Freedom Incorporated, Peter Tylee [literature books to read TXT] 📗

simply petitioned the hardest. Already being in the law enforcement business, UniForce could claim they had a legitimate use for the system. The fact that they’d always intended to sublet time to other corporations for marketing purposes was irrelevant. Echelon was a law enforcement organism so the governments responsible for it sold it to a law-enforcement multinational.

They’d lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, unusual for the pair of chatterboxes. Samantha was tugging at the fraying sleeve of her pyjamas and Jen was nursing her empty mug.

Cookie gasped.

“What?” Samantha was glad for the distraction.

His jaw hung slack and, for once, he was incapable of speech; the present task totally engaged his brain. His fingers were a blur of activity. No matter how archaic it felt to stick stubbornly to a keyboard, Cookie refused to get implants; they just felt too unnatural. Samantha approved.

“What is it?” Jen echoed Samantha’s question.

“I’m in.”

“What?” Jen and Samantha leapt to his side, fixing their gaze on his screen.

“No, wait…” He held his breath, inwardly swearing at the false alarm. “Sorry, I just got jittery. I’m through another layer. This thing’s like an onion, they sure as hell don’t want anybody in there.”

Jen visibly sagged. “Want a cookie, Cookie?”

“Yeah, baby.” He stopped what he was doing, blinked, and removed his glasses to rub feeling back into his eyelids. A thin crust had formed over his corneas and it hurt to moisten them again. “Hey, Samantha, you think you could get me some eye drops?”

“Sure.” Samantha knew better than to argue with him. She’d tried dozens of times to stop him from abusing his body, but he pigheadedly refused to change his habits. Eventually she’d given up trying.

Jen brought the tray of chocolate biscuits and offered them around while Samantha administered the saline drops to David’s swollen eyes. “Oh, and your coffee’s gone cold.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” He pushed back from the computer. “Man, I gotta take a break, this stint’s killing me.” He munched on a biscuit and skulled his coffee.

“Can you leave it where it is?” Samantha was hoping he’d take a break, at least until morning. She planned to deactivate his alarm after he fell asleep so he could get some decent sleep for a change.

Cookie creased his forehead and brushed the crumbs from his lap onto the carpet. “I think so; just let me activate a prop.” He’d already explained to them the necessity of such measures. Without a prop program the UG7-rated network would self-heal and all the holes Cookie had laboured to bore into the electronic defences would be gone by morning. Worse, a setback like that would break Cookie’s spirit. He’d already invested more than fifty hours in the hack. The team that had devised the UG7 protocols certainly hadn’t intend for anybody to compromise their network alone. All the previous successful UG7 hacks had required a whole team of hackers - all with implants - and a disgruntled system administrator leading the charge.

He sent the appropriate commands zinging through the wires and trusted the prop to keep his hard-won holes open during his absence. “That should do it.”

“Good.” Samantha kissed him, passionately.

Jen was used to it. It didn’t even make her feel uncomfortable anymore. Besides, she thought Cookie had earned it. Penetrating another layer was a breakthrough worth celebrating.

“We’re close, you know,” Cookie said seriously. When he’d accepted the challenge, he didn’t really believe he could do it. But every day it looked more possible.

“How long do you think?” Jen felt her stomach boiling with excitement.

“It’s hard to say, I don’t even know how many layers there are. It depends on how good their sys-admin is.” He gracefully accepted another kiss, silencing any more talk for at least ten seconds.

Jen waited until it was over and said, “You two go, would you? You’re going to steam the windows if you keep that up.”

“How about it? You tired?” Samantha’s slitted eyes peered into David’s bloodshot whites. She felt guilty for asking because he needed his sleep.

“Hell no, I’ve got hours left in me.” He smiled, scooped the light-framed Samantha into his gangly arms, and carried her to their bedroom.

Jen was amused. She knew he’d be asleep ten seconds after his head hit the pillow and she knew Samantha would complain about it the next morning. She sat alone, watching the prop’s dizzying progress. But moments later the screensaver engaged and the computer showed a luscious coral reef. Bright yellow fish hovered around the entrance to a moray eel’s cave. To the right were more fish with sharp backward-angled spines along their top ridge. And a myriad of seaweed swayed in the shimmering slant of light. She loved that picture - the turquoise water, the brilliant coral, the tiny shrimp she knew she’d see if she leaned closer. It somehow represented freedom. Strange how that works.

Then it dawned on her - she had hope. It was fragile, but it was there and it felt good. And that was enough, for now.

*

Wednesday, September 15, 2066

17:02 Groningen, The Netherlands

Perspiration beaded on Hans’s forehead. It trickled past his thinning eyebrows and stung his sensitive eyes.

Godverdomme. He blinked and rubbed a palm across his sweat-streaked temples before smearing it onto his sleeve. Yuck. His containment field was expanding; he could feel the hairs on his legs puffing away from his body with the electrostatic charge. He frowned, wondering if he’d somehow made an error and supplied the amplifier with too much power.

