The Victor Project (7 page)

     If we can’t find out what this Victor Project is about quickly and expose it to the people, we should be able to use the DOE’s results to focus the masses to at least demand answers and apply some pressure, maybe even bring us out into the open to lead the cause.  If they throw the PERFs in jail or bring any sort of public criminal action against us, it would just corroborate our issues and the masses would rally.  With Rick Mallory’s Identification and password, I think Grunt can hack into the system and obtain those results.”

     “So Mars says it’s so and boom just like that the plan is set.”

     “You have never met Mars have you?” said William.

     “No, I thought no one had.”

     “I’ll let you in on a secret.  I have met him,” said William.

     “And,” said Val.

     “And he is brilliant.  He’s not a radical terrorist that’s teetering on insanity and he doesn’t have long hair and sit in some dark room smoking dope all day.  He’s well read, his first principle is never to harm anyone.  He believes in democracy, capitalism, freedom, everything that the declaration stands for.  You’d especially like him because he knows history.”

    “When do I meet him?” she asked.

     “Unfortunately you won’t until all this changes.  If it changes.”

     “So you believe that we are doing the right thing,” she said.

     “With complete confidence,” he replied.  “Don’t you?”

     “I mean this plan.  Do you believe in this plan?”

     “I have to.  It’s all we have at our disposal and I have got a feeling the end is near.”

     “So if I fail we will all probably end up dead,” she said.

     “All those historic men you’ve read about who fought for democracy and freedom?  One day someone will read about you.”

     “I have goose-bumps already,” she said sarcastically.

     “Are you on his schedule again?” asked William.

     “No, but I will still see him.  I think he’s sweet on me,” she said.

      “One more thing.  I’ve downplayed this, but this time the word is that they are really out to get us.  One slip up and you will be dead.  Be sure of that.”

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     The entire morning had been wasted completing the first five items on the list, leaving the entire afternoon to execute item number six, which was to simply stroll around the mall.  The return trip to Zone 3 was not scheduled until four o’clock and shopping for four hours didn’t seem like that hot of an idea.  Next to the duty was listed a PR and PWF, which meant he was to use the public restroom and the public water fountain.  That would take three minutes tops.  If they wanted the afternoon to be free time for him, why didn’t they just put it on the list.  Rick you have the afternoon off, that’s all it would have to say.  But it didn’t and now he would have to somehow keep himself occupied inside a mall.

     Over the past two years more and more of the duties appearing on the lists seemed somewhat ridiculous.  When he first started with this program, the idea of using people to insure that all zones got their fair share of viruses such as influenza seemed like a good idea.  Isolated as these zones were, it was quite possible that an entire zone might miss out on a strain of flu that could help strengthen the immunity of its population.  He had traveled with colds before and was pretty sure that he picked up one or two everyday viruses from the people of Zone 5, bringing them back and sharing them with friends and family.  Now it seemed as though someone was just wasting his time.

     Much of the morning’s thoughts had been spent on recounting the previous night’s ecological debate with the woman named Val, although some of it had centered on thoughts of he and she doing the sofa-shuffle.  The more questions he asked himself about her points of living free, the more questions he came up with.  All of the sudden, he knew what the Tin-Man felt like in that Wizard of Oz movie, but this Tin-Man needed a little sound reasoning instead of a heart.  The only Great Oz that Rick knew was his boss Frank.  Fortunately, he didn’t have to traipse up some ten mile yellow-brick road to find Frank.  Oz was an eight minute cab ride away.

     He had rehearsed the questions he wanted to ask Frank so as to make it seem casual.  He also rehearsed a few answers in case Frank became inquisitive himself.  After all, the department didn’t like people such as Val running around stirring the masses, much less the Travelers.  Even worse, she was an item on the list, so she must be employed by his people, one way or another.  If Frank asked who the person was that planted these questions in his head, he would simply say that it was someone who had approached him at lunch and offered some company.  What the person’s name was or where they came from he didn’t know.  They simply appeared, rattled his thoughts and then moved on.

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     Although it shouldn’t have, it seemed a little odd walking in the front door of the office building of his employer.  On scheduled trips the transport vehicle always dropped him off in the lower garage decks from a side entrance.  It had probably been over a year since he had strolled down the main hallway.  The features decorating the main lobby and guard desk were quite elaborate.  None of it looked familiar though, so they must have remodeled since the last visit.  As he stepped on the elevator, he hoped that Frank hadn’t switched floors.

     The opening of the elevator doors revealed the familiar sight of dark grays and blues that Rick thought had  always given the atmosphere a depressing quality.  Two of the faces that passed as he made his way towards Frank’s office also looked vaguely familiar and equally depressing.  All of the employees on the floor seemed to be wearing the same mask of dullness.  It was a face he would have probably been wearing if he had continued to pursue employment as a Satellite Technician.  Being a Traveler was looking much more attractive as a career move.

     Frank’s cheap nameplate was on the same door as it had been a year earlier, but the door was closed.  For a moment he paused and thought of taking a seat and waiting for Frank to emerge, but Frank was his boss, knocking on his door was acceptable.

     “Just a moment,” a voice came from the other side of the door.  “Come in,” it said after a pause.

     Frank was sitting at his desk eating a ridiculously late lunch as Rick swung the door open.

     “Rick, what brings you up here?”

     “I thought I’d grab a snack from you,” he joked as he pointed toward the sandwich.

     “That’s lunch.  Can you believe it?”

     “Knowing you, yes,” replied Rick.

     “Take a seat.  What can I help you with?  You didn’t lose the list?”

