Amos shifted his weight and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Chase, why are they looking for you all over the place? Did you feed them some more bad information?”
Chase met Amos's stare. “Yes and no. By the hour the exoself seems more proficient in anticipating my next course of action. My systems have the Feds chasing rabbits. The intel says I'm here, then it says I'm there. And I'm the one who's doing it. Only it's not me.”
“Do you think the exoself has developed its own consciousness? Its own survival instinct?”
“It's thinking for itself,” Switchblade said. “Is that what's happening, Charlie?”
“I don't know. I'm a transhuman, but I'm not a transhumanistâI didn't design this stuff. I've reviewed data and read online books. The science is starting to make sense, but I might owe that to my recall enhancement. The other side of it, the philosophy, is as foreign to me asâ”
“As Christianity?” Amos asked.
Chase nodded. “As any deep belief system. The pioneers of the transhumanist movement were zealots. And now the scientists, the government, the entertainment platforms, are all putting their faith in it. It's not about curing disease and improving the quality of life anymore. It's about living forever. It's not that different from what
you
want, is it? It's a religion. Only⦔
“Only what, Chase?”
“It's a godless religion. They are their own gods, and they want to live forever by their own existence. By their own power.” Chase pressed his fingertips into his temples. The sting of Switchblade's blow was gone. Had the processors in his body boosted his capacity to heal? That wasn't possible, was it?
It almost sounded justifiableâthis new religion. A human being as proficient as a computer and just as durable. And Chase was the first to profit from its blessing. A man who didn't follow transhumanism became a transhuman. A man who didn't follow Christ became an honorary member of the Underground Church. Chase lowered his gaze and sighed.
“Godless, indeed,” Amos said. “And yet to be like God is what they desire. Chase, do you know the story of the tower of Babel?”
“No, I don't think so.” He perused the exoself for information and found the old story. But not the scripture. “I've got it. People tried to build a city on their own laurels without acknowledging God's dominion. But God confused their language and the tower was destroyed. He split up the smart guys, huh?”
Amos nodded. “Do you know why God did that?”
“I'll tell you why,” Switchblade said. “Because God don't got no competition. Ain't nobody gonna bring Him down, and nobody's gonna bring themselves up without Him.”
“Is God that easily threatened?” Chase asked.
“No. There is no threat,” Amos answered. “He wants to come down to us, to lift us up. But the tower was built, and the transhuman is built, as an act of rebellion.”
“What does that make me? A rebel? A tower to be knocked down?”
“You ain't nothing but a rock at the base of that tower, Charlie. You didn't put yourself there. Once the tower comes down, the rocks get cleaned up and used for something good.”
“Switchblade, that's the nicest thing I've ever heard come out your mouth,” Amos said.
Chase, as usual, found the whole thing baffling. He narrowed his eyes at Switchblade. “Thanks. I think.”
The conversation could have continued, giving Chase a chance to catch on to the things the exoself didn't understand any better than its host. But Mel returned with the newest resident, who was cleaned up and dressed in jeans and gauzy white blouse, her long blond hair pulled into a ponytail.
Amos rose to his feet and faced her. “You must be Windsong. We owe you so much for all you've done up top. We're grateful that you escaped today, but sorry for the loss of your plane and your services. You'll stay with us now, for as long as we can manage down here.”
“Don't think I'm unappreciative for your help in keeping me out of prison today, but I'm not staying. I'm getting my plane back,” she said. “And then I'll go to the EU. I'll paint the plane and change my alias, and I'll continue my work for the Lord. That's what He wants, and that's what I'm going to do.”
Amos lifted his brows and shook his head. “I don't see how, young lady. It seems an impossible task.”
“You're looking at the water, sir, and not at the one who walked on it,” Windsong said.
“I suppose I am. Forgive my unbelief. What is your plan, young lady?”
“You're going to help me,” she said to Chase. “I need somebody to change my life.” She smiled and slapped him on the back. “Let's get to work, Chase Sterling.”
