The Bar Code Tattoo (13 page)

The Superlink would take her to the Adirondack Park, where she knew resistance groups were hiding. If she found no one there to help her, she might continue on to Canada. Hopefully, she’d be able to cross the border without trouble.

The Superlink blazed like daylight but she’d never hitched a ride before, and the tractor-trailers sped by so fast she couldn’t imagine them ever being able to stop for her. They kicked up a hot wind that blew pebbles and debris into her face and knocked her back.

By sunrise, the stolen shoes had blistered her feet beyond walking, so she tossed them into the woods behind her. Making herself a nest of old leaves among the trees, she lay down to a dreamless sleep. Hunger and daylight awoke her several hours later. Standing, she saw a Globalofficers car pass and she stepped behind a tree.

Maybe she should just go back. What was the sense of running? She hadn’t killed her mother. Her only crime was not having the bar code.

They’d tattoo her, of course. It would cast its shadow on everything she tried to do with her life.

Still, she might be okay for a while. Like Amber, she’d still be able to buy things like food and gas. With the tattoo, she might even patch things up with Zekeal. If that happened, she could possibly even move in with him.

It shocked her that she would even think like that. After what she knew about him, how could she? But she pictured his handsome face, his large brown eyes and — despite what had happened — she longed to feel his arms around her. It was hard to fall out of love with him when everything had happened so suddenly.

But why couldn’t he have told her the truth — that he was a member of Tattoo Gen? Had he ever loved her at all, or was it all some manipulative seduction, a trap?

In the distance, truck brakes squealed and Kayla looked toward the sound. Peering through the trees, she saw the orange roof of a Super Eatery, the road stops that appeared about every twenty or so miles along the Superlink.

Stones cut her bare feet as she made her way through the woods to the Super Eatery. They wouldn’t let her in barefoot, so she went and found the painful shoes. Putting them on brought tears to her eyes.

Although each step was torture, in ten long minutes she was nearly to the Eatery. It was turning into a warm day and she slipped the jacket off. She stepped into the restaurant and the warm
smell of bacon cooking and the friendly chatter of people made her long for normal life.

At the slick, bright orange counter, she ordered a cup of tea. The waitress looked at her skeptically, which reminded Kayla how bad she looked with her knotted, tangled hair, scraped face, and dirty, rumpled man’s outfit.

On the wall above the counter, a large flat-screen played the news station. A blond woman in a bright pink suit stood in the corner of the screen, recounting recent newsworthy events.

President Loudon Waters’s face appeared behind the woman. He was receiving honors from a scientific society for lifting all bans on human cloning, saying it was long overdue and that fear of cloning was a remnant of the past. Kayla wasn’t sure how she felt about this, but at that moment she had other things on her mind.

The tea arrived and felt like hot silk going down. Her plan was to finish it and then make her phone call to the Globalofficers to turn herself in.

Another story came on about the latest space shuttle. It was now making regular stops to the new station on the moon. This shuttle was carrying a team of scientists experimenting with the impact of weightlessness on cell division.

Kayla stopped listening. She needed to plan what to say to the Globalofficers. Where would she claim to be living now? Technically, she was still a minor until she turned eighteen. There was no
relative she could go to. Would the Globalofficers want to put her in some kind of institution? Juvenile hall?

The thought made her shudder. How would she survive in a place like that? She couldn’t go, there wasn’t a chance.
Stop, if that’s what you have to do, you have to do it,
she forced herself to think. She
had
to call them. It was the only sensible thing.

The woman on the flat-screen kept talking and Kayla half listened as she finished her tea. Due to another terrorist threat, the mayor of Washington, D.C., was proposing that a protective wall be built around the city to help defend it in case of an emergency. “I’ve conferenced with President Waters on this and he fully endorses the measure,” the mayor explained to a reporter.

The news cut away to a commercial for a new holographic screen that would present programs as though you were watching a play in your own home. The characters would be about half the size of real people. Kayla had to admit it was pretty impressive.

The programs will probably all be sponsored by Global-1, though
, she reasoned. She imagined her own version of their ad.
Global-1, bringing you all the bar code has to offer — total invasion of privacy reaching down into the very intimate spiral of your DNA.