It’s not stable. He shook his head in dismay, wondering whether it was safe to turn it off so soon after turning it on. It’s definitely not stable. Hans flicked the switch and hoped the build-up wouldn’t fry his circuit. No smoke, that’s a good sign. He’d smelled smouldering silicon twice since breakfast and the acrid smoke was still burning his nasal passages. The last thing he wanted was another mushroom cloud of toxic particles darkening the walls of his tiny apartment. The neighbours were already getting suspicious.

With the device deactivated, he turned off the containment field. The tickle on his leg-hairs stopped and the buzz at the back of his neck receded. Hans sighed in defeat and returned to the scratchy pencil jottings that covered the graph on his clipboard. It wasn’t that he’d failed - he’d found another way it didn’t work. At times like this he reminded himself of Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb. But he didn’t have the fate of the world on his shoulders. Hans dabbed at the sweat that was already returning to his forehead. Talk about pressure.

He drank the last of his beer and grimaced; it was warm.

Hans couldn’t count the number of laws he was breaking by doing his research. He scoffed at the stupidity - his own stupidity. Is it worth it? He wondered that at least twice every experiment. Lars Olssen, his colleague, close associate, and perhaps even friend had paid the ultimate price. How far am I willing to go? And should I even bother? Nobody else is…

They were all questions beyond his capacity to answer. Some things just ‘are’ and he’d learned long ago not to argue with them. Hans van de Berg was an anti-quark expert. He sneered when he thought about it. His parents had said it was the field of the future - and they’d been right. Hans thought of all the parties he hadn’t attended at university so he could study his textbooks and simulations. What a waste. He would’ve been happier as a carpenter. Or perhaps a painter? He pondered the could-have-beens with a whimsical smile. But no. The smile faded. I’m stuck in this two-bedroom shoebox with no friends, no job, and no prospects. But he was the top of his field, wasn’t he? Hans opened his fridge; it was alarmingly empty. A stale crust of bread and a portion of smeerkaas - spreadable cheese - were all he had to satisfy the rumbling in his stomach.

He munched unenthusiastically and allowed his thoughts to drift again. He knew why he wouldn’t allow himself to quit, at least not until he ran out of money: nobody else would bother. Nobody else had the expertise and nobody else cared enough or knew enough to care at all. So that leaves me. It wasn’t a comforting thought really. What if I fail? He swallowed his gooey mouthful with difficulty.

Quantum physics wasn’t the easiest arena to learn about the politics of science. Hans had learned the hard way. Sidelined for his radical - yet correct - theories, he was quickly ostracised from the men and women he’d once considered colleagues. He still winced when he thought about it, even after so long. Isolation was like an icicle in his chest. Always a social man, the pain became almost unbearable after Lars Olssen’s assassination.

A clamour outside immediately snared Hans’s attention and he darted to the window, peering cautiously over the sill. He lived on the second story of a three-story building and he scanned the scene below for signs of trouble. An unleashed dog was loping down the cobblestoned street and had spooked a child. Understandably so - the dog was huge. Hans waited for a long time to make sure nothing more serious was afoot, smearing his palm across the pane when his breath fogged the window. It was getting cold. Summer was nearly over and already the first leaves were turning, carried away by the slightest breath of air. They tumble haphazardly, spinning and cartwheeling until the rotting began. He loved autumn; it was his favourite season, a beautiful death. It brought the familiar smell from the sugar factory, which settled over Groningen for months. He adored it, but everyone else complained about it endlessly. The conversion from sugar beets into sugar emitted an acrid odour that Hans always associated with home. Sadly, for him, this year would be the last. They were setting up a system of baffles to cleanse the air before it escaped the factory. It was a new design based on nanotechnology and the designers had touted that it would make factory-emitted air cleaner than ambient air.

Hans also enjoyed taking long walks through the city, aimlessly wandering around the market and drifting through the park. He enjoyed saying hello to the ducks and feeding them freshly baked bread from the bakery on his street. He clenched his jaw. But no more. Work, work, work. It pained him, but the walks were something from his past. He had to consider his personal security and meandering aimlessly through the city was a recipe for disaster. But his memories were alive and every night he dreamed of a time when he could wander the city again.

But for now, the next combination needed testing. Who knows, maybe this is the one…

*

Thursday, September 16, 2066

International Portal Terminals

08:34 Sydney, Australia

Dan felt the familiar change in pressure and stepped away from the white circle. Portaling from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere always tickled his lungs and he coughed to erase the irritation. He’d asked about it but nobody else experienced the same sensation. His doctor had said it was all in his head. He’d suggested that perhaps the first time Dan had portaled, he’d gone from high pressure to low pressure and the air in his lungs had shifted. Ever since, his mind attributed portaling across the hemispheres with a tickle in his chest and reproduced the sensation because he expected it.

But Dan doubted it. It’s real, no matter what anybody else says.

He was irritable from an abundant lack of results. Of the three original possibilities on his list, he’d already scratched two, but he’d had to go to London and Chicago to do it. The suspects had turned