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

were nearby. She motioned at Samantha to hurry and jogged quietly in what she still considered the ‘right’ direction. With the lights on it was easier to recognise the curvature of the corridor. They could also see the damp rising from the concrete floor, which helped muffle their footfalls. And Jen clenched a protective fist around her rucksack to squelch the muted jingle of equipment.

From somewhere behind, Jen heard voices. They were hushed, urgent voices, and they triggered another wave of adrenaline-induced panic. Suddenly the necessity for leaving the main corridor exceeded her desire to reach the 6b exit. She herded Samantha into an antechamber and quietly closed the door, thankful it didn’t screech on its rusty hinges. Then she pulled the catch that released the lock, wincing when a clack echoed through the halls. She visualised the guards trying to pinpoint the source of the sound, isolating the direction and refining their search. That won’t keep them out forever.

She swivelled just as Samantha found the switch for the lights and a flickering fluorescence illuminated their tomb.

Samantha gasped, “This is it.”

“What?”

“I recognise it. This is where James and I were.”

Jen raised an eyebrow, “You were here too?”

“Come on, it’s this way.” Samantha grabbed Jen’s hand and tugged her through a room filled with so many pipes they could barely see the concrete walls. Water had pooled on the floor from a leak and they splashed across the puddle just as someone pounded on the door behind them.

Twenty metres later they arrived at a pair of solid steel doors. They swung ponderously outward to more steps when Samantha pushed on a horizontal bar. Jen touched a warning hand to Samantha’s shoulder and silently crept up the stairs. Samantha had been right - the entrance to lecture theatre 6b was to their left. Jen carefully scanned the area and strained her hearing, trying to detect whether anybody was hiding in the dark.

“Okay, let’s go,” she whispered.

They scuttled stealthily across the carpeted floor and looped back to the same glass doors they’d used to enter the complex. The screen caught Jen’s attention and a smile tugged on her lips despite their predicament. It depicted a gagged student sweating in frustration at the cloth stuffed in his mouth. An evil-looking computer lurked in the background, and underneath in nightmare-green were the words, “Would you trust your education to a Global Integrated Silence?” The jammed images would change every five minutes. Cookie had said his alterations were so complex that it would take a technician half a day to fix. That was half a day for students to sit in the quadrangle and read the truth. Global Integrated Systems had knotted their own noose by attempting to make their circuit hack-proof. They couldn’t switch off an individual screen without affecting the network, and they weren’t likely to shut down the entire system just to disengage one jammed screen.

“Let’s get out of here,” Samantha said, stirring Jen from her reverie.

“Okay.” She felt pleased with herself. “Let’s go.”

They hurried around the edge of the quadrangle, staying low and hunched over in case security personnel were nearby, which seemed likely.

Five minutes later they were clear of the University and had a leisurely stroll to the nearest portal station. As usual, Samantha was beaming. “We did it!”

Also as usual, Jen was more subdued, though the thrill was burning inside her like an intense flame. “I just hope they can’t undo it easily.”

“I hope they shut the system down! But even if they don’t, we’ve still won.”

“This round.” Jen’s smile dissolved as she thought about the long-term ramifications of their actions and about what they still had to do. “It hasn’t even begun yet.”

Samantha disagreed. “Sure it has. It began decades ago. It just slowed down recently, that’s all. But we’re helping to speed it back up again.”

Jen shook her head and said, “No we aren’t.” The thought punched her in the stomach, knocking the wind from her. She knew they were barely more than vandals. So far. But her grandfather’s vision hadn’t rotted with his corpse; it lived on, skipping a generation to saturate Jennifer Cameron with a sense of purpose. “We haven’t started yet.” She turned to face her friend - her only friend, aside from Cookie. The other people in her life were mere acquaintances. How could she call them friends if they knew nothing about her secret life as a jammer? And she couldn’t tell them, they wouldn’t understand. Nobody understood. Nobody except Samantha and Cookie.

Samantha stopped, returned the look, and said, “Why do you say that? We’ve been jamming for two years.”

“And what have we achieved?” It came out harsher than she intended and Jen immediately regretted her tone. She bit her lip and reminded herself that Samantha wasn’t the enemy. “I don’t want to be just a jammer.”

“Then what do you want?”

Jen clenched her jaw and absently brushed her hair back over her shoulder where it belonged. “I want to be an activist. A real one.”

Samantha narrowed her eyes and studied Jen’s pensive expression. “Like your grandfather?”

Jen nodded, “Yes. I’ve given this a lot of thought.”

“How?”

Jen frowned. “I don’t honestly know…”

Silence.

“…but this is something I have to do.”

Samantha nodded, understanding perfectly. “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

Jen shrugged and started walking again. “I don’t know that either. We’ll think of something though.”

They walked in silence for a few minutes before returning to the somewhat less threatening subject of men, which provided plenty of entertainment to fill their journey back to Tweed Heads.

