Voices in the Stream: Phase 02 (The Eighteenth Shadow) Read online

  “Fair enough.”

  “So there is a reason you, of all people, are sitting on this bench at this particular moment. Just like there is a reason that Kansas, created in 1861 at the dawn of antique America’s bloody Civil War, chose to call itself The Free State.”

  William took another drag off his cigarette.

  He was grateful for the smoke, “Honestly, you’re losing me a bit, Mr. Abner. What are we talking about?”

  Dax sat up on the bench, removed his circular, wire-rimmed sunglasses and looked straight at him, “William, I run a still.”

  William realized he had never actually seen the man’s eyes. He was surprised at how amber they were, like fields of burning wheat. There was something else about the man’s gaze. William instantly felt even more relaxed, light headed… yet incredibly focused. The colors of the Earth around them seemed to grow brighter.

  A couple of seconds passed before he responded, “I’m more okay with stills than you could know.”

  Dax smiled tightly and recovered his eyes with his sunglasses.

  He started to say something more but was interrupted. The garage bay on the barn rolled open with a patterned, mechanical hum. Out floated a large flatbed hovtruck. The hovtruck was painted green and had a cheerful looking pumpkin logo on its door surrounded by white lettering that read, Abner Family Pumpkin & Gourd. Its large levfans displaced so much air that it was impossible to talk as it floated by. The grass on either side of the asphalt pad leading from the barn was blown flat. Hugo was piloting. William could see LOFN hanging her head out the back cabin window and staring at him as they floated past, headed down the driveway towards the hovroad.

  As soon as they could speak again, Dax turned back to William and raised his eyebrows, “Pumpkins being delivered? In April?”

  William dropped the nub of his cigarette to the grass and tamped it out with the heel of his boot.

  “What exactly are you trying to tell me, Mr. Abner?”

  Dax didn’t miss a beat.

  He tented his fingers, his voice clear and precise, “What I am telling you, William, is that that outbound hovtruck contains 2,500 liters of 100 proof potato vodka produced in my fusion powered, subterranean still. The truck will float to Manhattan, Kansas. There, the payload will be sold to a black market distributor name Earl King. In addition to being able to sprint at 129 kilometers per hour across open land, dig through a brick wall and leap five meters vertical from a stand still, the DOGS unit on board that hovtruck you know as LOFN is also capable of functioning as a telemetry relay for holographic computer streams. The control transmissions, which serve to protect the cargo and occupants while in route, emanate from the framework of the barn itself. The boards contain strands of fiber optic cable at their core, you see? In essence, the barn is a massive satellite receiver. The dual cupolas along the ridge line function as bipolar transmission terminals.” The edge of Dax’s lips curled into a sly smile, “As of this moment, you are one of four living people who know this information.”

  William remained silent.

  Dax smiled, “Agreed. Words are of far less importance than understanding. So understand this. North America’s next civil war has begun. At the moment, its battles are fought mostly on the holostream, but that will change.” Dax waved his hands to illustrate, “On one side you have the white, attempting to propagate a new era of heightened surveillance and end what remains of North American privacy. On the other you have us, the black, the Traditionalists. Those who fight to preserve free will. For what is life without freedom?”

  “Death.”

  “Exactly!” Dax agreed. “We fight and die for the right of any consenting adult citizen to make a choice. Now I’m going to ask you to make a choice.” Dax gestured west in the direction of the city, “You can walk away and I’ll have a hovcar float you to the maglev station. Keep the money, return to whatever life you know and pretend we never met.” Dax turned on the park bench and pointed at the barn, “Or, you can walk across the lawn with me into that barn. Once inside I’m going to introduce you to four additional DOGS units, two of which are exponentially more advanced than the LOFN model.” Dax Abner turned back to William and looked at him over the tops of his sunglasses, eyes on fire, “If this meeting goes as I believe it shall, you will immediately begin your first day of work as my new chief of security. I have DOGS units that I cannot properly control. To achieve my goals, I need a tether to manage them. You, William Thomas Angevine, are that tether. So what’s it going to be?”

  Fragmented Remains from the Cloud Diary of Daxane Julius Abner – July 27, 2076 2:01 am – Six Years Three Months Before Event.

