The Reborn (The Day Eight Series Part 1) (22 page)

After he finally got up, he found Damon right in the computer cabinet where they’d parted.

Damon rubbed his shoulders as he emerged. “I couldn’t hear a damn thing in there. Pretty soon I was just going to cross my fingers and open the door with the hope that they’d be gone.” Damon looked Trevor up and down. “What in God’s name happened to you? Did you do the run of the bulls while I was in there?”

Trevor was filthy, and his shirt had a tear. He explained where he had been, then they headed into Ezra’s control room for both warmth and to check the building’s security monitors. Although there were no cameras on the hidden floors, they could see Paxton putting on a hat on the entrance floor and leaving the building. Kane was nowhere in sight.

Damon pulled up the door logs. He scanned the last few entries. The most recent one read:

Fletcher, Kane………29 – Neurologic

“Change of plans. He’s in the neurology lab… I was hoping he’d have left with Paxton. Sometimes I don’t even think Kane sleeps. Not sure how much time we have, so we’d better be quick.”

“I wasn’t entirely sure what the original plan was anyway,” said Trevor, “so I fully support the new plan… which I also don’t know anything about.”

“Like I said, the plan was for you to see as much as possible in case something happens to me. I’d say we got more than we bargained for. The old plan also was to talk to Ezra so that we could dig and see if she had any hints as to the intentions of Kane and Stonefield, since I’m suspicious of them both. Now I’d say my suspicions are founded.” Damon drummed his fingers on the console, losing himself in thought.

The room looked like it had been built by a technophile on speed. It was lined with high-end monitors, input cameras, and speakers. Two virtual reality helmets dangled from the ceiling. Keyboards and mice shared various surfaces with manila folders bulging with documents. There were even a few custom controllers used to navigate three dimensional spaces. It might make sense to have those if Ezra lived in a larger area than Allison.

“The new plan,” Damon finally continued, “is to remove a communications chip that has been synchronized to Ezra. We can use it with the mainframe that Allison lives on, and it will allow us to see and talk with Ezra, even though her simulation is running here.” Damon squatted down by a bulky safe resting on the floor and worked its dial back and forth. “There are only two of these chips. They allow wireless communication via a highly encrypted signal. They transmit over a radio frequency.”

“What, like cell phone frequencies?”

“We own our own band of the spectrum from 105 to 108 gigahertz. Officially, it’s designated for passive space research signals, radio astronomy, and transmissions from Earth exploration satellites. Unofficially, those things only use the 8 gigahertz of allotment above our band rather than the whole 11 that’s reserved for them.”

“How do you work something like that out?”

“The government – the NSA, to be specific – has their hands in all forms of communication, especially airwaves. They gave us this segment of radio frequency as part of another project. It’s safe to assume they listen in, but even they cannot break our encryption.”

“As far as you know,” added Trevor.

“And we know quite well. Even if they could break it, they don’t have the hardware to run what we’re transmitting.”

Damon finished the combination and swung open the thick, steel door. He reached in and pulled out a compact briefcase. Inside rested two chips, each the size of a quarter. Damon slipped one of the chips inside his cigarette-tin-like case. “I didn’t want to have to take one of these. They can’t be replaced; they’re manufactured at The Valley branch. This chip,”  Damon tapped his case, “isn’t supposed to leave the building yet.”

Damon resealed the safe. “This past week we synchronized both of these chips to communicate with Ezra’s simulation. Soon, one is going to be shipped back to The Valley for Stonefield. The other… well, I don’t know what the plan is for it. Kane might notice before we can return it, but it’s a risk I feel we have to take.”

Damon checked the door logs again. Kane still hadn’t left the 29
^th
floor.

Damon yanked at Trevor’s arm. “Let’s go. Quickly.”

An overwhelming tiredness overcame Trevor. He was dirty, sore, and had barely gotten any sleep since the night before. He desperately wanted a shower and longed for his bed. He didn’t even respond, he just got to his feet and turned to leave.

That’s when a blue glimmer caught his eye from one of the work surfaces.

A small sapphire-colored object partially protruded from beneath a folder of papers. He recognized it immediately.

It was his stolen memory stick.

Questions for the Universe

T
hat was definitely Trevor’s memory stick. What was it doing in Ezra’s control room? And a mere 24 hours after a thug stole it from his apartment?

“Damon.”

Damon turned and looked impatiently at Trevor. “I’ll answer more of your questions later, we need to go. Now.”

“Damon, this is my memory stick.” Trevor held it up between both their gazes, pinching it with his forefinger and thumb.

“I don’t think so. We have all sorts of memory devices around here. You aren’t the only one with a blue thumb drive.”

Trevor twisted it in his fingers until the other side faced Damon. “How many of your company’s blue thumb drives have a double-helix with my initials drawn on them in Sharpie?”

“… You need to put it back. Right now. Leave it just as you found it.”

Fear struck Trevor. Damon didn’t seem shocked by this discovery. His eyes didn’t widen, the pitch in his voice hadn’t changed, he didn’t give it an inquisitive look; he merely spoke matter-of-factly. Trevor immediately felt like he was back in his apartment only feet from the intruder. It hadn’t occurred to him that Damon might be part of whatever this was. Would he have been so careless as to leave the memory stick there and then bring Trevor into the room? No… no, he wouldn’t. Regardless, somebody else here knew of Trevor’s involvement, and that was bad.

