Irreconcilable Differences, page 6
“Dude, why am I shivering?” Micki nudges me out of my reverie as we stand in line to walk through the metal detector. Yup. Had those, too.
“Probably me. Don't worry about it,” I tell her. I'm lost in dusty corners of my memory that I haven't visited for over a decade. My life before the Corps. I'd forgotten. I really had forgotten.
A girl ahead of us walks through. She looks young, probably a freshman. That makes her what, fourteen? Maybe? Nothing happens, except that two female guards walk over to her.
“Irene Carlson?” one asks.
“Yes?” she asks, and holds her ID card up.
“Come with us, please.”
The girl looks horrified. “But I didn't do anything!” She starts to cry. They lead her away anyway. It jars me back to the present, even though Micki is still calm. I need a gun, and I don't have one. They can't be looking for me. They can't know I'm here. It's impossible. Force myself calm again. Damn it, this used to be so much easier.
Whisper urgently, “Mick?”
“Yeah?”
“What just happened?”
“Oh. Relax. She won the lottery, that's all.” Micki nonchalantly walks through the metal detector. Again, nothing happens.
“Meaning what?”
Micki rolls her eyes a little. “Meaning she got picked for a random search and drug test. They take her to the infirmary, strip her down, take a blood sample, urine sample, hair sample, go through her clothes, and do a body cavity search. They've been doing it since I've been here. Your parents agree to it when you sign up for high school. They say it cuts down in-school crime and drug use by almost a full percentage point.”
“You ever won the lottery?”
Before she can answer, the security guard speaks again. “Michelle Blake? You too.Come with us, please.”
“What, again? Come on.”
If they search us…
We're escorted to the security office with Irene Carlson. She gets led to one room. We go to another. Metal framed steel door. Thick, polymer window, that casts a slightly yellow glow to what little you can see through it. It slams shut behind us, and the lock buzzes softly as it engages. Quiet sobbing sounds from the next room. Size up the security guard. And the door. And our chances of getting out of the building. The female guard in the room with us is about my age. Doesn't move like she's wired at all. I can take her gun. Shoot her in the head. Look at the room a moment. Okay, the next shot would have to go through the security camera. There's still the matter of the locked door. The remotely controlled, locked door. How could I be so stupid, that I got tripped up by the security paranoia of a high school?
“Rae … do something,” Micki whispers to me.
Take a slow breath with Micki's lungs. Try to push this panicked feeling away from me. Realize just how much that skill is more than mental. Breathe again. “Do they do body scans, Micki?” I ask her. But she doesn't have a chance to answer.
“Ms. Blake,” the guard says, “This Priv-i-seal package arrived for you this morning. It's from Kansas Provincial Child Protective Services. Provincial law requires that this package be delivered to you in a secure environment. Please sign on the dotted line.”
Blink. Let Micki drive. Feel everything in my guts … in Micki's guts … relax. We almost pass out.
“Fuck.”
Micki's laughing at me inside. I can feel it.
“Um, Micki. Don't open that. Stick it in your backpack. Whatever's in there … could probably get us arrested if we open it in here. It might set off the explosive and propellant sniffers in the building.” Any school paranoid enough to have metal detectors would have propellant and explosive sniffers too. I would.
And they let us go. Talk to Micki. Anything. Calm down a little, if I can. “So have you ever won the lottery?”
Micki shrugs. “Few times, yeah. Mom called ‘em and requested it on me a couple of times, too. She went through a “Micki must be a junkie because I saw it on TV” phase. Micki swipes her ID card in her locker door, and it opens. “Okay, five-minute clock starts now.”
“For what?”
“I'm officially here as of when I went out the security office door. Once my locker door opens, I have to get my ass and my card to a classroom in five minutes, or I get a detention for loitering.”
“Geez.”
“Yeah,” she says. “Welcome to the prison camp.”
“It's not a prison camp, Mick.”
“Might as well be.”
“At the end of the day, you can leave.”
“So what?”
