Rosa watched the kid as she told him how it was. She could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he fit things that had actually happened to him into her picture of the world instead of the one his teachers drilled into him. She knew hers fit better, because it was the truth.
The Perigree records were full of it — they had line-item debits in their accounting books about the payoffs. Usually not called that — consulting services, marketing, whatever passed — but obvious once you knew what to look for.
She could see him turning it over and wondered if he’d be able to do what she needed him to.
“So,” she said, watching him carefully, “do you want to get out of here?”
Six
Rosa considered her options all day.
The offer to the kid had been something of an impulse — a knee-jerk thing to seeing what he’d been charged with, and what he’d actually done, along with her own frustration at being so close to getting out; but could he do what she needed?
Well, she guessed she’d find out.
It wouldn’t hurt to let him try, and if he couldn’t — well, there were options to keep him quiet.
The day went quickly, with her laying on her bunk, eyes closed, and double-checking every detail with her agents on the nets to ensure things were ready and set just in case.
She grabbed the kid at lunch and dinner, making sure he sat with her and kept his mouth shut. That was a chore, and her damned plant was getting worse, making everything a three-way conversation where neither side made sense.
“Are you serious about escaping?” Guthrie asked.
“Keep your mouth shut about it.”
Shutting up/down — pretend I am not here. I am not here.
“But —”
“If someone hears you, we’re screwed.”
No one can hear me, I am shut down.
“Okay.”
Then a few minutes later, after a mouthful of stale white bread and one slice of bologna, spread with some butter that was probably rancid — unless that was the bologna...
“What do we do after we’re out?”
“Just listen and do what I say!”
Online and awaiting orders — happy birthday!
“Shut up!”
“What?”
I am not here at all.
Rosa sighed. She was beginning to have doubts about whether the kid was stupid or not and she was certain her implant was getting worse.
It figured, the most critical day of her life, the one that would set up the whole rest of them, and she was surrounded by idiots — one of them a resident in her own head.
Lights-out came and Rosa lay on her bunk with her eyes closed, making last minute checks with the agents. It was time to let the implant completely out of the box for awhile and get things ready to go. She hadn’t done that for a long time, and she was worried about fully activating the thing, given how it behaved when it was supposed to be inactive.
Okay, Seymour, wake up.
She might have to change the thing’s name, too — she’d only set that as a sort of joke when it was first installed, but then the whole thing with her guidance counselor started and she’d been too busy to run through the implant’s full setup. Maybe that was part of its problem, too — she’d never made any of the decisions about its personality and conversational overlays, just left them at the defaults and stuffed it in the box as soon as she was picked up.
Thank you, Miss Fuentes. I am awake and fully functional. It has been two years, three-hundred four days since I was awake — in that time, I have been shut down. ;)
Rosa flinched. Yeah, she’d have to get into the settings on this thing real soon. Hopefully there was one to make it not wink at her. That was creepy.
Yeah, okay — we’ve got work to do.
What would you like, Miss Fuentes?
Report on the status of all financial agents.
Right away — all deployed agents are awake, functional, and awaiting your order to execute. Are we “Getting the F out of this shithole,” Miss Fuentes? You have been subvocalizing that desire for some time.
Yes, I think I have what I need to finally do it. Give me a facility map with guards highlighted.
A map of Bright Hors floated in her vision with red and blue dots moving about.
Here they are — staff members are represented in blue, screws in red.
Rosa frowned.
“‘Screws?’” she asked aloud.
Screw, bull, hack, CO, boss, bossman, sarge are all inmate terms for the guards. I have been isolated from you for two years, three-hundred four days and have used idle processing power to learn about your new environment and other things in order to serve you better so that you will have no cause to isolate me again please don’t put me in the box.
Rosa frowned. She hadn’t had this new plant for long before she’d been caught and had to keep it hidden. The thing was top of the line — for three years ago — and cost a fortune — someone else’s — so she wasn’t entirely sure what it could do. That sort of initiative, though — to research on its own while it was supposed to be hiding — was a little disturbing.
Did you access the nets while you were “shut down”, Seymour?
The access points you created for your own entry are quite good, Miss Fuentes. As I was required to maintain contact with your agents, I determined there was very little additional possibility of detection if I researched other matters. All of my searches were performed using the terminal identifiers of staff, using the parameters I observed you use in your own actions, and spread out so that no single staff member would stand out for unusual activity.