     “No, I already finished today’s.  I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

     “Shoot,” said Frank.

     “Well, I was eating lunch the other day and a total stranger approached me and asked if I wanted some company.  I eat by myself so often that I thought what the hell, why not.  At first the conversation was the normal stuff, traffic, weather and so forth.  But after a while the small talk changed to the topic of the purpose of the zones.”

     “What do you mean?” asked Frank.

     “I think the guy was just rambling, but he said that the zones shouldn’t be a part of our lives, that we should be living free wherever we desire.”

     “That’s ridiculous, we’d all die,” Frank interrupted.

     “That’s what I told him, but he insisted that it could easily work.  He said that long ago when the epidemics hit that
Mother Nature would have taken its course and a percentage of the human race would have survived anyway.  He basically said that the remaining groups would have separated themselves from each other and broke the communicable link for diseases to ride upon.  He also said that he felt that we were being held in the zones for some other reason than our health.”

     “Think about what you’re saying Rick.  Why else would the government spend billions of dollars to contain everyone?  Why would they do that when hundreds of millions of acres lay out there wasting away?”

     “I agree.  For some reason it made me think if there had been any studies conducted on the probabilities of man existing on his own, a kind of natural selection.  You know, that’s what brought us from some micro-organism in a warm puddle to the intellectual fuck-ups we are today.”

     “Don’t you think they tried to allow
Mother Nature to take its course long ago?  What if Mother Nature’s course was to eradicate man from the face of the earth?  That’s highly probably.”

     “I’m with you.  I guess I just became aware that there are people out there who would take their chances with
Mother Nature just to be free again,” said Rick.

     “Those people have always been there.  There were millions of them when the epidemics started.  They ran off into the mountains and hid to take that chance.  I’m pretty sure mother nature won.”

     “Has anyone ever taken the time to prove that?”

     “Sure.  There have been a thousand missions to find those people.  Our government has searched the entire globe outside these zones and found nothing.  I’m telling you, that guy’s theory is full of holes.”

     A knock on the door brought Frank back down from his soap box.

     “I’m sorry Mr. Belker, Jim is in the waiting area,” said Trudy.

     “Wait here,” said Frank as he jumped up from his desk and bolted out the door.

     Rick didn’t recognize the name Jim from the department, but whomever he was he could push Frank’s buttons.  As Rick waited, his eye caught the sandwich that was sitting on the desk and a small amount of guilt overcame him from not allowing the man to finish his late lunch.  In an attempt to redeem himself, Rick reached across the desk and grabbed the ends of the paper that held the sandwich and folded it over.  At least his lunch would stay fresh.  As he completed his good deed the door opened and Frank entered.

     “Sorry about that,” said Frank.  “Where were we?”

     “Hey I’m sorry, I just realized that you’re not getting a chance to finish your lunch,”

     “Don’t worry about that.  I want to make sure you get this off your chest,” Frank said.

     “So they never found anybody out there alive?”

     “Not a trace.  Sure we could open up the zones and let the people who desire to, to live free, but there would still be a large number of humans that would feel more secure inside the zone, secure from all the killer diseases.  And for them we would have to forbid re-entry to the ones who wanted their freedom.  But sooner or later another epidemic would strike and you could bet your ass those freedom lovers would beg for the government’s forgiveness while demanding for the zones to open their doors and save them.  But we couldn’t, we’d have to let them die out there.  Otherwise, we’d risk the death of the entire population of the zone, all the zones.  Then we’d be right back to where we started.” 

     “Makes sense.  The panic alone would draw people to the zone gates,” said Rick.

     “Hell yes it would.  They wouldn’t go off into the hills to die.  They’d come to the front doorstep of the U.S. government to be saved.  That’s what happened about three hundred years ago and the government answered their pleas and built these zones.  Now they want to criticize that very ingenuity and brilliance that saved their lives.  I sound like a damn professor, don’t I?”

     “Maybe not a professor, but you do make sense.  Hey, thanks for letting me discuss this with you.  Sometimes you can get caught up in someone’s viewpoint, if they’re persuasive enough,” said Rick.

     “Anytime,” said Frank.  “What time are you scheduled to head back?”

     “Not for over an hour, but I want to grab a snack for the road.”

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     Rick once again flipped the switch on the holographic assistant to the off position, just as the vehicle exited Zone 3’s main gates.  Unfortunately, the bag of cookies that he had purchased sat next to the switch and was in his grasp before the assistant signed off.  He had planned to eat a couple of the cookies somewhere between the two events, now he would be lucky to have any left for a desert that night.

     The return schedule would have him at the overnight post in time for a late seven o’clock dinner, which would be meticulously prepared by the department, awaiting his prompt arrival.  During Traveler orientation and annually thereafter, each Traveler is asked to complete a questionnaire outlining their favorite entrées, deserts, drinks, etc., so even though he was never sure of what the main course of the evening would be, he at least knew it met the requirements of his own personal taste buds.

     To pass the next couple of hours, Rick signed on to the vehicle’s Global Earthnet System to find an opponent for interactive football.  Finding an opponent wasn’t difficult, it was finding one he could beat.  Interactive Football had been around for about two-hundred years and almost every Earthnet football fanatic available to oppose was a seasoned pro.  There were guys out there that spent fifty-percent of their free time playing I-ball and the other fifty-percent bragging about never being beat at the game.  A good percent of the guys you would find to compete against wanted to place a monetary bet on the game.  That was the only way some of the hardened characters would compete online against you.  There were rumors that some of the online I-ball guys made a decent living from the gambling payoffs alone.  Rick just played to pass the time.