Velvet Dogma About 3300 wds (7 page)

"Yes! I know Olga. Where is she? Does it say what she's doing?"

"None of that, but she's actually closer than your grandmother. If you want, we can swing by her flat without making much of a side tour."
 
Reading the indecision in her eyes, he added, "Until we can figure out what's going on and who to trust, you need a place to go to ground. Maybe Olga is just the person we're looking for."

Rebecca nodded, realizing the soundness of Andy's advice. In fact, Olga's place might be the answer to most of her problems. A part of her wanted to save her grandmother. She didn't know the legalities of the D-Pens or the organ levy laws, but if she could somehow manage to spirit the old woman away, Rebecca might think of something that could be done. "You're right. Let's go."

They turned to go, then spied three grey-suited police officers zoom to a halt at the corner of Hollywood and Cahuenga on hoverBoards—similar to the gravBoards but round where the gravBoards were long. The cops wore glistening black helmets. Each wore a POD over his left eye. Knee high black boots covered their legs, snapping into heel-sleeves on the fore and back parts of the boards.

Rebecca and Andy stood north of Hollywood Boulevard and uphill from the corner. The crowds thinned as the police advanced at a careful pace on their boards, one down Hollywood, one south down Cahuenga and one directly towards them. She thought he'd seen her, but he stopped at a burrito stand and spun a woman around with short blonde hair around. She fell to the ground, but he made no move to help her up. Instead, he began searching up the street.

The police were definitely looking for Rebecca. Without thinking, she grabbed Andy and jerked him into her as she leaned back against the wall. She kissed him deeply, closing her eyes as she willed herself invisible. Andy, to his credit, didn't pull away. Just the opposite—he kissed back, his body covering hers as their lips danced. He made a small moan.

They held each other for nearly twenty seconds as she heard the hum of the board as it passed. Then her worst fears came to pass. She heard the board pause, then return and stop, hovering directly behind Andy.

She opened her eyes to slits, meaning to sneak a glance. But surprise took over as she noticed the policeman staring directly at her. As their gazes met, her eyes widened. Andy felt the change and opened his own eyes. She glanced at him, eyeball to eyeball. What could they do now?

"D
amn," he mumbled into her mouth.

Then he spun around, his right arm hooking the policeman around his knees. Andy heaved upwards and jerked the man from the board. They both went down in a heap.

Rebecca lunged forward and kicked the downed man, her foot striking the nearest part of the downed cop—his knee. He simultaneously screamed in pain, then growled as he struggled with Andy for position. Rebecca kicked again, this time missing and losing her balance. She fell sideways, her head leading the way. She groaned as the side of her head smacked into the policeman's face. Everything went grey, and her vision blurred, then she felt herself jerked to her feet. Andy threw her arm over his neck and broke into a jog. She stumbled to keep up with him.

"Bec, you okay?"

She mumbled something meant to mean yes, but didn't even understand herself.

He took her weight and dragged her into an alley. Resting her against the wall, he massaged her cheeks, pausing only to use his thumb to open one of her eyelids.

The cobwebs dissolved, leaving only a throbbing pain on the left side of Rebecca's head. She shook her head and pushed his hands away.

"That's not how you felt before," he said, a sparkle in his eye.

"Oh, stop. You sound like a fourteen-year-old."

He shrugged. "Let's go."
 
He took off at a steady run down the alley.

She followed, still a little unsteady but getting better with each step.

A cry went up behind them. She didn't dare turn. It was probably the policeman.

They shot out of the alley onto Wilcox and turned right, running directly into a pair of gravBoarders dressed in silver and black who were lounging against the wall. Andy grabbed one, and spoke into his ear.

"Stat, we need a ride. Copy, then poll P. Rao. Emergency prog Boston Celtics."

The boarders exchanged glances, their sneers shifting to wicked grins.

"Hop on, pops," said the one nearest Andy as he dropped his board and climbed on.

Suddenly it clicked. What she'd taken for jargon had been code. Not just any code, but computer code. With internal and external POD interfaces, the ID, what she'd know as the World Wide Web, had become a live environment that allowed vocal interaction. Where Rebecca had been limited to the parameters and speed of a keyboard and modem, limitations vanished as access was fueled by the speed of dialogue. She'd heard words like 'boon' and 'altruism.'
 
These were probably words that represented lines of code, like the old
control
and
alt
functions that could be programmed to do anything from add sums to inserting pages of text. She remembered the woman on the bus sub-vocalizing commands to her POD. She could have been calling the police, checking the weather, or shopping for a blouse.

Rebecca remembered how Kumi had described the PODs."Personal Ocular Devices. Everyone has them these days. Some are external, and look like monocles. They fit into the orbit, resting just in front of the eye where images and information can be both viewed and fired directly down the optic nerve. Some are internal modifications attached directly to the orbit and allowing download from any local node. The more expensive ones can't even be seen."

"And they call them pods? Do you have one?" Rebecca had asked.

"Not me. They made sure I was pod-free when they hired me for this assignment. Not that I oppose them—they just wanted me to be able to interact more easily. The sad thing is that reintroduction is usually accomplished through a POD interface and is frightfully easy, but with the terms of your parole and such it makes the process that much more difficult."

"There's opposition to these PODs?" Rebecca asked.

"Definitely," Kumi said. "The term
POD
became more than just vernacular when the detractors got a hold of it. Like the Earth Firsters or the Ack Acks, they call anyone who uses PODs 'Pod People.'
 
They say they've been taken over by the Information Database, or the Id as we call it, and have no control over their lives."
 
Kumi rolled her eyes. "There will always be dissenters, I suppose."