  “…I walk out the farmhouse door and become a machine. Daxane Julius Abner; as much cyborg as these DOGS units Joan now has on watch. The creatures are amazing. Were only I covered in BIOSKIN©!

  Today I attended my fourth monthly CNED meeting at the Mason’s Hall downtown. It is painful how they blather on, though the small fortune I donated to their efforts has ingratiated the fools. Unfortunately, they know nothing about what else takes place in a slaughterhouse. Besides the sonic lobotomy, that is.

  My theory is that it is a push, a courtezan-like shift of perception that causes the headaches. This push turns man to humdroid, permanently ingratiating them to the white order. All humdroids have one of two destinies from there – the work camps – or CNED.

  Other wheels spinning.

  There is a sheriff who is sly, Dale Proudstar. His office hacked my combud traffic for six months after I made an initial quarter million D$ donation. Naturally he and his deputies discovered nothing but the busy comings and goings of an expat philanthropist.

  This leads me to mention Joan… who is beyond brilliant. My bias regarding the efficacy of a female dolphin was unfounded. Nonetheless, the sheriff distrusts everyone (as he should). There is one force that no dolphin, no DOGS unit, even the power of allurement cannot overcome, and that is intuition. The sheriff knows something is out there. He feels it in his skin. I am building a decoy still on the west side in an abandoned barn by the antique coal factory across the river… next week it explodes. A bad solar relay is dangerou… UNSCHEDULED HARDWARE DESTRUCT / DATA COMPROMISE / INITIATE BACKUP.EXE FOR REINTEGRATION FORMA… LOSS. LOSS. LOS”

  Chapter 2.2 – The Courtezans

  The Lawrence Journal World Sunday Edition – Editorial Holopage 02 – February 25, 2080 “TEN-SENT ANSWERS” FEATURING SHERIFF DALE PROUDSTAR by Martin Wringle, LJW

  This section of our report on the legendary Darkpool Labs’ Coyotes features quotes from my personal interview with Douglas County Sheriff Dale Proudstar. Sheriff Proudstar responded to the following questions: 1) Where did the Coyote come from? 2) What progress has been made in capturing the fugitive arsonist and alcohol addict, Tara Dean?

  Re Question 1, Sheriff Proudstar: “The origin of the deactivated Coyote(s) is not known. There were numerous heavy borg prints in the soil surrounding the crash site, but only a single set of prints left the scene. A tracking drone lost this trail approximately six kilometers away on the banks of the Wakarusa River near the confluence where it joins the Kaw. The Coyote chassis itself has been shipped to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it is being analyzed by FCC scientists at MIT.

  Re Question 2, Sheriff Proudstar: “As for fugitive, Tara Dean, despite rumors circulating on PingMe (and other social streams), we have no confirmed surveillance of this individual on the streets of downtown Lawrence. She is not, I repeat, not believed to be in the area any longer. Speaking to associated rumors of malfunctioning drones and city FR systems, I know that you, Martin, ordered breakfast at The Rowdy Pony Coffeehouse this morning at 7:34 am. You paid with a Lawrence Credit Union MasterCard scan from your holotab, had an almond milk latte, a blueberry muffin and a two strips of extra crispy synthbacon. Now you got any more questions about the efficacy of my tech, or can we end this circus early so I can get back to work?”

  There you have it, folks, straight from the sheriff’
s mouth. Look for more updates in the days to come, and as always, thank you for reading The Journal World.

  Today’s Ten-Sent Answers sponsored by PingMe.

  February 2080 – Two years Eight Months Before Event.

  No infinite sky awaited the opening of her eyes. She had hoped for sky, but expected to be strapped to a hospital bed, once more relegated to counting white dots on lime green ceiling panels. There had been a single window in that room where she was held. The window could not be opened. It had provided an epic vista of the hospital docking lot. Beyond that, a hemp field turned fallow for winter.

  So it was that Tara Dean’s gaze came to favor the blue of the sky above.