“Makes all the difference in the world.”
She unloads her backpack into her locker, and rummages around for a few moments.
“What'd you do to land you in the camps?” she asks. Smart girl. Lucky me.
“That's where they took all of us, once they rounded us up and starved us out.”
“Holy shit, you were Mijaneen?”
I have to stop and stare at Micki. “For a girl who hates school so much, you sure sucked up your history with a vengeance. That's pretty obscure.”
“I never said I hated school. And they said you guys were the ones who sent Jerusalem back to God with a freaking cobalt bomb. That's not exactly obscure. Stop dodging the question.”
“That was never proven. General consensus at the time thought the Saudis did it in retaliation against everyone who was helping us.” Sigh a moment. “But yeah, I was Mijaneen. They called us that. It means madmen, so it's kind of insulting.”
“What'd you call yourselves, then?”
“Americans. Yankees towards the end. Employees of Freedom Systems, Inc., until they went completely psycho, and got so busy telling the federal government to go screw itself, that we got left on our own. It's all public knowledge.” Well, most of it is, at least. Close enough.
“So how did you wind up working for a corporate army?”
“Our command got transferred to private control when the U.S. pulled out of the Middle East. It's a very long story. And you've got two and a half minutes to get to class.”
“Shit!” Micki slams the locker door and walks as quickly as she can. It is like flying when I feel it through her nerves. Sudden, effortless grace and speed. If they only knew, every teenager on the planet would have wired nerves. Micki's at the classroom just barely in time. She slinks to a seat near the back row.
The chair creaks as she slides under the integrated desk top and sets her deck down on it. She picks up the induction rig and unplugs it from the end of the fiber, plugs the fiber into the deck's direct interface jack, and plugs the other end of the fiber into one of the jacks in her neck. From behind her, a whistle. “Whoa, Micki, when'd you get a jack? Man, a quad? That's a big step up from your induction rig.”
Micki turns, trailing the fiber plugged into the nape of her neck like hair over her shoulder. Gives him a disgusting look. “That's so none of your business, Kurt.”
Watch the kid. The expression on his face is awe. If he only knew. Relax the barrier between me and Micki a little. Touch in the gestalt.
“Dude, what are you doing?” she says inwardly.
“Giving you jack access.”
“Ugh, that's creepy. It feels like you're inside my skin.”
“Yeah. It's no picnic for me, either. Okay. You're hooked up. Let ‘er rip.”
Micki pushes the button on her deck, and the Zhang D-40 lays a heads-up display into our field of vision, smooth and silky as you please. “Wow,” she thinks. “Fast.”
“Get used to it,” I think back to her.
“I hope not.” She smiles, and I can feel it as though it's a light inside her. New toys. I was like that in the Corps with my rifle, for about the first week or so. After that, it just got heavy.
The teacher gets up from his desk. “Good morning, class. Michelle, it's good of you to join us. You're just in time for today's exam.”
Coyote moment. Frozen fear. “Fuck,” she thinks. It's a wonder the whole class can't hear it. Desperation. “Rae … you have to help me.”
Work through it. Think, despite the panic chemicals in Micki's blood. “Micki, I don't even know what class this is.”
“Is everybody logged in?” The teacher goes on. “Good. As you can see, the exam awaits. You have forty minutes. Begin.”
Micki opens the exam. Stares at it. Her mind goes profoundly blank at the questions, as though she's never sat in this classroom before, never cracked the book, never studied. I'm thirty-six years old. If you count the two years this copy-me has been lying around, it's been twenty years since I was in high school. And I still get nightmares like this. The only thing missing is that we're not suddenly naked.
“Would you shut up?” she hisses inwardly. “It's bad enough I'm going to flunk this test without listening to you nattering on to yourself about me being naked. It's like you're hot for me or something.”
Look at the test questions. English. My worst subject. U.S. lit. Worse and worse. “Discuss the theme of Edgar Allan Poe's The Telltale Heart,” it says. “Uh … Mick, have you even read this story?”