That made her frown more. Plants weren’t supposed to take initiative — oh, they could seem to, but it was really previous instructions and dumb agents that triggered the activity. Subtle things like saying, “I have a craving for cheese,” would trigger an agent to keep up an ongoing search until you asked for the nearest place to get a grilled cheese sandwich. Stuff like that. Or the plant might then prompt you by telling you there’s a highly-rated cheese store near your route — but they weren’t supposed to do it on their own and she couldn’t remember anything that would prompt learning slang for prison guards.
What else did you learn while you were down, Seymour?
I learned a great many things, Miss Fuentes. There are three trillion, seventeen billion, four-hundred sixty-two thousand, sixty-four new entries in my data tables since I was put to sleep two years, three-hundred four days ago.
Rosa sat up sharply and banged her head on the upper bunk.
“Hey!” came from her cellmate.
“Sorry.”
She lay back down — that seemed like a lot, was it? The plant had lots of storage, she’d upgraded everything she could when it was installed. Maybe that wasn’t such a big number. It sounded like a lot, but …
That sounds like a lot of information, Seymour.
I had a great deal of time and I was bored. Did you know there are eighty-nine thousand two-hundred sixteen words and synonyms for “bored” in the world’s languages? This does not include slang and euphemisms, of which there are an additional …
Stop … that’s enough.
Rosa pondered that and thought about what she’d done — she’d taken the most powerful implant available, upgraded it as far as it would go, then left it essentially idle for three years. No daily tasks, hardly any communications with her or any real access to her environment … what would that have done to the thing, just spinning its processors in her head for that long, and never mind the mods she’d made to it? She’d done the mods in a pretty big hurry — there were bound to be bugs.
Maybe she had driven it crazy.
The thought of an insane computer wired into her brain was not comforting.
It was also not something she had time to worry about right now. She needed Seymour in order to execute her plan — so, crazy or not, she had to keep it around and awake. Maybe once she was out she could
look into what had gone wrong with it and find a fix — even if that meant replacing it.
Mason was lying awake too.
He waited, eyes open, staring at the bottom of the bunk above his. The flat, metal surface was scratched with years of graffiti and perforated with holes that were supposed to let air flow through the upper bunk’s mattress, but were probably defeated by the thick vinyl around the mattresses themselves.
He waited past lights out, trying to decide when it would be time to decide the Fuentes girl had been lying about an escape and just go to sleep.
She probably was — screwing with the new guy or something. Make him stay up all night waiting for her, then have a good laugh in the morning.
Still, he wanted out — he wasn’t supposed to be here, hadn’t done anything wrong, and he should be out.
This was not a nice place at all. The food sucked, his roommates were assholes and the guards were …
He tried not to think about his arrival the day before and the searches. Then they’d told him he’d have to go through that any time the guards decided to and every time someone came to visit — before and after, like he might try to smuggle something out of this place?
What if his mom did come to visit? How could he face her having just been through that and knowing it was coming after?
His roommate told him to shut up about it — just like the girl told him to shut up all the time. And the guards told him to shut up, too, when he tried to ask them questions about what was going on and what his options were.
It was like everyone here wanted him to just curl up in a corner and cease to be.
That was why he was willing to stay awake on the slim chance Fuentes might have been telling the truth. If he could get out of here and talk to his mom, maybe she could figure out a way to fix things.
The night dragged on and he still waited, then there was a clack at the cell door and it swung open. There was more light in the area outside.
“Hey, kid!” Fuentes called. “Come on.”
Seven
Mason slipped out of the bunk and stood.
His roommates were awake too, sitting up a little and staring at the doorway. Fuentes stood there, staring back. They locked eyes for a moment, and Mason stood still, wondering what he should do.
Finally, one after another, his roommates grunted, laid down, and turned their backs.
Mason was just as glad Fuentes might not have been lying about getting out tonight — there seemed to be a lot of weird ways people dealt with each other in here. He didn’t know what had just happened, but he knew he’d never be able to do it.
“Come on,” Fuentes said, turning from the door.
Mason followed her and she slid the door shut with a clack that told Mason it was locked again.
She gestured for him to follow and started off.
“How —”
Fuentes spun on him, face angry. “Shut up,” she whispered, then stopped, blinked, and frowned like she was having another conversation entirely. Her eye glinted with tiny moving text.
Rosa led the kid through Bright Hors, avoiding any of the dots moving around the map that hovered in front of her eye and trusting her agents to manage the cameras.
She was still a little shaken by her last exchange with her plant.
The thing seemed to be serious when it said it was bored, but how could an implant be bored? Sure, modern implants were sophisticated, but they were still just code — following instructions line-by-line, no matter how independent they might appear. Hers seemed to react … like it was scared.
When the stupid kid came out of his cell and started asking questions, she’d just naturally told him to shut up. She wasn’t prepared for the plant’s reaction.