  When she was confined to bed, all she had was the blue of the sky. Though when that sky was not filled with passing clouds, it brought no more joy than might a cobalt rectangle painted on a wall. Once in those thirty days of isolation, a CO2 scrubber had slid by the window like a fat ant dangling its abnormally long legs through an azure pool, gone as fast as it had come. At night, the window brought only darkness tinged with the yellow LED blush of the docking lot lamps. Sometimes the black, bulbous form of a Greystone security drone would float past. The drones were orbiting, legless ticks. She had found them as ominous and stupid as she found the winter landscape stern and austere.

  With such memories fresh in her mind, Tara was forced to blink several times before she could accept the reality of her new surroundings. Instead of hospital LED’s, blazing natural sunlight poured in from three separate windows. At first, the light made her temples quiver with pain. She was in bed, in a bedroom. She slowly sat up. The fingers of her right hand were healed, though an adaptive compression wrap still supported her arm from the elbow down.

  Someone must have welded me up with nanotech.

  She flexed her fingers and carefully rotated her wrist. The muscles were sore, joints creaking and popping like she was an old, homeless lady wandering the windy viaducts of New Riverside. But everything worked. Someone had also dressed her in yellow pajamas. With bunnies on them!

  Did I just wake up in hell? Where are my damn clothes!?

  One of the windows was cracked, allowing in refreshing gusts of chilly winter air. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose.

  Directly outside the windows, the leafless branches of an enormous tree were silhouetted against the muted backdrop of a February afternoon. A small flock of goldfinch and a few sparrows chirped amongst the branches, bathing merrily in the 2 pm sun. She knew it was 2:00 because the red, 3D digits of a retro holoclock were projected in the space above the wooden, six panel door opposite her bed. The view overhead was not of lime green ceiling panels, rather clean sheet rock with a modern ceiling fan that lazily circulated the air. The walls of the room were painted a muted tan, accented with conservative, clean-lined alabaster trim. A pair of enormous, orange and green abstract paintings drew the eye and the floors were shiny, ancient hardwoods, the only obvious indicator of the age of the… house?

  It must be a house.

  And the bed, there were certainly no bio-braces holding her in place. It was a queen size with a contemporary, dark wood frame that sat low to the floor. She rested upon a feather mattress, surrounded by poofy pillows and silky, Egyptian combed hemp-sheets that smelled of new fallen rain.

  The serenity of the whole experience was… surreal.

  Is this peace?

  She expected a baton wielding CNED agent to kick in the door at any minute. A ferocious robotic fox might burst from the closet and start gnawing on her leg. A security drone might center itself in the window and begin launching botulinum darts at her face… but no. She waited… still no. None of these things happened. The wind blew lazily without affair. The birds chirped. The holoclock flipped to 2:01.

  On a bedside table to her left was a pitcher of lemon water and three glasses of varying size. She pulled the sheets off and carefully, one at a time, spun her legs over the edge of the bed and touched her bare feet to the floor. Her toes curled at the cold. She had just picked up an empty glass when the door opened abruptly, and a man stepped into the room. Startled, she dropped the glass, eyes wide with fright. It shattered on the wood, and she yanked the sheets back over herself, afraid.

  The man who had entered was clean shaven with a natural olive complexion. As soon as she realized she was not in immediate peril, Tara’s first thought was how ridiculously handsome he was. The man was dressed in a crisp, tan suit.

  Who wears a suit? Government? No. Too stylish.

  He stared at her with devastating, yellow eyes that made her feel both exposed and comfortable, looking like a model from a cologne advertisement in a gentleman’s holozine.

  She was about to ask him just what the Dogdamn hell was going on when he smiled and said, “Hello, Tara. My name is Daxane Julius Abner. You are in the guest room at my home twenty kilometers east of Lawrence.” He held up a finger in a cordial request for silence before she could say anything more and touched the combud in front of his ear, “Can you please send the Kleendroyd© to Ms. Dean’s room?” His warm, yellow eyes again fixed on hers as he said, “Thank you, Joan.”

  Tara was alarmed to find herself getting slightly aroused by the plush timbre of this man’s voice.

  Only a total nympho gets turned on three minutes after waking up from a coma!