*

Wednesday, September 15, 2066

04:27 Andamooka, South Australia

Dan stretched lazily toward the ceiling and perversely enjoyed the pain that shot from his bruised back. The nightmares were back, haunting his sleep with memories he would have gladly erased. The night was silent, especially out in the desert. His property was over 30 kilometres from the centre of town. Nobody, not even the locals, came out this way.

He shambled to his bathroom and ran some pink-tinged water for a shower. The hot water system groaned protestingly through the pipes he’d personally installed in the walls. At least, Dan noted, the damn computer selected the right temperature. He’d been having trouble with it recently and was thinking about getting someone out to examine it. An undersized fan laboured to siphon off the steam billowing from the cubicle and Dan slid into the curtain of heat, closing the glass behind him.

The warmth seeped through his body, massaging the stiffness from his muscles by pelting them with needle-like drops. It stung, but Dan liked it that way. His lips twisted into a savage smile when he remembered how his wife had endlessly complained. She’d enjoyed taking showers with him but could never stand his settings. And for his part, Dan had never enjoyed the tepid showers she’d preferred.

The agony of recollection thumped him like a fist in the stomach and knocked him to his knees. It took all his strength to keep from totally collapsing as he fought to keep the floodgate of memories closed. He remembered the last time it had happened, how his limp body had covered the drain and the bathroom had flooded while he just lay there, shaking. It wasn’t something he wanted to repeat.

He regained his feet, then mindlessly soaped his skin and rinsed the grit from his body. He spent long minutes digging the dirt from beneath his fingernails, ignoring the sting of soap in the cuts on his hands.

Katherine, Katherine… Katherine. He thought his wife’s name with each scrape of the brush under his nails.

There were some things you just couldn’t let go.

And this was one of them.

The best he could hope for was to cram the thoughts back into his ill-treated mind and hope they never resurfaced. Of course, it never worked. But it was effective enough to let Dan live something that outwardly resembled a normal life.

Finished with the shower, he dried and dressed in work clothes - another set of ragged garments from the endless sea of ragged garments brimming in his cupboard. He glanced at his watch and a bemused smile flirted across his lips. He remembered the advertisements PortaNet had used to extol the benefits of the portals, back in ‘32 when the company was just starting. He wasn’t old enough to remember the original transmissions; he’d seen them on a tribute-to-portal-technology show aired on the company’s twenty-fifth anniversary. One particular commercial came vividly to mind - it depicted two social scientists explaining how portals would eliminate jetlag, allowing businesspeople to travel in comfort.

Dan scoffed.

How wrong they’d been. If anything, the jetlag situation had grown worse. Dan’s circadian rhythm was still working on London time. He’d spent most of the previous week there and it had thoroughly confused his wake-sleep cycle.

He had no inclination of returning to bed and allowing his nightmares to manifest again. So, without anything else to distract his roving mind, Dan started the day in earnest. He cast a guilty look at his gym equipment, idle for months now. He sighed and walked quickly past. It seemed to laugh at him from beneath a layer of dust in the corner of his den.

Breakfast was the same as it had been every morning for eleven months - rolled oats sprinkled with sultanas. It was the only thing he could be bothered making.

Then Dan looked at his bottle. Its plastic surface was glossy white, as though Xantex had fabricated it in pristine laboratory conditions. Dan doubted it somehow. He held it loosely in his hands and read the prescription label, the same as he did every morning.

“Zyclone.” His lips felt soiled just speaking the name. It was, theoretically, the most powerful anti-depressant ever to come from a Xantex test-tube. Or so they kept telling everyone. Personally, Dan wasn’t sure he felt any different.

That’s a lie. He tried to ignore the voice, but it was persistent. You’re losing yourself, mate.

It was true, he felt numb. But he doubted that was any fault of the chemical in the capsules. Some emotions were stronger than ever - fury, grief, remorse. They were still there. Perhaps the edge was gone, but they were still powerful enough to wind him, to bring him to his knees.

He flipped the cap, tossed a capsule to the back of his tongue and swallowed without water, all in one fluid motion. It scraped as it went down despite the gelatine coating and he reached for some orange juice to wash the feeling from his throat. Hmm… not many left. He made a mental note to stop by a pharmacy within the next few days.

With a resigned sigh, he rubbed his fatigued eyes and cleaned up the kitchen before retreating to his study. Then he sank into his recliner and rested his feet on the desk. It was his favourite chair, perfectly moulded to the shape of his back and buttocks. He snuggled deeper into the fabric. It smelled musty; he admitted that. And Katherine had pleaded with him to get a new one, but he just couldn’t bare the thought of parting with it. Especially now. She’d said it didn’t go with any of their other furniture and not even Free-Breeze could remove the smell wafting from the cushions. Yes, Dan was glad he still had it; the study wouldn’t be the same if he’d relented. But today the ugly bruise on his back made it… not uncomfortable, but not comfortable either.

He foolishly let his eyes wander to a photograph of his wife. Slowly, gently, he reached out and held the frame, gazing into her brilliant blue eyes.

“Katherine.”

Eleven months had passed since that cruel twist of fate had wrenched her from him,