Rebecca frowned, her thoughts drawn to an old movie that had terrified her as a child. She could still see Donald Southerland standing with his arm extended, finger pointing, condemning the last human on Earth, an alien squeal erupting from his lungs as the woman who trusted him realized too late her mortal danger. There had been pod people in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
. Rebecca was pretty sure that the simulacrum aliens had hatched from those very same pods. She shuddered at the similarity. "I don't know if I'd want one of those anyway," she said.

"Well, hon, you'll never have the choice. As I said, the conditions of your release forbid it. Other than Class One automations like insta-cookers and grav-lifts, you're pretty much restricted from interacting with society on a technological level. You'll see it, and recognize it, but you can't even touch it. And they're serious about this. You scared them good back in your day and they don't want you anywhere close to the ID. If they catch you violating their terms, you'll be locked up forever."

Rebecca frowned, "Then why did they let me go at all?"

"Those same groups who are against the PODs are against the governments. They feel the need to play oversight and watch out for people like you. So in an odd way, you owe them for your freedom."
 

"Is that who you work for? The Ack Acks? Or the Earth Firsters?"

"No. I'm contracted to the North American Free Trade Congress for the duration of your reintroduction."
 
She'd held up her hands. "But don't let that fool you. They pay the bills, but my loyalty lies with you."

Rebecca doubted that. She might have been locked up for twenty years, but basic human nature couldn't have changed that much. She believed Kumi's motivation about as much as she believed there wasn't a secret motive behind her release.

Reading Rebecca's expression, Kumi added. "No, really. I had my choice who I wanted to sponsor and I chose you. I read about your case in college. I'm a great admirer of yours, actually."
 
Kumi lowered her gaze. "I mean, you took on the
world
."

More things that Rebecca had tried to forget slinked from dusty corners in her mind, dragging broken limbs into the light. She remembered when they'd finally captured her and brought her in that they were so worried that she'd escape that forty guards had flanked her as she trudged the steps of the courthouse. What had she really done? Shutting down the Pentagon's computers had been frightfully easy. Even simpler was breaching the United Nations' systems. For four years she'd been deep in Warez Underground, chaos hacking and bit-torrent cracking, sometimes for the highest dollar, and sometimes because she felt like it. She'd accepted astronomical sums of money to do things that had been second nature to her, but because the money was so easily obtained, she'd always found a way to pass it among the groups needier than her and her loyalist friends. With the Warez, she'd never had need for money anyway.

Then came the day when she'd become too full of herself. Already surfing the leading edge of the chaos wave, she'd developed a Trojan Horse Exploitation Sniffer Worm that had sought to retrieve all defense related information world-wide. The idea had been to post the gathered information publicly on Usenets and Listservs so the world would know the secrets, but she'd never gotten the chance. Within hours of launching her program, she'd been arrested, accused of violating the Patriot Act, and hurled into a cell with barely a pause for a trial.

Yeah, she took on the world...and lost.

Now that Rebecca knew what to look for, she'd begin watching the POD people, checking for the minute movements of the lower jaw and the throat. She'd seen their eyes and noticed that most held a long stare as if they were only partially paying attention. She couldn't help wonder what it was like. She was only able to imagine that it had to be something like driving down the 405 while watching a DVD movie on the dashboard.

Andy slid behind the smaller boarder, struggled for balance once, then wrapped both arms around the man's waist.

Rebecca followed suit. No sooner had she climbed aboard and latched onto the other gravBoarder, she felt a sudden increase in pressure as she shot forward and then around the corner, flying inches above the ground at terrifying speeds. She locked her hands together and hugged the man's back. Her chin pressed against his shoulder, and she had a clear line of vision to what was in front of them.

Traffic.

Cars jumbled together at a traffic light loomed in front of them. The light changed and she watched as the cars began to inch forward. Andy's boarder shimmied through a gap that snapped shut behind them. Rebecca's boarder shot towards the same spot. She closed one eye, but left the other one open to witness her doom. Miraculously, the car in front moved. Before the car behind it had a chance to slide forward, they sped through the space.

Rebecca risked a look behind her. She shouldn't have. All three policemen were on her trail. They rode their boards like surfers, leaning forward, arms out to the sides, partly to steer, partly to fly, while the boarders rode with an arm outstretched in front of them, their other wrapped around their passengers. She was sure it had to do with the difference in designs.

Her boarder swerved left, then right, then banked on the side of a city bus. Rebecca's eyes widened with the woman's in the seat behind the window on the right when it cracked. Whipping her head around, she saw one of the police boards clip the side of the bus at it tried to mimic her boarder's move. The rider screamed as he sailed over the bus, disappearing into a window display across the street.

Her boarder poured on the speed as they found a straightaway. He pulled alongside Andy, who held his boarder in a death grip.

"You sure know how to show a girl a good time!" she hollered, the wind trying to snatch the words.

Andy grinned through his fear. "Only the best for you, Bec!"
 
Then he looked forward and screamed, "Oh my God!"

She turned and felt her heart leap into her skull. A city bus was headed right towards them. If they didn't do something fast, they'd meet it head on like a June bug on an interstate. But their boarders weren't doing anything to avoid it. They kept cruising straight ahead as the distance dwindled to a suicidal nothing.

She screamed.

And then the two boards separated—the one on the right swerving right onto Melrose West, the one on the left onto Melrose East. An explosion sounded behind them. She didn't dare look, but knew that one of the police boards had met an angry end.

The gravBoard darted in and out of traffic for a few moments longer, then slowed, pulled into an alley, and stopped. The board set down hard to the earth. She let go of the boarder as he stepped off, and flipped his board into his hand. He jerked his head for her to follow as she unlatched a back gate about three houses down. An old house that had survived the Tsunami and the quakes, he rushed to a wooden basement access door, pulled it open and hurried down. Rebecca waited only a moment before she joined him.