“Uh … no. I was supposed to do that over the weekend, but y'know, somebody had other plans for me.”
“I haven't either. So I'm not going to be any help.”
“God forbid you be any help,” she snipes back.
Micki's thoughts come out onto the exam in muddled fits and spurts. Coyote moment. This, I can control. Take a slow breath. Force myself calm. Sharp. Clear headed in combat. That's what I'm good at. Force us calm. Force us sharp. There's a sense of embracing. Of engulfing. Of being engulfed. Micki gasps a little. Something jumps the line between the two of us. Some thought, some experience, some part of me. Or maybe Micki reached into me and grabbed something. I'm not sure. I don't know. Take a slow breath with Micki's lungs. Calm.
Then she turns the bill of her baseball cap around to the back. Gets to work. Jacks the story into her memory from her study ice in a fast-load. Winces a little, but the story settles over the hooks in her mind, and she draws it apart quickly. Takes control of the tools she's learned in this class. Madness. She writes about the madness of all-consuming guilt. And I fly with her. Secret shadow. I am her for a little while. More questions. More stories. Jack the data in. Tear it apart. Write the answer. I get an education just watching. Understand it. We think together. The test ends, at last. Like hitting yourself in the head with a rock. It sure feels good when you stop.
“Time, ladies and gentlemen,” the teacher calls. “Check your work in now, please.”
Pull back from her a little. The hard line between us has muddy footprints on it now. I still know where it is, but it's not so distinct. Shake my head inwardly to clear it. Mission. I'm on a mission here. We're on it together. And all of this is to that end.
“Whoa,” she says in the gestalt, once we're separate enough to talk again.
“Whoa, what?”
“Whoa, that. I guess … I guess you helped me after all. Um … thanks.”
“But…”
“No, really. It's like, all of a sudden I just felt this calm thing going, and it was like, ‘Duh. Hey plughead, stop freaking out and just fast-load the book.'”
“Mick, I didn't do anything. I just … let you drive.”
“Let me drive what?”
I have to think about that a moment. “The whole net, I guess.”
“But doesn't that mean I drove you, too?”
“I think so.”
“You don't know?” she asks.
“No. This was all experimental when I was copied.”
She's quiet for a few moments. “What exactly do you do for for Interpol, anyway?”
“Information warfare. What information can I get, how do I control it, and how do I apply it to my mission objective? That's pretty much it. Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh. Pretty much exactly what we just did. It's like we started thinking as one person and whammo. After that, it was identify the problem. Gather information. Break it down. Kill it. Move on to the next problem.”
Shiver again as Micki unplugs the deck from her neck. Identify problems. Gather information on them, break them down and kill them. That's not a bad description of the last twenty years of my life. “Mick?”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful what you get out of my mind, okay? I'm not a very nice person.”
Chapter 8
In the hall. At the locker. Get ready for lunch. Rush of bodies down the narrow hall. Familiar faces. I can feel the familiarity from within Micki's mind, even though all I see is too much makeup. Heavy black eyeliner. Rouge. Bright lipstick. A look that emphasizes the mouth and jaws, and de-emphasizes the eyes and forehead. A look of calculated stupidity. Remember Micki's point about makeup from this morning. Gum. Lots of gum. Chatter.
“Hey, what'd you do this weekend?” “Oh, man, I was so drunk… ” “… great party…” “… off in the back room…” “… had this big old fight…” “… cops came…” “… I gotta get out of class on Wednesday to go to court…” “Yeah, the usual, you know…” “… agricultural science at the community college, how ‘bout you?”
I'd close my eyes if I could. I don't know where I am in this place. What I'm doing here. This country. This rural place. We are, in fact, in Kansas, Toto.
