Sela become used to not asking questions directly. "Yes," she rolled her eyes. "I finally got to it. Not so easy getting an appointment with… him." She obliged Gaines by not referring to Harrington. She coolly handed over the recording device.

  Gaines bit into his cigar and smiled broadly, taking it. "Good, good! This, I've been waiting for!" Puffs of smoke rose with each word.

  As Gaines copied the files and checked their quality, Sela simply waited. She knew he would pay her momentarily, and the pay would be decent, even if the ghost time purchased for the mission had been substandard.

  Gaines usually had a few jobs in progress. Where he got them from, she never knew. From time to time, there were people in his office when he arrived, and she respected their privacy. She wouldn't want anyone peeking in on her meetings with the broker.

  Gaines could lock the door with a simple code on a tablet if he wanted to, although he usually unlocked it when he saw Sela on his security feed.

  He liked her, which was not unhelpful in this precarious business. She knew that her father had dealings with Gaines at least once, but Gaines had no idea who he really was.

  “Marvelous, Sela. Simply marvelous!”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” she smiled.

  “As agreed, the credit is in your account,” Gaines sat back and pulled the cigar away from his face and blew the smoke toward the ceiling. “I don’t think I’ll take any more jobs from that client again.”

  Sela asked, “Too pushy?” Gaines always liked relaxed conversation.

  “Impatient,” Gaines grunted as he leaned forward. He tapped the ashen end of the cigar against a tray, breaking off the crystalline end. “Seemed like he needed the sample before he came to me.”

  Sela watched Gaines take another puff. Wrinkling her brow, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me the client needed it so fast?”

  Gaines wheezed out a laugh, “Because I told him it would take a while. Besides he didn’t want to spend as much as I should've charged.”

  The price would have been exorbitant if the customer had demanded the sample immediately. Sela wondered what she could have done to get access that fast.

  Gaines had workers who could do that sort of job faster, but it wouldn’t be covert. A good smash-and-grab crew could set something up within a few hours, even if the target was in a reasonably-secure area, like Harrington’s art gallery.

  To get the sample without Harrington knowing had been hard enough. To do it within a few hours of the order being placed…

  She sighed and set aside the speculation. “I need another job, Gaines.”

  “So hasty?” Gaines quipped. “Usually, I like my ghosts to get a good rest between.”

  “No, you don’t. You’re always dishing out work.” Sela wanted to keep working. Staying busy was a way of keeping her mind off her family.

  Besides, at some point, it might be handy to have a bulging bank account to work with, in case she needed to buy her own ghost time, or… or even help her parents escape the Tower of Hope.

  “Well, to be honest, Sela,” Gaines sat forward and stubbed the cigar out, half-smoked, leaving the remainder for later in the tray, “all the jobs I have right now are from Unmakers.”

  Unmaker was a slang term for a group trying to rebel against the Provisional Council and the Remaking of the world.

  “Oh,” Sela sat back, disappointed.
/>   “Now I know how you feel about Unmakers, Sela,” Gaines started.

  The truth was, he didn’t, though. Rare was the ghost who wouldn’t help Unmakers, since the Guides were generally inept at catching them. But there were so many separate Unmaker groups, and with such disparate goals, no rational structure had developed among them.

  Some Unmakers had left for Sovereign City, attempting to form coalitions and fight back from there. So far nothing had been worked out enough to implement any coherent plan of rebellion in Megora or any other city.

  Now and then, when Unmakers left for Sovereign City, the cells they left behind were broken up by the Guides, many of the members arrested. It was hard for Unmakers to develop new contacts in Megora if everyone they could trust had disappeared.

  Every so often, someone would say that the Unmaker leaders were only using their influence over their members to get a way out of Megora. They would leave and go to Sovereign City to be free, leaving their organization to fall into disarray and disputes. The leader would slink away while his organization was being taken down by the Guides.

  There was probably some validity to those accusations. But primarily, Gaines’ ghosts worked for the Unmakers because the money was good, the work was steady, and the Guides could rarely catch up with the hundreds of Unmaker organizations that operated in the shadows.

  Most ghosts who turned down Unmaker work detested the splintered, dissolute, and contradictory goals of so many different organizations. How could you fight against a behemoth like the Council when you couldn’t collect more than a dozen people together behind the same plan?

  Inept, misguided, and downright foolish as the Remaking was, there really was no serious effort to stand against it, except for the existence of Sovereign City. Some ghosts despised the Unmakers for being even more inept and deluded than the Provisional Council.

  And yet, Sela had always refused Unmaker work for a different reason.

  Gaines continued, “I understand, I do. You don’t want to bother helping people who sometimes can’t find their own shoelaces, much less develop an actual plan.”

  He grimaced, “But the fact is, I’ve got big orders coming my way, and that’s occupying all of my attention.”

  Sela sighed slowly, “So you don’t have any work for me right now?”

  “Well, not unless you’re willing to do a few small jobs that…" Gaines shrugged and leaned back in his chair, "You wouldn’t even know it was Unmaker work if I wasn’t upfront about it.”

  Shaking her head, she moved to stand, but Gaines held out a hand for her to stop. “Wait, Sela. Just wait.”

  Reluctantly, she settled back into the seat.

  “I’ve been happy to save you a lot of choice jobs, knowing that you’re new to this stuff. You should be aware, most of the work that comes through me is Unmaker work. Most of the work that’s out there is Unmaker work.

  “To be honest, there won’t be much that isn’t Unmaker for the next month or so.” Gaines paused to let that sink in.

  The smoke had curled in the air until it dispersed uniformly. Sela would have to shower as soon as she could, or else she would smell of stale cigar for the rest of the day.

  “Now, it’s not easy for anyone, but I just won’t have anything for those who won’t touch Unmaker jobs. And frankly…” Gaines frowned and shrugged, “I don’t really have anyone else who could fill the roll I need.”