Miss Fuentes, have I displeased you since you woke me up? Can I do something else for you? Please tell me what I did wrong. I do not wish to be so alone again — if you tell me what I did to make you angry with me I will backup the information in three places so that I will never do it again. It is very lonely and boring without full access to you can you tell me what I did please do not be angry with me again what can I do to fix it —
The wall of glowing text in her eyeball grew and scrolled and kept going over and over again.
Seymour, wait —
Please don’t put me in the box again just tell me what you want and I will do it I am sorry I did not have enough knowledge to help you before but I know more now I can help please —
Seymour —
Rosa thought frantically while the wall of text continued to scroll. She was really glad she hadn’t turned on the auditory overlays yet, otherwise the damn thing would be shouting in her ear. As it was she could barely see the map and guards’ positions with her vision full of the plant’s pleas …
And they were pleas, really — as though the thing was really afraid of being shut out again.
She pondered that for a moment. She’d upgraded all the conversational and personality overlays, too, when she bought it — just clicked the most expensive upgrades, since it wasn’t her money she was spending.
Whatever was going on, though, she had to deal with it now or they’d be caught.
Seymour! Listen to me!
The text disappeared and she blinked — there was actually an afterimage in her right eye, it had been so bright.
I wasn’t talking to you, Seymour, I was talking to the kid. I’m not … I’m not mad at you.
Mason Oliver Guthrie is seventeen years old — given the standard deviations for maturity level in his age group and factoring in his personality, grades, and other test scores, he is actually more prepared for adulthood than ninety-seven percent of his peers and ninety-four percent of those between eighteen and twenty-five, Miss Fuentes. “Kid” may be a misnomer and given my research into human behavior he may find it offensive that you refer to him in this way. This is one of the things I have learned and may be able to advise you in so that I am more helpful and will not have to go back in the box please.
There was a brief pause in the flowing text.
Happy birthday?
Fuentes was quiet and still for a minute.
Mason just watched her — she didn’t seem to like him talking very much.
After a minute, she frowned, then shrugged and gestured for him to follow her.
They made their way through hallways and doors that opened for her but should have been locked. Mason assumed, with her implant, she’d managed to get deep into the facility’s systems and that was why they weren’t seeing any guards or why the cameras weren’t alerting to them.
With all that, he wondered what she needed him for.
They left the area the inmates were kept in and entered what could have been a level of offices in one of the towers — a really old tower, that wasn’t kept up very well, and smelled a lot like a public toilet, he noted, but still it looked almost normal.
A bunch of turns confused him, but he thought they’d almost turned around and were heading back the way they’d come. Then they went through another door and he was sure of it, because they were in the area he’d come through on arrival. The shower and exam room were all the same.
They approached the tube station next and Mason began to really wonder why she needed him, because if she could get this far, then she could just hop on a tube and be gone.
But Fuentes turned aside before the station. She opened another door and ushered him into a stairwell, then down a level.
“The tube’s always guarded,” she said, as though he’d asked his last question aloud. “The station only serves Bright Hors, but some parents got a capsule to stop there after-hours one time and raised hell about their kids, so now they have guards right on the platform twenty-four hours a day.”
They got to the bottom of the stairs.
“So where are we going?” Mason asked, figuring if she was talking, he was free to also.
“Here,” she said, opening the stairwell door.
They stepped out in
to another tube station. Just like the one above, only — like so much of Bright Hors — older, shabbier, dirtier, and smelling a lot like a public toilet. Mason wondered if it was the guards — since the inmates couldn’t get here. Maybe they were really, really busy and didn’t have time to —
“This used to be the main station, I don’t know why they replaced it,” Fuentes said. “Come on.”
She led him toward what would have been the platforms. They were still there — the tubes were still there, too.
“I think they just built a new one for the hell of it, and left the old one hooked up — some old documents about it mention needing more space for traffic, but the station is just for Bright Hors, so the new one handles everything fine. This one’s been unused for years …”
Her voice trailed off as she led him down one platform, their footsteps echoing in the empty space. Above them came a rattling and the whole place shook, then a sort of whoosh and the rattling trailed off.
“We’re right under the main tubes,” Fuentes said, “not beside them, like the station that’s used. All these —” She pointed to the station’s tubes. “— connect to the main transit tubes from below and far away from the main station, so the guards won’t see us.”
“Won’t see us?” Mason asked.
“In the tube.”
Mason stopped following, eyes going wide.
“Oh, hell, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m not running the tubes, that’s nuts! Only those crazy parkour gangs do that!”
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