Looking away, she scanned the group for someone who looked approachable enough to ask to
borrow their phone. Her mother once told her that, when she was young, you could find a public phone, insert a metal coin, and make a call. It had never existed in Kayla’s lifetime, but she wished it did. A public phone would have solved her problem now.

An elderly couple in a booth caught her attention. The woman was heavy with a halo of white fluff for hair. The man, though very old, was still strong-looking, with a shiny bald head. They spoke to each other pleasantly as they ate their pancakes. Kayla considered approaching them, but as she got up from her seat, a familiar voice made Kayla freeze, then slowly turn toward the flat-screen.

Nedra was on the screen.

“Yes, she told me she planned to set the fire,” the girl told a reporter. “I didn’t believe she’d really do it, though. If I had, I’d have called the Globalofficers immediately. But she’s sort of a crazy type, always thinking and saying weird things, you know. She often talked about how much she hated her mother. But I never thought she’d try to kill her!”

Kayla covered her mouth with her hand as shock and disbelief swept though her.

Her picture filled the screen. It was her school picture, the way she’d looked last September. Her brown hair glistened with its neat blue streaks brushed to a sheen. Her expression was open and carefree. Kayla barely recognized herself.

Hopefully, no one else would, either.

“Globalofficers have been searching for Kayla Marie Reed since May twenty-second” the blond announcer said. “She is wanted for arson and in connection to Ashley Reed’s death in that fire.”

Kayla got off her stool and backed up. She had to get out of there! She whirled around and crashed into a waitress with a tray of hot coffee. The coffee splashed on her, burning her arm and hand. “Sorry!” the waitresses cried.

A waitress hurried out from behind the counter with ice wrapped in a towel. She guided Kayla to a stool and pressed the iced towel on her arm. The cold towel covered the fake tattoo and Kayla was grateful that she had it. “Thank you,” she told the waitress.

Another waitress arrived with a first aid kit. “I have something that’s great for burns,” she said. “It’s the latest thing, just came out.” In a flash, she smeared the cool cream onto Kayla’s arm.

Kayla watched in horror as the cream smeared and blurred the black lines of the fake bar code. She clamped her opposite hand over the ruined fake. “I have to go,” she said, getting off the stool.

“You should sit a while,” one of the waitresses urged her, not seeming to have noticed the damage to the tattoo.

“No, thanks. I can’t,” Kayla insisted, hurrying away from the waitresses.

Kayla kept her head down, barely daring to breathe. She rushed to the front lobby, then checked to see if anyone was looking at her.

Life seemed to be going on as usual. She noticed no one approaching, no one staring.

She was interested to see a robotic cashier in the lobby. She’d read that the Super Eateries would be using them. Robots had been used to do construction and factory work for years now, but they had recently become sophisticated enough for more high-level jobs. This seemed like a lucky break. A robot wouldn’t remember seeing her.

Kayla paid with the e-card and walked out into the parking lot, blinking against the morning sun. Her stolen shoes bit into her heels and her burned arm throbbed.

A Globalofficers car came off the Superlink and slowly cruised the lot. Kayla turned her back toward it. Her every instinct was to run, but she knew that would only catch their attention.

A green hybrid electric-gas car stood beside her. Kayla noticed a scrap of red plaid sticking out of its door. The car couldn’t be locked with that material wedged in it. Moving closer, she opened the door and slipped into the backseat. The red plaid belonged to a blanket. Kayla squeezed down into the space behind the front seat, curling up into the tightest ball she could manage. Then, reaching up, she pulled the blanket over her.

She could hide this way and maybe even — if no one noticed her — catch a ride farther north.

“Stop!” Outside the car a voice yelled angrily. “Stop this minute!”

Someone opened the car door and jumped in, quickly starting the engine. “Come on,” he shouted and another person rushed into the passenger side of the car.

Kayla didn’t dare look to see who was driving as the car shot out of the parking lot at top speed. At almost the same time the car started, a Globalofficers siren shrieked.

“Toz, dear, we have a stowaway.” Kayla looked up into the grandmotherly face she’d seen in the restaurant.

“What?” Toz snapped without slowing.