  Sela chewed on a lip and thought. They heard a muffled clatter of pans falling in the bakery. Gaines glanced at a screen that blinked with a new message. He ignored it.

  At last, she said, “I set my price?”

  Gaines nodded.

  “And I want it all in advance,” she said.

  “For each job, sure,” Gaines shrugged.

  Sela made another demand, “And I want the right to turn down jobs.”

  “Sure, but no work, no pay,” Gaines said, his eyes already starting to smile. He knew she was going to agree to it. Any solid ghost would.

  She sighed and waved a hand, “I guess I should consider it.” Sela ignored the broad grin that spread his beard. “What’s the first job?”

  Gaines shook his head, “No job yet. Not just yet, anyhow. But you’ll be working with some of the Unmakers.”

  “But I don’t wa—”

  Gaines cut her off, “This is going to be a condition for most of the work, Sela. You can’t work alone forever.”

  Biting back her annoyance, she nodded and waved for him to continue.

  Gaines grunted, “All you need to do right now is meet your primary contact. His ghosting is Desmond Tine.”

  Sela sighed and asked, “How will I know who he is?”

  “He’ll know you. And…” Gaines handed her one of his tablets.

  On the screen was a snapshot from one of the security cameras. Desmond Tine was about average height, maybe three inches taller than Sela. He was thin, and his clothes couldn’t quite fill out his frame. Thin and young. His face was blurry from the video. She would have no trouble picking him out though.

  She handed the tablet back. “How long have you known him?”

  “Long enough,” Gaines responded as he set the tablet back down. “My business isn’t very old, you know.”

  “Megora isn’t very old,” Sela noted.

  “True,” Gaines said, scratching at the whiskers on his neck. “I’ve known Desmond longer than I’ve known you.” He smiled lightly. “Seven p.m. tomorrow. Where should I tell him to meet you?”

  Sela thought for a moment, then named a place. She would have to trust that Gaines was a good judge of character. He was trustworthy. Yet she had never told him why she had turned down the job to Sovereign City that her father had arranged for her.

  He wouldn’t understand unless he knew who her father was.

  It was risky to trust someone merely by extension. Her confidence in Gaines was high, but it only meant a little that Gaines put confidence in Desmond Tine.

  Sela would evaluate Tine herself, and he would have to prove his trustworthiness all on his own. Tine's image hovered in her memory as she thought.

  Just who was he? Was he just someone who paid Gaines to get some of these jobs done? Well, then why would she meet with him directly? No, that didn't make sense. Gaines wouldn't cut himself out of the loop.

  So he ran jobs and probably used Gaines for help. Unmakers going up against the Remaking, the Guides, the Provisional Council... Somehow she had always pictured Unmakers as disheveled, unkempt; the sort of people whose gaze was always split by a lazy eye.

  Somewhere inside, she burned with embarrassment. That was the Agency of Vision's doing. That was propaganda. When they spoke of the rebel groups, government toadies were derisive and dismissive, as though all who actually disagreed with the Council were merely unwashed fools.

  Every so often, the news would show images of crazy-looking people who were arrested and put on trial for Unmaker activity, although, the term Unmaker was never used. The terms varied; regressive, antiquated, savage… All methods of demeaning rebels were employed, as though the past was all dark ages, and modern enlightenment had arrived.

  Desmond Tine was handsome, so much as the grainy, blurry image testified. He was fit and confident in his poise, his feet planted on the floor of the bakery storeroom. He didn't look at all like the Council's caricature of Unmakers. How had she succumbed to that insulting view of people like Tine?

  Sela would have to evaluate him carefully.

  Chapter 4

  The following morning, Sela went jogging. She got into the habit of jogging before she had to live on her own, yet it had only grown into a ritual since then. If you couldn’t change things, you could shed stress by pounding the pavement.

  Although it wasn’t pavement she jogged on.

  Suspended between buildings, several hundred feet above the street, a set of jogging paths webbed around much of Megora. It was wide enough for six people to run side by side. You had to access it through entrances o
n the buildings.

  It was high enough, the breeze got rid of any lingering smells of refuse and waste wafting from below. The only area that was problematic was the massive sewage treatment plant, which was easily avoided.

  Sela meandered on her run, knowing she had plenty of day left before her meeting with Desmond Tine. She didn’t want to push herself into exhaustion. That was unwise.

  Who knew when the Guides might try to come after her? She needed to have sufficient energy reserves to go on the run at a moment’s notice.

  On the other hand, this sort of training would help Sela expand her capabilities. Longer and longer runs would keep her fit and give her greater endurance, which might make a difference one day.

  How long could she stay in hiding like this? Her ghosting might be found out eventually. She probably would have been discovered already, if her father had bucked the Council's control.

  But it would be found out eventually, or else her name would end up on some report to the Guides for other, petty infractions. She would have to stop being Sela Mason eventually.

  That was a nice name. She liked it, even though she much preferred her real name, Sela Wallis. But she couldn’t use her family name. Mason was okay for now. It would have to change someday, though.

  Sela panted and grimaced as she ran, wondering what other name she would have to put on like a ragged piece of camouflage. How long could ghosting hide you from the Guides?

  Surely, they would realize Sela Wallis was ghosting and then buying future ghost time would get a lot more expensive. More expensive than her father’s payment account could cover.

  A gust of warming, summer-morning wind splashed through the tall guardrails, forcing Sela to lean into it a few degrees. The foam rubber path had abandoned the side of one massive building and stretched toward the next. Sela could feel the reverberation of her steps in the steel girders underneath, holding up the bridge.

  She would take a right at the end of the next building. The running paths had at least twenty miles of available track, even longer, depending upon which route you took.