The Bar Code Rebellion (2 page)

The cramped hydrogen-powered two-seater hummed along the Superlink toward Baltimore with soundless ease. In the tiny baggage space in back, Kayla squirmed to relieve the numbness that had settled into one of her legs.

She was thinking about a black-capped chickadee.

On the day Mfumbe and she had decided to leave their safe, peaceful Adirondack cabin, their cat, Lee, had killed the small black-and-white bird. Some convergence of pity, compassion, and hope had compelled her to cradle it in her hands and attempt to channel her life force into its body. In her mind’s eye she saw her inner energy as a blue stream running through her palms and into the dead bird.

The effort had drained her. But she had kept on focusing.

After some time, the bird had quivered almost imperceptibly in her grasp. Astounded by her own power, she’d slowly uncupped her hands and gazed down, marveling at the rise and fall of its downy chest.

Seconds later, it had flown to the nearest branch.
Immediately, she’d known that she was strong enough to stop hiding. She agreed to come back and lend her energy to what she believed in.

Thinking of the bird reminded her of a song. It was from the turn of the century and she’d always liked it. “I’m like a bird, I only fly away,” she began to sing quietly.

The buzz-cut driver of the car glanced back at her irritably. When he twisted his thick neck, the bar code tattoo permanently imprinted at the base of his head did a snakelike undulation.

The back-of-the-neck placement had become very hip. “The two of you are breathing too loud!” he screamed. They’d realized, too late, that the driver of the ride they’d picked up at Indian Point was some kind of psycho.

“Listen, maybe we should get out at that Super Eatery up ahead,” Kayla suggested. She couldn’t take another second of this maniac.

Good call,
Mfumbe agreed telepathically.

The driver swung the car wildly onto the turnoff to the orange-roofed Super Eatery. Kayla winced as she set her foot outside the car; the blister on her left heel burned with pain. It had developed when they were right outside Peekskill. She’d barely hobbled into the warehouse before Mfumbe found them this ride.
I can hardly walk,
she told Mfumbe.
Let’s go inside so I can get some toilet paper to put in my sneaker to cushion this blister.

Inside, the overly air-conditioned lobby was
bustling with lunchtime business. On a newsstand,
The Baltimore Sun
proclaimed the big news story of the day in bold letters:
DISSENTERS DESCEND ON CAPITAL TO PROTEST BAR CODE — POLICE PREPARED FOR ANY TROUBLE
.

Kayla hurried to the bathroom to attend to her painful blister. Leaning against a sink, she gingerly peeled off the blood-soaked heel of her sock.

“Ouch,” a female voice commiserated.

Kayla looked up sharply into the face of a very elderly dark-skinned woman with wild, wiry white hair. The woman’s eyes scanned Kayla’s exposed skin and settled on her wrist. “No code, I see. Going to the march?” she asked.

Although it was too late, Kayla impulsively pulled her arm away. Knowing who to trust wasn’t easy these days.

“It’s all right, dear,” the woman assured her, extending her own uncoded wrist. “I’m going, too. Many years ago I walked for my people with Dr. King. This time I’m walking with the senior citizens who are dying because of this damn code. You know, if a person over eighty-five goes into a hospital with one of these bar code things on, that person does not come out. When they scan the code it must send them a message that says
TOO OLD
!”

“Does this remind you of when you walked with Martin Luther King?” Kayla asked, awed to meet someone who had participated in such an amazing piece of history.

“In some ways,” the woman answered. “Of course, the city wasn’t surrounded by that awful blast wall back then, but it was a march for human dignity, like this march.”

“Do you think we’ll make a difference?” Kayla asked hopefully.

The woman sighed. “These things don’t come easy. All we can do is keep trying.” She patted Kayla’s shoulder. “I’d invite you to ride down with us but our little compact seniormobile is packed to capacity.” She rummaged in her purse and pulled out a silverpatch Band-Aid. “Here. It will heal that blister in a snap.”

“Thanks,” Kayla said, taking the Band-Aid from her. She washed the blister with a paper towel the woman handed her. How many fights had this woman seen? Yet she was still strong. Still fighting. Kayla wondered if a person ever got to stop fighting.

“Good luck. Maybe I’ll see you there,” Kayla said as she slipped back into her sneaker.

Ready or not, she was newly determined to go.

The closer they got to DC, the more people they saw headed in the same direction. The sides of the Superlink were crowded with pedestrians. The highway itself was jammed with slow-moving traffic.

Kayla was elated by the sights around her — a procession of free people without bar codes, all technically lawbreakers by virtue of their uncoded status, but out in the open, unafraid. The silverpatch was healing Kayla’s foot, and her enthusiasm at being part of this movement of like-minded people made her footsteps light with excitement.

