The Intruder (12 page)

"No."

Her abrupt answer surprised him. "Just flat-out 'no'? No maybe's, or possibilities, or anything?"

MacKenzie shook her head. "Sorry, just, ... 'flat-out no.'" She looked at Hanna and they both giggled. Apparently it wasn't a Society expression.

"Privacy is sacrosanct on the hole," she continued. "Nobody can send you anything, except mail, unless you want it. And you can even filter mail."

"But isn't there some information that goes to everybody? Like the clock, or, ... I don't know, emergency stuff. Civil defense. Warnings about invading dragons. That kind of thing." Hanna laughed.

"Yeah, there's lots of stuff that comes off the hole to everybody's implant, but it's not visual information. It's kind of background noise." Jeremy took note of that. "You don't see the embedded messages unless you want to. What I mean is, your implant gets notice that there's an emergency message. You get that notice however you have your implant set, and then you have to access the file. Nothing comes to you automatically." 

Jeremy asked about the black floaters he saw the first couple days he had the implant. 

"Well, okay," MacKenzie conceded, "some of the noise is 'visual,' in one sense. But that's an accident, first of all, and it's just noise, not information. Most people don't see it, and if they did, it wouldn't be anything recognizable. Maybe our brains learn to ignore it."

He remembered Dr. Berry's comments about his enlarged occipital region -- a region that does visual processing. Could there be some connection?

"Is that noise at a special frequency, or something like that?" he asked.

MacKenzie shook her head. "'Frequency' is the wrong word, but it has a characteristic signature to it. We just automatically filter it out, ..." She paused for a minute and looked hard at Jeremy. "But you might not, since you're a newbie. It's possible, I guess, that some visual information could be coming through, like the noise that makes the floaters."

She looked down at the table, hard in thought. Jeremy looked over at Hanna to make sure she was doing okay while he and MacKenzie monopolized the conversation. She reached over and grabbed his hand, which was resting on the table-top, and gave it a friendly squeeze. She nodded her head at MacKenzie, as if to say, "She's the one to figure this stuff out."

"Jeremy, I have an idea," MacKenzie said after a minute. "I just wrote a little program that can test what we were talking about."

Jeremy looked at her in surprise. "You just wrote it?"

"She's amazing," Hanna said.

MacKenzie rolled her eyes. "It's no big deal, guys, but listen -- I'm going to send a message to you and Hanna, and I'm going to put some noise in it. I want to know if you can see anything when you get it."

They both nodded, and a second later Jeremy heard MacKenzie's voice through his implant. At the same time he saw a small dark patch, like a storm cloud, hover over his chocolate malt. He looked quickly at Hanna, whose expression told him all he needed to know. He looked up at MacKenzie and smiled. She mouthed 'wow' and stared off into space, deep in thought again.

Chapter 7

"This is amazing," MacKenzie said after another minute of stunned silence. "Jeremy, this is ...." She shook her head at a loss for words. "I just have to show this to my professors. Nobody has ever been able to make this kind of communication work. I don't think you realize the implications of this. I could do my doctoral thesis on the message I just sent you. I need to ...."

Jeremy cut her off, shaking his head and holding his finger to his mouth, asking her to be quiet. "I'm sure I don't understand the technical aspects of it, MacKenzie, but there's something else we need to talk about, before you tell the world. And this isn't the place. Can we get out of here?"

Hanna and MacKenzie looked at each other as if they didn't quite understand why he was being so mysterious, but they were willing to play along. They shrugged and got up to leave. Jeremy didn't speak until they were a block away from the Chocolate Bar and on a somewhat lonely stretch of pavement.

"I've got a story to tell you both, but I need your word that you won't repeat any of it to anybody." Jeremy looked seriously at Hanna and MacKenzie, who almost laughed at him. MacKenzie was still thinking of all she could do with what she had just learned, and how it would impact her academic schedule. 

"What? You want me to keep this secret?" MacKenzie protested. "This is the biggest discovery in hole communications in a decade."

Jeremy hung his head and thought for a minute. He spoke without looking up. "I couldn't ask you to keep what we've just talked about secret. That wouldn't be fair." He looked up and stared MacKenzie in the eye. "But I want you to swear to me that you won't tell anybody what I'm about to tell you. Both of you," he added, looking at Hanna. "And I think that after you've heard my story, you'll want to keep quiet about the other stuff as well. At least until we can figure it all out."

Hanna and MacKenzie shared a meaningful look. They whispered something to one another, and then Hanna looked back at Jeremy.

"Well, it turns out that your luck is better than you know," she said. "We're both Covenanters."

