Jacked (6 page)

Ludler grimaced. He did not like the idea but it made sense.

“Okay. I’ll bring him back alive if I can.”

“That’s all I ask.”

Ludler walked to the door and reached for the handle. He stopped and turned.

“What should I do about anyone with the boy?”

“If they can be useful, bring them back,” replied Father Eli without hesitation. “If not…”

Ludler smiled.

Chapter 8

Tar stared at the glowing screen, his eyes trying to take in everything at once.

He sat on the floor in Mr. Keisler’s hidden room, watching the television play shows from the machine he had grepped a few days earlier. Every night after his lessons Tar headed to Keisler’s apartment. Uncle Jahn was not very happy about it but as long as he kept up with his schoolwork, his uncle just grumbled and waved him out the door with a warning to be home before lights out.

The music swelled as the show ended. Tar spun around on the floor so he could face Mr. Keisler, who reclined by the wall with his feet up on a stool. Every night for the past week they had watched an episode of
Firefly
.

“What did you think?” Keisler asked.

“It’s chilly,” Tar said, a grin spreading over his face. “I like it that they are like me, just grepping along for apps and getting by. But they’re all books and they help each other out.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “You said that this show was all made by computers?”

“Most of it,” Keisler replied. “All of that when they’re flying in the spaceship was all filmed in what they called a studio. The special effects—the stars, flying, shooting the weapons, those kinds of things—were all added later by computers so that when the viewers tuned in to watch you couldn’t tell where the real ended and the fake began.”

“Is that the way it was when people were jacked into the Mind before The Crash?”

Keisler sighed.

“For some, yes, they couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what was in the Mind. You see, it started out as a tool, a way to help people do their jobs more efficiently. But then it started to do more and more. It was in every part of people’s lives. Machines couldn’t work without it. People stopped learning about things because it was easier to think a question and the answer would just pop into your head. And they were never alone when they were in the Mind. You could send messages back and forth to your friends or family around the world just by thinking about it.” Keisler shook his head and smiled but Tar thought it was just a reflex, that there was no humor in his thoughts. “My friend Harry—Haruki Sarakamo—he used to tell me that it was non-stop. People were trying to talk to him all the time. He would get so mad he would turn off his implant just so he could eat his lunch in peace.” His eyes took on a glazed look as he remembered a bit of his past.

“What happened to your friend?” Tar asked after a few seconds.

Keisler shook his head and blinked.

“He was jacked in when The Crash hit. He just dropped over at his desk, hard boot. I was only twenty feet away from him when it happened…and I couldn’t do anything for him. I suppose it could have been worse. He could have gone zom. Those poor people, wandering around, no mind left at all. They were just as dead but they were still breathing.”

Tar nodded.

“When I was little Uncle Jahn told me I should be happy that my parents went hard boot right away. He said he wouldn’t have wanted to live like that.”

“He was probably right. But back then we still had hope for them. That—
bam!
—they would snap out of it and wake up. Our son, Tim, died right away and that was so hard on Anna. She never quite got over it, kept praying somehow the news was wrong and he was only zom.” Keisler snorted. “I suppose your uncle would consider him one of the lucky ones. Tim was a commodities trader in Chicago and he was jacked in from the time he woke up until the time he fell asleep. He loved gadgets and technology from the time he was a little boy. He probably would have hated living without it. But we’ll probably never know what caused it now. Everybody who was somebody before The Crash is gone now so there’s no one left to figure it all out.”

“How do you know so much about it, Mr. Keisler? Were you and Harry scientists?”

Keisler rolled his head back and laughed.

“Oh, God no!” he finally said, wiping away tears from the corners of his eyes. “I barely passed my high school science classes. Scientist, huh. No, I worked for the
Mercury News
.”

“The what?”

“Bah, I feel sorry for your generation sometimes, Tar. The
Mercury News
was a newspaper. I started as a street reporter and worked my way up to the city hall beat. That was way back when we were still printing a newspaper every day, big as life, on a 48-inch web.” Keisler held his hands apart to show Tar how wide a newspaper was at the time. “But when we switched to all-electronic delivery I moved over and began writing a column. ‘Pat’s Points.’ Some humor, some pop culture, a little bit serious sometimes. Won some awards from the California Journalism Association.”

“Harry worked there, too?”

“Yeah, Harry and I started within two weeks of each other. I teased him all the time about having seniority on him. But he stayed hard news, never left the state and local politics scene. Wrote one of the best editorials I’ve ever read just a week before The Crash.”

“What was it about?”

“The U.S. government wanted to tax usage of the Mind but people had been using it for years without paying for it and the voters were really pushing back. At the same time there was a growing ground swell against technology attached to people. A lot of people didn’t like it and there were lots of rallies…wait, let me see if…”

Keisler took the small box and punched some buttons. The list of shows on the DVR appeared on the television screen and he scanned down.

“April, August, August, September, ah! I knew I saw some from October.” Keisler leaned forward in his chair and gestured toward the television. “Remember when you brought me this DVR and I said there were some newscasts on it? I noticed the other day that most of them were recorded in the last few months leading up to The Crash. This one is from October 26, only three days before it happened.” He pointed the small box at the screen and hit another button.

“…seen today in an undisclosed location near the White House, the President kept up her push for new revenues to curb the growing government deficit…”

“It is just a fact that we need more money to fund all of the programs that American citizens are demanding,” said a woman standing behind a lectern with a high glass shield in front of her. Flanking her on each side were soldiers in full body armor. Their heads were encased in helmets with no noticeable way to see through. “Nearly two decades ago when the people were given the right to vote online on every piece of legislation in Congress no one realized how much expenditures would explode. Now guaranteed pension plans and free health care for every person in the country are threatening to overwhelm our federal government. We need more money and we need the wealthy, the people who are better off than others, to step up to the plate and pay more. With nearly seventy percent of all adults in the country using MentConn technology this tax is the fastest way to raise revenues before the country is forced to file for bankruptcy by the end of the year.”