As they walked, Mfumbe even managed to allay some of her anxiety over what she’d seen on TV.
It was a digital computer simulation,
he suggested logically as the high white blast walls surrounding the capital came into view.
They probably filmed someone else who looked like you and merged her digitally with your yearbook picture. Since your house burned down, that’s the only picture they’ve got.

It made sense. It explained why the smiling,
repentant girl was so old-Kayla.
But why would they use my picture?
she questioned.
Why me?

Who do you know who hates you and is also the national spokesperson for Tattoo Gen?
he challenged her to recall.

Her eyes widened as the realization dawned. Nedra Harris! Of course!

I bet she orchestrated it to mess with your head, discredit you in the resistance, and maybe even trick you into thinking they’re not looking for you anymore,
he added.

All that might have upset her if it had not been so much better than the alternatives that had been running through her head. It meant she
wasn’t
seeing a vision of the future in which she betrayed everything she believed in. It also discredited her other, even more terrifying fear — that the schizophrenia that ran in her family was manifesting itself in the form of this chillingly paranoid hallucination.

They were just inside the blast walls when a sleek fighter jet streaked by. It was flying low. She’d never seen one like it, yet it seemed familiar somehow.

A male voice came into her head, but it didn’t belong to Mfumbe.
It’s a robot jet,
the voice said.
It’s taking surveillance photos of the protesters.
Kayla looked at a nearby group gazing up at the jet. Someone in that group had spoken to them all. Learning which telepathic speakers to block and
which to receive was going to be tricky here in the middle of such a largely telepathic crowd.

When the jet had passed, they resumed their walk toward the city. She realized where she’d seen the jet before — in one of her visions. She’d foreseen this entire event.

Kayla stood outside the White House at dusk in a crowd of approximately a thousand other protesters. It had been the most inspiring, thrilling day of her life.

They had been fired on by a jet as they approached the walls, but no one had been seriously hurt. News reports said that the Secret Service claimed the release of ammunition had been a mistake in the programming of the robot craft, though the protesters believed it had been an attempt to scare them off.

In a speech at the Lincoln Memorial later that afternoon, David Young, a charismatic man in his late thirties, had told the protesters to focus on a world where people moved freely and were unafraid. He urged them to envision a society of equality and justice where all were valued, regardless of their genetic code. “We will not use violence to achieve our end,” he continued, “but we can use the strength and energy of our minds to change our world.”

Now they stood outside the White House waiting for David Young to emerge with Loudon Waters
in tow. Finally, they were going to force their so-called President to give them some straight answers.

“Hey! Over here!” Kayla and Mfumbe turned toward the familiar voice that had called to them. A short, heavy-set guy with dyed neon orange hair waved to them. August Sanchez was maneuvering his way through the crowd that separated them. His burly frame barreled through with the determination of a linebacker.

“I thought you’d decided not to come, man,” Mfumbe said, gripping August’s arm in delighted solidarity.

“You guys shamed me into it,” August replied, smiling. “And I was getting bored spending all day in a field trying to contact alien life-forms with my mind. It seemed like a good idea at first but, I mean, come on. My brain was starting to hurt. You guys were only gone half a day when I started to miss you. I tried to catch up, but you two move fast.”

“We’d have waited for you if we had known,” Kayla said as she hugged August. He was their friend from high school and part of their original resistance group. Like them, he’d wound up in the Adirondack Mountains, but he had joined a group that hoped to contact outer space with their thoughts. Although it had seemed bizarre to Kayla, the people involved were sympathetic to the resistance. “Just before I left, I got a letter from Allyson,”
he added, pulling an envelope from his back pocket.

“Postman?” Mfumbe asked. Postmen, who were both men and women, secretly passed mail from one person to the next until it reached its intended recipient. It was an act of resistance, a way of circumventing e-mail that could be read by the prying electronic eyes of Global-1 and bypassing phones, which were also known to be monitored. The Postmen’s skill at tracking people was quickly becoming legendary.

It was said that Postmen never gave up. They simply asked if anyone had seen or even heard of the intended recipient of the letter. Then they either passed the letter on or asked some more, and tracked and tracked until their letters were delivered. They performed this task with a dogged determination resembling religious fervor.

August nodded, unfolding the handwritten letter. Allyson was another one of their group, their science whiz, always rational and sensible. Kayla thought of her now in her loose, flowing clothing, her blond curls like a halo around her face. For Allyson, not getting the bar code tattoo would have meant passing up a huge scholarship that she needed. It was her dream to study genetics at Harvard, and so, in the end, she’d gotten the tattoo.

“How is she?” Kayla asked.

“Here. Read it yourself.” He handed her the letter, and once again Kayla saw the twisted, angry scar on his wrist where he’d scorched off the bar code he’d allowed them to tattoo on him in a moment of hopeless despair.