  Had she been in a coma? And why wasn’t she in control? Tara had been able to turn her sexuality on and off like a light switch since she was fifteen. Yet here she was, swelling uncontrollably like an eleven year old girl on her first pony ride.

  Get it together!

  She pulled the sheets up a little further and blinked defensively, trying to sound exasperated, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. But who the fuck are you?”

  The man was as sincere in demeanor as he was attractive in appearance, and she could sense that none of it was disingenuous, “I told you, Ms. Dean. My name is Daxane Abner. You are in my private residence east of Lawrence. We picked you up on the hovroad seventeen days ago in the midst of what can only be described as rather dire circumstances.”

  Seventeen days… Jeezus.

  There was a contemporary red leather chair positioned conspicuously close to the edge of the bed.

  He gestured towards it, “May I?”

  “Yeah, whatever I guess.” She drew her knees closer into her chest, irritated by the fact that she was unable to take her eyes off this man.

  As he walked closer, he swayed for a moment, as if light headed. His smiling, warm eyes stayed fixed on hers. He stood beside her bed without speaking and unbuttoned his jacket. He removed it, folded it carefully over the back of the chair and sat down. The closer he came, the warmer Tara got. She felt a little light headed herself, maybe even stoned.

  Did they drug me?

  No. Because at the same time she felt remarkably lucid.

  The strangely handsome, well dressed man who called himself Daxane sat in the red chair and placed his fingers together in a tent in his lap. Tara was used to men staring at her, but this was different. It was like he was staring through her. A few seconds passed as they studied each other, not speaking. Tara began feeling utterly calm.

  They must have drugged me.

  But she was aware of things about this man that she could not possibly know! He was born in London, to parents who immigrated from the Middle East and…

  “You’re Lebanese,” she said, frowning as she looked at him. “You’re 37 years old. You read and write computer language, quantum esolang code. You like chocolate soy milk and…” her eyes grew wide and then she closed them, trying to process the waves of information that began slamming into her brain, “This is not a farm. This is not a pumpkin farm!” she said. “There are walls of red eyes underground, a cradle of water… and this is…” she winced as if stuck with a needle, “the house where you will… die?”

  Tara opened her eyes in shock. A tear ran down her cheek, turning a few of her brown freckles black.
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  The sadness that accompanied this last realization was crushing, “Jeezus fucking Francis, man! Who the sky are you, and what the hell is going on!?”

  The man’s face changed from a smile to sadness. He leaned forward in the red chair, “I am so sorry.” He reached up and touched his combud and said, “Not now, Joan,” then he reached for her hand. She wanted to draw away, but her fingers wove instinctively through his as though another force compelled her actions. When their fingers touched, the feather bed, the room, the colorful abstract paintings, the blue sky, chirping finches and passing clouds – all fell away. She felt a sense of peace she had never known. His skin on hers was like warm soul morphine.

  He continued at last, a tear falling from his eye, “I am Daxane.”

  She said, “Yes, spelled d-a-x-a-n-e, but it is pronounced, Dox-on. That is how your mother intended. Your friends call you Dax for short. They all mispronounce it and… if your mother was here, she wouldn’t like that.”

  Another tear fell from his eye, pupils black and big against the now thin outline of gold iris, “Good lord. How do you know this?”

  She wiped her eyes but the tears kept falling, “Fuck if I know, dude!” She sobbed with elation, “I just woke up here. I don’t know where I am! But I do! The cops will be looking for me. I need to go! Oh Jeezus, I should go, I really should float…”

  Just then a door slammed somewhere in the house. An aggressive clamoring grew louder and louder, feet on hardwood floors, feet on stairs, many feet moving rapidly closer. Tara screamed, eyes wide as a large black dog burst through the door, turning its head back and forth in a surreal blur of speed between Tara and this man named Daxane.

  “What the Dogdamn…?!” Tara shouted, as next a tall, blonde man in blue jeans and a red flannel shirt wearing a cowboy hat walked into the room. She pulled the blanket up further.

  The man looked at Dax with alarm, “Boss! You okay? Joan told us you cut the com and your heart rate was going through the roof!” The tall man looked at Tara and smiled, “Now I see why.”