The woman shot Kayla a quick smile, then shifted her attention to the back windshield. “They’re not even chasing us, dear.”

The car slowed to a less breathtaking speed. “Thank goodness,” the woman said. “We’d never have outrun them in this old hybrid.” Kayla lifted herself up onto the backseat.

“Now who the hell is this, Mava?” Toz demanded.

“Who are you, dear?” Mava asked Kayla.

Kayla felt delighted and a little amused that the woman didn’t seem particularly alarmed or angry to find her in their car. “My name is …” she began and then remembered that they’d been in the Eatery and might have seen the news report. “… Amber Thorn.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Are the Globalofficers after you?” Kayla asked. “I heard the sirens and all.”

“Yes, Amber dear. Yes, I’m afraid they are,” Mava replied. “Are they after you, too?”

Suddenly, Kayla felt like laughing. This was so bizarre. “Yes,” she said. “They’re after me.”

“And why is that?” Mava asked.

“They think I set my house on fire,” she answered, unable to lie to this open, direct woman. “They think I did it to kill my mother. But I didn’t. I swear I didn’t. She set the house on fire when she tried to burn her tattoo off her wrist.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Mava sympathized, her bright blue eyes growing dark. “That’s terrible. You poor thing.” She reached out and her eyes fixed on Kayla’s red, burned hand and wrist with its smear of black lines. She said nothing but just squeezed Kayla’s hand.

The kind, motherly gesture brought tears of gratitude to Kayla’s eyes, but she was distracted by Mava’s wrist, which bore a red, twisted scar. Mava smiled sadly. “Toz and I also removed our tattoos. I understand what your mother must have been feeling,” she explained with the same lovely calmness that characterized her whole speech pattern. “However, we used acid. That was awful enough, let me tell you. Oh, so painful. But we know too many people who’ve done terrible damage with fire.”

“Yeah, they had TMB,” Toz said, shouting like a person who is hard of hearing.

“Do you mean TMP, Tattoo Mania Psychosis?” Kayla recalled.

“No! I mean TMB — Too Much Bull. That’s what this Global-1 business is and it doesn’t take smart people a long time to figure it out.”

“Acid seems to be the best way to go,” Mava went on.

“How’s your hip doing?” Toz asked Mava.

She patted his shoulder lovingly. “Barely a twinge today.” She turned to Kayla. “I fell and broke my hip a while back. We didn’t dare go to the hospital, because once you’re over eighty — I was eighty-one last January — you don’t come out of the hospital.”

“What do you mean?” Kayla asked. “I know of people in their eighties who have operations and then come out. My friend Amber’s grandmother was eighty-five last year and had her appendix removed and was fine afterward.”

“Aren’t
you
Amber?” Mava asked.

“Oh, sorry. I lied. I’m Kayla.”

“Oh, I see. Well, things have changed since last year. No one talks about it, but old people know that doctors now slip you something and say you died in your sleep. The insurance companies encourage them to do it because nursing homes have become too expensive. Our daughter is a doctor — she told us all about it.”

“That’s horrible,” Kayla said.

“We certainly thought so. Our Sarah won’t do it and it’s made things very difficult for her. She’s
relocated to Toronto where the bar code isn’t the law. Sarah set my hip before she left and it’s doing quite well.”

“Why were the Globalofficers after you?” Kayla asked.

“We didn’t pay for our breakfast. Can’t. No money left in our e-cards. We’re heading up to Toronto to be near Sarah. They still use cash there, you know. Where are you headed?”

“I want to join a resistance group in the Adirondack Mountains.”

“That’s right on our way. We can drop you. But do you mind if we stop at Sarah’s apartment first? She left in a hurry and we said we’d pick things up for her. Do you mind?”

“No, not at all. Thank you.” Kayla curled up in the small backseat and let the car rock her. She imagined being a baby in a cradle, rocked by a loving hand. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and …

They are inside the city now. Glass-and-steel buildings tower, making her feel like a mouse running along a baseboard. It’s intimidating. It’s probably meant to be. The wide boulevards swarm with people. She reaches out and takes the hand of the young man beside her. “Scared?” he asks, only she hears his voice in her mind. She
nods. He rubs her shoulders. “Don’t be. This will work.”

