The Remaking

by J. T. O'Connell

  "Actually, I'm pretty good with calculus," Sela grimaced. "I just…" She had to force the words out. "Why are they…? Why are they keeping you… involved?"

  Gaines nodded. Even with his mouth closed, she could tell he was fishing to free something from between two molars. "I think," he swallowed and cleared his throat. "I think they want to keep you at a distance until they know they can trust you. For themselves, rather than just hearing it from me."

  "But they took me to their… their headquarters, I dunno."

  "They did?" He was surprised by that. "Huh, that's a bit odd."

  "Yeah, I met—" Sela suddenly cut off wondering whether she should even be talking about this.

  "Who? Michelle?"

  Sela sighed and nodded.

  "Huh," that surprised him too. He put his right arm across his gut and rested the other elbow against it, leaning his chin against his left palm. "I've only spoken to her on conference calls with operatives. Don't even know what she looks like."

  What am I supposed to make of that? Sela mused.

  "I wouldn't give it too much thought," Gaines decided, moving back in to finish off the crêpe.

  "Why not?"

  "Well," he flipped the lid closed over the three remaining doughnuts and pushed the box to the edge of his desk. "I sold you pretty thick."

  Sela lifted her head, "Ah."

  "Yeah, she may have wanted to meet you, see if you were every bit as good as I said you were."

  She took a few breaths, squeezing her lips together. What if Gaines oversold her talents? She was good, but he was never there when she did a job. How was he to know what else she could handle? That was something only she could guess, and no one actually knew. Sela hoped she would never find out.

  "What did you tell them?"

  Gaines shook his head, "I just told them about a few of your jobs. Truth is…" Gaines glanced away from Sela, and reached for his coffee. "Truth is, that voice-print job was originally going to go to Desmond. But…"

  Sela felt her eyebrows rise. Desmond was supposed to get Harrington's voice print?

  "I offered it to Desmond, but then I thought you'd've fit the thing better." Gaines shrugged as he sipped. "Dez wanted to know who it was I thought was better for it."

  "Oh," she said, not sure how she felt about that. How was she supposed to feel that Desmond knew Gaines had sent her to bat her eyes at a perverted middle-aged man, get him to talk enough to sample his voice print?

  She felt a blush rise in her cheeks.

  Gaines shook his head, "I just told him how you've been great in some tough situations; well, him and Michelle on a conference call."

  Feeling her fingers squeeze tight around her purse, she forced her muscles to relax. The other hand had crumpled the manila envelope. She had to look at the job, regardless of what it was. If she wanted to, she could fly off the handle and never come back to Gaines, much less talk to Desmond ever again.

  But later.

  Sela focused on controlling her breathing. The folding chair creaked beneath her as her leg muscles relaxed.

  Gaines leaned forward and tilted his head to one side, "Hey, I'm sorry. I should've come 'n talked to you first."

  "That would've been better." Sela knew she was glaring at Gaines. She didn't mind. "Why didn't you do just that?"

  "Michelle kinda sprung the conference call on me. She just called and she and Dez were already on the line and…" Now Gaines blushed behind his beard. "And I had some spare time, and it's only once in a blue moon she bothers to contact me directly…"

  And you couldn't help yourself! The words screamed through her mind. Maybe Gaines wasn't as professional as she thought .

  Something in her mind objected to that assessment, and yet she couldn't override her anger. How could Gaines just tell these Unmakers all about her? She trusted him, and he was selling her to other clients…

  With another deep, exasperated breath, Sela asked, "Did you ever use my name?"

  "No, never," Gaines replied enthusiastically. "Not until you agreed to meet with Desmond." The realization settled over his face. "I never told them who you were, Sela. Just that I had someone who could do some great work."

  Well, that's not so bad, Sela tried to tell herself. It was hard to put those emotions back in the bottle though. And even still, Gaines would have to earn her trust back over a long process. Hopefully he knows that! her mind sputtered.

  Besides, didn't he sell her skills to unknown people all the time? For all she knew, he could be selling her work to the laziest, most foolish group of Unmakers the Guides hadn't managed to crush yet.

  Bottom line, Gaines was selling her skills to anyone would pay for the work, as well as any materials and ghost time it would involve.

  She did not like how loose he had been with preaching her talents, though. Especially to people that she had made clear in the past she did not want to work for.

  You don't tell your clients about the people filling their orders. You just fill their orders!

  The manila envelope was crumpled enough that she could now see the outline of the memory card enclosed in it. She would look over the job and consider taking it.

  Desmond's face floated into her mind and she saw something new. She wondered how much that caring, careful, and wise man was authentic and how much was a character he was using to draw her into their organization.

  She would have to play her own part to find out, if she was going to take the job.

  Chapter 8

  Lock the door.

  Draw the curtains.

  Air purifier already on.

  Turn the fans on high.

  Sela had refined the list. She had gone through it numerous times over the past months. The first two tasks were normal precaution, while the fans and purifier were to scatter any nano-swarms that might attempt to take shape.