“I thought you and God had this worked out,” Chase said. “What do you want from me?”
“A little interference in choosing a location for my plane. You're connected to the Feds, right? Have them send it to the nearest airstrip.”
“The nearest airstrip is covered with drones,” he told her. “I'm afraid that won't work.”
“So send the drones somewhere else.”
“The more I interfere with the local entities, the greater my chances of being found,” Chase said. “Drones are manufactured and tested in the area. Hundreds of them would have to be relocated. I think somebody would notice that.”
“So what? Switchblade said you were making stuff happen all over the WR.” She grinned and bounced on her toes. “It'll be fun. You'll be right under their noses and they won't even notice.”
“Sounds too risky,” Amos said. “We just got the Feds out of town. I don't want to bring them back.”
“Wouldn't it benefit all of you if the drones moved out of this area?” she asked. “Maybe you should wipe out the whole place.”
“What are you suggesting? We aren't doing anything to add truth to the Feds' lies about us. We aren't terrorists.”
She blushed a little. “I didn't mean you should blow it up or anything. Look, we're in this together. There's got to be a way to evacuate that drone plant for a few hours and get my plane to land there.”
“You seem in a hurry to leave us, Windsong,” Switchblade said. “I know Mr. Sterling was hoping you'd stick around.”
Chase glared at the man. “I can get the functional drones out. And I can get the plane in. Getting you on the plane and in the sky would be difficult.”
Windsong swung her ponytail over her shoulder and laughed. “Difficult never stopped me before.”
19
Chase waited until midnight to attempt the ridiculous. He'd like to go to bed and forget all about hiding with a bunch of odd believers. Except that he'd kissed the girl he'd been missing for months. He'd never forget that.
The evening hadn't allowed him that talk with Amos. With all the commotion, he and Mel decided to wait on telling the leader of Blue Sky Field that he was dying.
Now he had to work his magic on a WR drone manufacturing plant. Messing with the orders of a few low-level authorities was easy. Moving large groups of people from one location to another, right under the watching eyes of the Feds, hadn't even been a challenge. But flying an army of drones away from their base seemed impossible.
While Windsong slept in Mel's room, Chase scoured military bases across the eastern countryside. He knew how to destroy a drone in an emergency situation. But taking out hundreds would be, at least to Amos, an act of terrorism.
Many of the little air machines were half assembled in the plant. Chase found 327 S-drones and simpler formatted surveillance drones ready to fly and taking up space on the single airstrip. He smiled at the coincidence. The code the exoself used to protect Chase was 32-7. The very code that had crashed the S-drones in Atlanta.
But the drones were not threatening him or anybody else, at least not at the moment. The code he needed right now was the same one he'd used to get Molly and the others out of the detention center. Somehow the code for safe travel held the greatest potential for subverting the WR. He sparked the thirty-first processor and pulled eight lines of code.
“Come on, exoself, show me how to get these drones moving.”
The exoself surged, and Chase found his way into systems of fourteen military bases between Quebec and Florida. He wriggled his way in through secured programs until he was in position to order new drones for each facility. An overriding order from the head committee of the WR overseeing distribution was interwoven through multiple systems, just as it would be if it were the real thing. The reason for the sudden increase in the demand for drones? He programmed the order: To hunt down Chase Sterling.
He filtered the requisitions to the various locations. He'd send the machines out as close to the east coast as he could. If anything went wrong, he'd plunge them into the Atlantic. Amos might not like it, but if the Feds caught on, the best way to hide the trail back to Chase was to rid the world of a few hundred drones. He could wipe out information in the base computers easily enough, but the embedded database built into each drone could recover an irregularity in the code that could identify the source of the bogus orders.
He overworked the exoself, if that were possible, and set up the purchase requests to come in hours apart. The drones would fly out in groups of twenty-two to twenty-four, beginning at dusk and continuing through the night. Security personnel would be at the plant after dark. Chase found the schedule for the week and gave them all the same night off, but made sure the schedule showed someone would be there. No one would suspect the facility was being left unguarded.