A bump in the road rocked her from her vision.

Sitting up, she saw they were approaching a toll. “Belt up and get as low as you can,” Toz told them.

“Why?” Kayla asked. “What’s —”

Toz speeded up, driving the car to its 140-mile-per-hour limit. Kayla was knocked down again into her seat. It was probably best to stay down as Toz directed, so she covered her head and drew herself tightly into a ball.

“Woo-hoo!” Toz shouted triumphantly as he blasted through the bar blocking his way at the tollbooth. Kayla saw shards of wood fly up in all directions. An alarm whooped, but Toz never let up on the gas pedal. A Globalofficers siren started up.

“Stay down!” Toz shouted to them. “I’ve got a good lead and the turnoff’s in two miles.”

Toz drove at full speed all the way to the exit he wanted. He raced straight through a clump of trees, slammed on the brakes, and shut the engine. The Globalofficers raced on, going straight up the Superlink.

Toz chuckled gleefully.

“Fine driving, dear,” Mava praised him. “How are you feeling?”

“Perfectly fine,” he said gruffly. “Stop worrying. I’ve never been better.”

“Toz had a heart attack last year,” Mava told Kayla. “Thank God it was last year and not this year.”

“My heart is in perfect condition now,” Toz growled as he started the car and they pulled out of the trees, back onto the exit ramp. “These little hybrids were good cars in their day. I don’t know why they stopped making them.”

Mava sighed. “The big oil companies didn’t want people to stop using gas, I suppose.”

They drove to Albany, straight to the modern apartment building where Sarah had lived. When Mava shut the lobby door behind them, Kayla felt safe for the first time in days.

Inside, Toz unlocked the door of an apartment. “She certainly did leave quickly,” Mava commented as she stepped into the living room. A lamp still lit the beige, modern furniture. A cup of coffee stood half full on the sleek glass coffee table.

“Make yourself at home,” Mava told her. “The shower is just down the hall.”

In the bathroom, it felt good to peel off her filthy clothing. Kayla stepped into the warm flowing stream of the shower and never before had she felt so blessed to be washed clean, to have her shoulders thumped by water. She pressed her body
into the tile wall and let the water run down her aching body.

Sarah had left all her toiletries behind. When Kayla was done, she stepped out and let the clean, thick towels mop the wetness from her body. She slipped into the white terrycloth robe that hung on the back of the door and used Sarah’s deodorant and moisture creams. She used a bath oil to wipe away the last of the fake tattoo. Only a few days ago she’d taken these things for granted. Now they seemed like lovely and rare luxuries.

As she stepped out of the bathroom, Mava came toward her with scissors. “How would you feel about a haircut?” she asked. “It would make you less identifiable. I’m pretty good at it.”

Kayla fingered her wet hair. “Okay,” she agreed.

She sat at a vanity in Sarah’s elegant bedroom. Mava cut, catching the hair on a towel at her feet. Kayla, worried that an eighty-one-year-old woman might have a shaky grip on the scissors, wore a scowl of concern throughout the cut.

When the blow-dry was done, Kayla examined the short, wispy result. Her hazel eyes appeared to be nearly twice their size.

“Do you like it?” Mava asked. “I think it looks wonderful on you. It will be easy to take care of.”

“I look like a different person,” Kayla said slowly.

Mava squeezed her shoulder. “Maybe that’s as it should be.” She opened a closet packed with
clothing, and tossed outfits onto the bed. “I’m sure Sarah has already taken the things she really wants. She recently gained some weight. These things might not even fit her anymore. You can have whatever clothing you like.”

Sarah’s clothing included the latest neon colors, but somehow Kayla wasn’t in the mood for them anymore. Instead, she put on a pair of black stretch pants that fit her perfectly. A long-sleeved silver shirt trimmed in bright pink was her next choice. Sarah’s black hiking boots were exactly her size.

“Who would have guessed that you’re such a beautiful girl?” Mava commented when Kayla was dressed.

Kayla smiled at her. “Thank you. Does Sarah have a computer I could use?”

May 23, 2025

From: DrS
globalnet.planet

To: (AT)cybercafe1700
globalnet.planet

From: DrS
globalnet.planet