Micki reaches for her lunch bag in the locker. Someone shoves her against the door frame and plugs something into the back of her head. She's looking down. Starting to turn. I catch a glimpse past her left breast of someone's sneaker. Assert control for an elbow strike. The neurofiber net slides out from under me, and I'm a long way away from her, suddenly. “Don't turn around.” A voice from somewhere whispers. An ironic chuckle from it. Darkness. No ground beneath me, and I can't move. Falling, then. I know that I'm falling. I can't control the system I'm in anymore. That means … that must mean…
CAF0.35b2.1: Skeleton key mode established.
“Hello Micki. Rachel.” The voice comes again. In the network with me. With us. The voice goes on. “I am your Interpol handler.” Smooth click of saliva against teeth. I recognize the voice. Rachel again, huh? What's he up to?
“Report,” he says.
“There's nothing to report yet. Go away.”
“I want you to make contact with the 785s, and analyze the local hacker ecology.”
“You told me. Now be patient,” I tell him. “You didn't exactly give me an easy cover to maintain.”
“I want you to make contact with the 785s tonight. Try and raise their profile in the local ecology. The other player will come to you. You should have all the tools you need in-hand.”
“You told me you wanted me to find the new big player and wipe him out. Are we changing the mission now?”
A pause. Then, “No. I'm adding to the mission. Raise their profile, so that the big player is aware of you. Then locate it. Then destroy it.”
“Stop micromanaging the op, Robert. You know better.”
The voice turns and walks away, and I can hear his footsteps. Click. Click. Then nothing, and, the ground rushes up to me. Slaps me in the soles of my feet, and compresses my spine. And I can feel myself breathing.
“Rae?” Micki's voice, far away. Far away, and yet close. “Rachel?” Open my eyes. Micki's eyes, suddenly. Snap an arm back to pull the plug ice out of Micki's bottom left jack. Stare at it. Feel it grow hot as its RF circuits burn themselves out. It's unmarked. Breathe. Relax control, like ice thawing. Feel the shakes from Micki's nerves. Maybe from mine too.
“Rae? What was that?” she whispers urgently. “I couldn't move.”
“Neither could I. It's called the skeleton key. It's part of the carrier agent firmware. It … lets them control your net.”
“But why couldn't I move?”
“Because I was trying to hit whoever it was. Probably part of the skeleton key sequence, really. Wouldn't make much sense to lock me up and leave you able to lay some smackdown. Or run.”
“Shit. Shit.” Micki is fighting back sobs as she puts the package in her backpack.
“Right there with you, Mick.” Not quite true, that. Micki's system is awash in adrenaline. Freezing panic from her. But I was wrong about me. The mind that is mine transmutes that fear the way it always has. Into fury. I have to rein it in before it chokes me.
“Every time you guys stick something in my head, it's worse than the last time.” She hisses at me in the gestalt. “And you're supposed to be the fucking good guys.”
“Yeah.” Wish I could be alone. But I can't. Do what I've always done. Keep moving. Stay focused. Mind on the mission. Try to forget the liberties they've taken with my mind. Like before…
“Like before, what?” Micki asks. She takes her lunch bag and locks her locker door.
“Would you cut that out? It's really fucking annoying.”
“You're the one talking to herself. Don't be such a bitch.”
Stare at her in the gestalt, until she looks away. “Like before, what?” she demands again.
“I'm not talking about it,” I tell her. No fucking way. Worst part of my life, and Micki Blake has no fucking need to know.
“What happened?”
“Micki, it doesn't affect our mission, and it doesn't affect you. It's none of your business, now let it drop.”
Anger from her now. “Well you fucking made it my business, Rae. You're leaking this shit into my head, and whatever it was, I don't like it any better than you did.”
I wish I could close my eyes. I wish I could walk away. With or without beating the tar out of Micki Blake. But anywhere I go, there I am, and there she'll be, and I need her cooperation. For the mission. For. The. Mission. So.
“I was at White Sands.”
“You mean Sandia?”
“No, I don't. The prison at Sandia wasn't built yet. I mean White Sands. The old missile range. A huge swath of nowhere in southern New Mexico. Old missile base. They changed me.” Look down. Try and shake the memories away, keep them from getting too close to me.