  She had never seen any indication of that in this apartment, at least not yet. Among her sparse equipment was a device used to detect the weak signals clouds used to communicate with each other. Sela had never considered buying a Flee collar, because they were so expensive. A strong fan usually sufficed

  Her detector registered none of the fuzzy, yet telltale signals fingerprinting the presence of hundreds of thousands of tiny particles working in concert. If there had been any nano-swarms in her apartment before, they were all gone now.

  Just to be safe, she grabbed her wireless headphones and powered them up. They synced with her tablet automatically. Then she tore open the top of the envelope Gaines had given her and shook the chip out onto her palm. It was no larger than her fingernail, without any label except a model number stamped into the plastic exoskeleton.

  Picking up her tablet, Sela thumbed the chip into the slot on the left side. An indicator popped up at the top of the screen. She tapped it, automatically bringing up the file system on the memory card. There were two folders, a file named "Contact", and a presentation file named "OVERVIEW".

  Opening that file up brought a document, with a handful of thumbnail images. The pictures were snapshots of notable people, as well as half a dozen blueprints.

  At the top, a single word was stamped in bold, newsprint lettering;

  VINES

  Without any clue what it meant, Sela moved on. She read through the file twice, skimming the first time, then going back and meticulously noting each detail.

  The mission was scheduled to take place in three days. She was to accompany Desmond to a gathering at an expensive suite in one of the buildings near the Tower of Hope.

  The party was high-class and exclusive. Everyone who was anyone would be attending, except for most of the Council and their own social circle. That was another tall step up the ladder. For all the high-minded talk of perfect equality, society in Megora was rigidly segmented into classes.

  The primary objective was to sneak away from the party, and insert a virus into the suite-owner's personal network. The high and mighty had private networks that were all but impossible
to hack from the outside.

  Whatever the virus did, the file didn't say. It did say that the suite was owned by a woman named Basil Davenport. Sela had never heard of her before, nor did she recognize the picture.

  Davenport was late 40s, and she maintained an athletic figure. She was synthetically tanned, had dark brown hair, and a keen gaze, slicing right through the image. She was a moderate-level advisor to a Council subpanel.

  A secondary objective was to collect as much intelligence as could be gleaned from the other attendees. "Information is the lifeblood of resistance."

  Sela paused and thought about the words. Information and action. Action without information was blind; flailing in the dark. It had no prayer of a positive result. Information without action was nothing but a library; useless without someone cracking the spines of the volumes and then using that data for some purpose.

  So what would the virus do? Sela couldn't even venture a guess based on the briefing. She set those thoughts aside and closed the file.

  There were also architectural layouts of the Suite and several other levels above Davenport's. Not to mention photographs of the exterior of the building itself, and a map of its location in Megora.

  Another file, a guest list for the event. It was broken up into two sections: those whose attendance was highly probable, and those whose attendance was tentative. About twenty people were on the first list, while another sixty or so were on the second.

  Twenty-five profiles had been prepared, including about two thirds of those who were certain to be there.

  Each file had several images, usually captured from a distance, though the faces were clear enough. Some of the profiles had an enormous amount of data, while others were paltry, and not just by comparison.

  After a while, scanning over the profiles became mind-numbing and a little overwhelming. Sela had been leaning forward at the kitchen table, her hair tickling at her ears and neck with the gusts from the fans.

  She shut the screen off and set the tablet down. Closing her eyes, she ran her palms over her face, trying to cleanse away the buzz of information overload.

  Her job was to attend the party, escorted by Desmond; crack into the network and collect intelligence from any conversation at the party they could get into or overhear.

  It wasn't terribly different from one of the jobs she'd worked in the past, although she had not attended with anyone to that event.

  An involuntary frown pursed her lips as she thought about Desmond. He was smooth, a skilled manipulator. She was sure of it, even as some of her mind protested. He had carefully crafted an appeal to her so that she would fall right into place.

  And what about Gaines being so careless with her identity? One of his contractor starts asking questions about another, so he opens up and sings praises? How was that professional? He was supposed to honor confidentiality! And the default mode of this dangerous business was always to reserve information unless revealing it was necessary. Volunteering information was never wise.

  Sela began to wonder if Desmond had paid Gaines to get him to talk about her. If so, then she didn't want to trust either of them ever again! Anger turned in her stomach.

  Trickles of reason seeped into the roiling waters, the temperature of sense cooling down her agitation. How else should a cautious Unmaker team look to candidate new members? What were they to do? Dedicate someone full-time to recruitment on the nearest street corner? That was a sure way to bring the whole conspiracy down.

  Sighing slowly, Sela had to admit to herself that Desmond also hadn't really been smooth so much as straightforward. He had even taken her to the office that ran his organization. If he was trying to sell her on joining the effort, he had done a good job. How else was he supposed to do that?

  Sela stood and paced, trying to expunge all thoughts from her mind. It would be best to think about all that later. The mission was reasonable, depending upon how they were to gain access to the party, something that wasn't included in the overview.

  If they had only three days to get all the planning in place, ghosting identities to gain access could be difficult. By all appearances, the invitations were particular to each person, allowing them to bring a date. No one else would be allowed entry.