Trevor replaced the memory stick. Once he set aside most of his fear that Damon was a threat, Trevor felt strange. Leaving his stolen possession there was a hard thing to do. He’d always had a hatred for thieves… there weren’t many people in the world worthy of hate, but thieves deserved it ten times over.

He’d imagined himself in scenarios where his wallet would get stolen, and he’d chase down the crook, kick him in the groin before tossing him through a plate glass shop window, then retrieve his wallet. Trevor often imagined capping it off by stuffing the robber in a dumpster full of used saw blades for good measure. He’d never be capable of that, of course. He wasn’t a violent person. The most violent thing he’d ever done was throw mashed potatoes at an elementary school bully in the cafeteria (and he’d learned not to do that again), but it didn’t stop his mind from wandering.

So the thought of finding his stolen property and then having to leave it was counter to all instinct. Nevertheless, Damon was right. He left it there, as he’d found it.

~

Damon apologized to Trevor for not getting to see the more intelligent simulants as planned. But this was better – they would soon be able to communicate directly with Ezra from Damon’s home. And as much as Damon wanted to know what Trevor had overheard while hiding under the floor, they didn’t want to risk being found out by Kane, so they both quickly headed off their separate ways.

Damon had said that the next time they met, they would discuss – how had he worded it? –
Everything, and then some
.

In the mean time, Trevor would continue to spend time with Allison during the day, and Damon would assess the situation at Day Eight and try to learn more about the Mayor’s involvement. Today was Tuesday, and Trevor was going to take the day off to rest. He more than needed it. His entire being felt drained, like his soul had slowly leaked from every pore of his body over the past few days.

At home, Trevor locked his door and balanced a glass on the handle. If anyone tried to get in through it, the glass would fall and alert him, and if he was lucky, would scare off whoever it was. Then he slid his dresser in front of the taped-up window.

~

Damon got home and instead of bed, opted for a stiff drink over ice, half bourbon, half apple brandy. He brought the bottles with him out back. He didn’t often drink alone, but for the first time in his life since his daughter died – no, this was the only time in his life other than that – things were becoming unmanageable. This was a foreign feeling to him. He was used to being in complete control, knowing what was going to happen, when it would occur, and why. And usually the “why” was because of him.

Things were becoming dangerous. Now that he had Trevor’s trust, he could ask Trevor to fix their code problem, which would pave the way to the ultimate goal. They had pressured Damon on this, said it was urgent, but Damon didn’t really need pressuring. He’d been planning on it. He wanted to reach the ultimate goal more than they did. But now things were moving more quickly than he anticipated. And he was second-guessing his intentions to involve Trevor with Allison, because Kane and the others didn’t know she was here or even alive. Everything was at risk now. But Allison needed care, what choice did he have? He thought using Trevor would be killing two birds with one stone. And a very volatile stone it was turning out to be.

He couldn’t walk away.

Aside from Allison, the ultimate goal was the only thing that he lived for. It would be the only thing that anyone would live for, if they knew. Of all the people in the history of the world, and all those who awaited in its future, he was the luckiest – he would be here when it happened, be at ground zero; he would witness the most important event in the entire history of civilization.

He was sure of it.

He just had to keep things from falling apart until then. After that, nobody would care if he had Allison.

Damon tipped up his glass and downed the rest of the libation. It burned his throat on the way down, but it was a good burn.

He poured himself another and stood barefoot on the grass at the bottom of his porch where a light mist crept over the warm earth of the lawn. He marveled at its fluid motions in response to his moving feet. Then he stood still again, took a large gulp of his drink, and watched the mist tangle around his ankles.

~

Trevor woke up well-rested around 11 am, vacuumed while singing awkwardly, then devoured an order of Kung Pao chicken in front of the news.

First was a horrible story about a nursery’s roof partially collapsing from water damage and killing three infants. That was followed by an update on a teen pop-star’s social shenanigans.

It surprised him how the anchor could so simply change demeanors between clips. One second she was somber, and between sentences, she flipped to jubilance as if the death of infants was simply another item crossed off a laundry list of daily announcements. Just a husk of flesh that the network had hypnotized to report current events, Stepford-style.

After commercials, some actual news blessed the screen. The female anchor sat next to her handsome, but aging, co-anchor.

She shuffled some papers and began, “Now you’re back with myself, Jackie Tristram, and our favorite male face, Stan Goodall. We continue our countdown to the White House. If you haven’t made up your mind, there’s only one week left to decide who you’re voting for.”

“That’s right, Jackie,” smiled the co-anchor, “And I’ll tell you, it’s an interesting scene at the polls. California Democratic senator Bill Bosley leads with 46%. New York mayor, Trent Paxton, for the Republican Party trails with 38%. That’s quite a deficit for Paxton to make up. The man has really nailed his responses in the debates, but the fact that he wasn’t even born by the time Bosley got drafted for Vietnam, well, there’s no making up for that lack of experience.”

“No there isn’t, Stan. But you have to admit, the history that Paxton
does
have has been quite impressive.”

“It certainly has been,” agreed the male anchor, “The man’s a paradigm of accomplishment. And who could have predicted his tears two nights ago? His response to the question of not having been in a war really touched the hearts and souls of the viewers. Imagine this: Paxton is only two years old and his father steps on a land mine in southern Vietnam and bleeds to death on the battlefield. Then when Paxton is nine, he walks into the kitchen and finds his mother like
that
, clutching a photo of his father. That would have irreversibly traumatized most people.

“Some psychologists speculate that Paxton’s dedication to both school and politics at a young age can be attributed to his mother’s death. It was his way of taking his mind off things, so to speak.”