Chase moved to one of the 3D computers and pulled up the schematics. He dropped the plans onto the flat board and pulled it up so that he could note locations of cameras and motion detectors. They'd all be rendered useless by the time the sun went down the following day.
A sound behind him made Chase spin around. “Mel, what are you doing up?”
She yawned and dropped to a chair in front of the 3D display. “Your friend is a restless sleeper. Keeps mumbling about getting her wings back.”
“She won't be here long. I've got the plant ready to ship out its fleet. Now I've got to get that plane ready to fly forty miles north and land in the middle of nowhere for no good reason.”
“Why don't you just have it sent to the plant to pick up some drones? It's big enough to hold five or six, isn't it?”
“Genius.” He bent to kiss her cheek. “How does it feel to be smarter than a man with a computer in his brain?” He changed the orders for two of the bases, taking three drones off one and two off the other. Then he ordered the confiscated plane sent to the plant to pick up five drones to deliver to an EU base outside of London. He pulled up a chair and sat beside Mel.
“Windsong's plane just got put into service for the WR. Its first mission is to pick up five drones at the plant and deliver them to the EU. I'm moving the funds from one WR account to another to cover the purchase. That's not stealing.”
“I didn't say it was.” Mel covered Chase's hand with hers and squeezed his fingers. “Did you know that when you're doing this stuff with the exoself, your fingers, and sometimes your feet, get fidgety?”
“It's weird to program a computer at a random location just by using what's inside me. Sometimes I want to punch a keypad. I guess that's why my fingers get restless. I hadn't noticed that my feet want to get in the action too.”
“You're amazing, boss.” She lifted his hand and kissed it.
“It's too simple.” Chase leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I don't believe this will play out like I planned it. It can't be that easy.”
“It's not over yet. You've still got to get the girl onto her plane.”
Chase opened his eyes. “I'll have to take her myself.”
“What? Come on, you know you can't do that.”
“She has no other way to get inside the plant and get on that plane.” Chase swiped his hand over the 3D image, closing the program.
“Stay on the VPad with her. Can't you monitor everything and tell her what she needs to know without being there?” Mel hurried to an adjacent work station.
“And what if they track her VPad?” Chase asked. “What if she loses it? We might as well hand her over to the Feds.”
Mel faced him, her arms crossed. “You are not getting on that plane.”
He smiled. “Yes ma'am.” He drew close enough to breathe in the hint of lilac in her hair. “I told you beforeâI'm not going anywhere.” He took her in his arms. “Except I'm going as far as that airstrip.”
“Chase, what if word of this gets out? What if we really do have a mole?”
“If anyone in this compound connected to an outside computer or VPad, I'd know it. And no one has been allowed to go up. Not since Molly and the others came down. Well, no one except Switchblade. He met Windsong at the door. Butâ”
“He's not a mole,” Mel said.
Chase nodded. “That's what I was going to say.”
A soft voice spoke behind them. “Oh, Miss Melody, don't let anybody see you hugging like that. You know what will happen.”
Chase let go and faced the intruder.
The teenage girl smiled. “On second thought, go ahead and get caught. We could use a party to liven things up down here.”
Chase placed his hands on his hips and tilted his head at Mel. “OK, tell me what she means by that.”
Mel put her arm around the girl. “Never mind, boss. Erin, what are you doing in here at this time of night?”
“I was on my way to the kitchen and I heard voices.
“Honey, you know you can't be snacking. We've got to stick to the rations.”
“Oh, I wasn't going for food or anything. Just⦔ The kid sounded as guilty as Chase felt when he concocted a lie.
But why the remorse? His lies protected these people. He stepped to the other side of the girl and directed her toward the hallway leading to the dorms. “Admit itâyou're hungry. I've got something for you.”