The screen switched back to a man and a woman seated behind a desk.

“Complaints about the proposed tax are being voiced by everyone from business owners to tax freedom advocates,” said the woman. “There have even been calls from some state leaders around the country to secede from America, saying that the burden being placed on American business owners and the workers with full-time jobs is crushing any incentive to work. But that may not be the biggest challenge to President Bellart’s plan.”

“That’s right, Clarise,” said the man. “What started as a whisper a few years ago about the ethical dangers of MentConn, or Mental Connection technology, has grown into a shout. Now tens of thousands of people are demanding this technology be outlawed. Entire new religions have sprung up around the country around the idea that man and machine should not be connected. Let’s go now to Hector Gonzalez who is standing by from our affiliate in San Francisco. Hector, that looks like a pretty big crowd behind you.”

“You’re correct, Kevan. Officials estimate there are about 50,000 people gathered here today to hear the leader of one of those new religions speak to a crowd of enthusiasts…”

The screen switched again, this time to show an older man with salt-and-pepper hair and beard waving his hands as he spoke. Under him appeared the words, “Rev. Elisha Lambert, Man’s Salvation Church.”

“It is mankind’s arrogance that is leading us down the path to destruction. When did we begin to think that we could improve upon the Creator’s design of human beings by adding a computer chip here and a CPU there? When did we think it was the Creator’s design to put millions of little robots into our blood to make us skinny or add muscle to our arms? If we aren’t careful, one day the unfaithful are going to wake up and discover that they are more machine than man and the Creator is going to pull the plug…”

Tar turned to Keisler.

“Is that Father Eli? He doesn’t look like that now.”

“None of us do,” the man said with a laugh. “That was almost fifteen years ago. We all have a little more snow on top of the roof.” He rubbed a hand over his gray hair.

Tar turned back to the television. Behind Father Eli a line of men all stood ramrod straight in their black and blue-colored uniforms. They sported the same style beard, cut in a straight line about three inches below their chins. A bald man directly behind Father Eli stared at the camera and Tar moved back without thinking. There was something about the man’s eyes that frightened him but he was too old to admit anything like that to Mr. Keisler. He scanned the others and stopped on the third guy to the bald man’s left. There was something familiar about him, the way he tilted his head when he peered to the left and rocked back on his heels when he looked straight ahead. Tar could not place the man before the screen switched back to the reporter.

“It was pretty bad back then, Tar.” Keisler turned off the DVR. “The country didn’t have enough money to do anything. It looked like we might have another Civil War and we had people like Father Eli jumping into the mix, saying we should go back a hundred years to the days of horses and plows. The Crash came three days later and damn near put us there.”

“Is that how Father Eli became leader?”

“More or less. There was a lot of confusion in the first few months after it all fell apart. A lot of people, key people in leadership positions, went hard boot. All the military had standard issue MentConn implants so they all died, along with the National Guard, police, and firefighters. Entire cities were nearly wiped out. San Francisco lost ninety-five percent of its population. Sunnyvale was so devastated it’s still deserted.

“But there was Father Eli with his Man’s Salvation Church. They had one of the few organizations still intact. They didn’t lose anyone because they didn’t use tech. With the Mind gone and no way for the people to vote Eli stepped in and took over for the government. They supplied food and set up hospitals so people went along because he was doing a lot of good things. But then, before we knew it, Father Eli was in charge of what used to be California, western Nevada, and southern Oregon. And his Black Shirts were everywhere.”

The lights dimmed, and then went back up to full strength.

“I’d better go,” Tar said as he rose to his feet. He walked to the doorway behind the bookcase and turned. “Good night, Mr. Keisler. See you tomorrow night?”

“That is okay with me as long as your uncle doesn’t mind.”

Tar smiled.

“Good. I want to find out why Jayne is wearing that stupid orange and yellow hat on the show.”

Chapter 9

Tar whistled as he walked down the sidewalk. He had traded a couple low-tech apps to a neighborhood shop owner for a couple bricks he knew he could fix later. He had also repaired a washing machine for his apartment building by rewiring the switch. It hadn’t required anything special, just the use of his hands like any regular person. It felt good to do that, plus everyone on the bottom floors who shared the machines would be grateful, and grateful meant he and his uncle ate better than usual for a little while.

Lost in his good mood as he headed toward the school he almost missed the whisper.

“Get down!” it hissed. “Black Shirts!”

Tar ducked into the dark of an alley as he heard the clop-clop of horses trotting down the street. He scurried behind an overflowing trash can and peered around its edge.

A group of six men on horses went by the alley opening, their black and blue uniforms showing the signs of a long, hard ride. Even so, their alert eyes scanned the area while they held rifles balanced on a leg so they could aim on a breath’s notice. One of them stared long and hard down the alley as he passed. Tar never stopped watching, never moved from where he crouched, hoping he was nearly impossible to spot among the shadows. A few seconds later the Black Shirts rode out of sight and he leaned against the wall behind him, feeling the cool bricks against his neck.

The sound of running feet on the sidewalk snapped his attention back to the alley opening and he moved his feet underneath him so he could leap into a sprint if needed. Toby ran into sight and Tar relaxed.

Tar stood and Toby hopped sideways away from him.

“Damn, Tar!” he said between gasps for air. “I thought you’d gone zom, walking down the street, not paying attention to anything around you. Are you fragged?”

Tar shook his head.

“No, I’m okay thanks to you. Where were you at?”

“Across the street in a broken doorway. I saw you comin’ but I knew I couldn’t make it across before they turned the corner. It’s a good thing you can hear those horses on the street for a long ways.”