  And even if they bought expensive ghost time with mid-level VIP status in Megora, they couldn't pretend to be someone on the guest list. Everyone at the party would know at least ten or so other people attending, and anyone ghosting an identity on the list would be rapidly discovered even if the namesake didn’t bother to attend.

  Desmond had to have something in mind.

  Sela huffed in the breeze and slapped her hands against her thighs, as though she were brushing away non-existent dust. Thoughts about nano-particles always made her self-conscious. Moving to the refrigerator, she grabbed out a bottle of water and cracked the seal.

  She drank the whole bottle, tipping it back only once. The cold water rushed in and brought a dull ache to her throat. She dropped the empty container and gasped a breath, nearly breathing in some fluid. She tossed the cap onto the counter and leaned against it and crossing her arms, pursing her lips.

  There was still so much she didn't know about Desmond Tine and about Michelle Duncan. She had gotten a glimpse of what they were doing and who they were doing it with, but she still was left without a very good understanding.

  True to Gaines' word, Desmond was contracting her skills for just one mission, thus far. He wasn't asking her to become a regular part of their escapades. He wasn't asking her to recite an oath of allegiance.

  And the data on all those elites, those people striving to move higher up the social totem pole, who had all they wanted and yet, were not happy. Such a wealth of intelligence was impressive, especially considering how the elites cloistered themselves into their own communities and shunted out everyone who didn't glad-hand with the Council. Everyone else had to fend for themselves.

  It was either worship the Council and the Remaking, and maybe get rewarded; or shut your mouth and do as you were told quietly and obediently.

  The only other alternative was rebellion, resistance, and rejection of Council dictates. That was either daring and foolish, or tragically wise and courageous.

  Maybe I should give Desmond more credit, Sela mused. It couldn't be easy, trying to scrape together information about the most powerful entity in world history, and then having to act on it immediately. Sela thought she had a tough time looking over her shoulder for Guides coming to arrest her.

  Sela shook her head back and forth slowly, whispering without thinking about it, "Desmond."

  She picked up the tablet and navigated back to the main folder. Bringing up the Contact file, she saw it contained a code for Kui. That was a communication service that had been around before the Remaking, and had been 'appropriated' by the Council.

  Users could build a contact list and keep in touch with them by sending messages or by calling each other with video.

  The company that had built Kui had not been happy about the Remaking adopting their program as the principle means of keeping in touch around the world, since the Provisional Council refused to pay for the program.

  When the mass migrations began, someone anonymously released the source code to the internet, with the hope that anti-Remakers, later referred to as Unmakers, would use it to disrupt Provisional Council communication.

  That had worked for a while, until the Council had their servers protected from those simple attacks. But the Council couldn’t stop inventive programmers from engineering plugins that made Kui reasonably secure against monitoring, for the average citizen.

  Using the code Desmond had sent her, Sela would be able to make video calls with Desmond, encrypting the transmission. Each side would compress the video data through a lattice of numbers, the digits of which were supplied in the contact code.

  Video could lag if the computer had to process a lot of data through a large lattice. Judging by the code, Sela guessed Desmond had a
5lattice, 3125 digits. She had never talked to anyone under such massive encryption before.

  As long as the Council didn't know who was sending and receiving the data packets, they wouldn't bother trying to crack it. A 5lattice code could take longer than the known age of the universe to crunch.

  If her father tried to use Kui to send her a message though, the Council would trace the routing along, even if they had no clue what content was being sent. Kui was secure only for those in obscure anonymity.

  Copying the number into her Kui plugin, Sela saw "DT" appear in her contact list. No icon, no data about his identity. Careful.

  A message arrived, "Hi S, I see you got the packet."

  Sela felt those rising grumbles, the same confused arguments she was trying to suppress. She typed back, "Yes." After a pause, she sent another message, "It looks interesting."

  Desmond typed back, "Got more planning done today. We should meet up and talk."

  Her eyes narrowed just a bit, "Couldn't we just do video?" and then, "or is the lag too bad?

  "Usually about 2sec," and then, "but easier if we meet up."

  Licking her lips, Sela swallowed back her complaints, and tried to defog her mind of all those extra concerns. "Ok." "Where?"

  Desmond sent back a pair of streets. It was an intersection toward the eastern side of Megora, in a nicer district.

  "When?"

  "an hour?"

  Sela replied that would be enough time and then closed Kui, and powered down the tablet.

  Before shutting the fans off, she withdrew the memory card. Her fingers slid aside the flap on the kitchen table underside, opening her hiding place. She used the small compartment to store a few valuables, like the letters from her father, a picture of her family, a pair of earrings, and a small case with several data cards from Gaines.

  After stowing the card away, she glanced in her bedroom mirror and concluded that she should change. If anything, she had to present a more competent figure to Desmond, because he had to know she was wary of him as well.

  And as much as she hated to admit it, Sela had a lingering embarrassment about having gone to the Hannan headquarters the day before… well, she couldn't think of any other way to say it… dressed down.