She might as well have said they were newspapers for all the good it did Jeremy. He looked at her with a blank expression.

As they turned aside to sit on a park bench, Hanna briefly explained what she meant. Covenanters were a religious group whose devotional practices centered around a series of covenants, or oaths, made with God, and in some cases, with others. Putting it in terms Jeremy would understand, they were a modern form of Puritanism.

Hanna didn't explain the details, but both Hanna and MacKenzie were sworn to keep confidences sacred at all costs. It had something to do with the initiation rites they started back during the riots. The survival of the fledgling Covenanter movement depended on secrecy.

Jeremy didn't understand it all, but he got the idea that they would rather die than reveal something they had promised to keep secret, and they both promised to keep his story to themselves.

Religion didn't have much of a hold on Jeremy, and he was not a little disappointed that Hanna had caught it -- he was sure it would put a damper on future dates -- but a sacred promise of silence sounded just perfect for his present situation. He told them everything.

*
             
*
             
*

They were still on the park bench well after dark. It was a warm, late-Spring night, and it would have been much more enjoyable if they didn't have such serious things to discuss. Jeremy finished his story about his experiences with the images, and Hanna and MacKenzie were still trying to take it all in. Hanna was the first to speak.

"It seems to be more than a coincidence that Dr. Berry had you under surveillance, and then there was one of those things at the public terminal, watching you."

MacKenzie nodded. "Yeah, that seemed just a little too coincidental to me, too. And you said that she went off suddenly after your meeting tonight?"

"She said she received an emergency call. She is a doctor, after all."

Hanna and MacKenzie were silent for another minute, thinking things over, but then Jeremy got a message through his implant.

From Dr. Berry. I need to see you right away.

Another coincidence?
he wondered. This was getting uncanny.

To Dr. Berry. I'm a little busy right now. I'll make an appointment with your office.
He didn't know what else to say.

From Dr. Berry. This is urgent. I've just received a new batch of analysis of the data from your implant. I need to see you right away.

Hanna and MacKenzie realized something was going on and they looked at him, curious. "Are you seeing something?" Hanna asked. Jeremy ignored her and began searching around for something on the ground. They looked at him like he had gone mad. He grabbed a stick and started writing in the dirt.

"It's Dr. Berry," he wrote, and then realized how silly he was being. "Why am I doing this? She can't hear what I'm saying."

MacKenzie shook her head and suppressed a laugh.

"She says she needs to see me," he explained.

MacKenzie immediately lost her mirth and shared a concerned look with Hanna. They both shook their heads.

"No way, Jeremy," Hanna said. "I don't trust her. Don't see her."

From Dr. Berry. Please respond. I need to see you right away.

Jeremy didn't know what to do, and he was beginning to fear that Dr. Berry could get a lot more information from him through her supervisory link than she had told him. He made a rash decision and cut the link. Hanna and MacKenzie were still looking at him, waiting for some explanation, but Jeremy had no time. He wasn't accustomed to managing his implant and talking at the same time.

There was an almost immediate response over his implant.

From Dr. Berry. This is not a game, Jeremy. Restore the link and come immediately to my office.

He reset his mail server parameters to block all incoming messages from Dr. Berry. He fumbled about, looking for the right settings. He was beginning to get frantic, and Hanna and MacKenzie could see it.

The three of them caught the eye of a passing policeman. He slowed his hovercar to watch what was going on.

"What's the matter, Jeremy? What can we do?" Hanna and MacKenzie asked. Jeremy's eyes were darting back and forth, trying to decide how to reconfigure his implant so Dr. Berry couldn't get to him. He was so absorbed in what he was doing he couldn't even hear their questions.

MacKenzie looked away for a minute while Hanna grabbed his shoulders and looked into his eyes. "How can I help you? What's the matter?"

Jeremy looked at her with far away eyes. "She's getting really serious," was all he said before he was interrupted by another message.

From Workstation 10 at the Berry Clinic.
Order
. Surrender yourself to police custody immediately.

Did she know there was an officer
nearby
? How could she?

The officer turned on his lights and got out of his car. 

MacKenzie finished whatever she was doing and grabbed Jeremy's arm. "Trust me," was all she said.

From MacKenzie.
Order
. Content unspecified.

Accept
,
Jeremy immediately replied. He knew he was in way over his head with the implant, and MacKenzie would know what to do. He watched as his implant performed a dizzying sequence of unfamiliar functions. All his mail and privacy settings were reconfigured. There was nothing for him to do but sit back and watch. Hanna realized that MacKenzie could handle the technical side of things, so she walked toward the policeman. He was an older man with a kindly face.

"Hi, officer," she said in her sweetest voice, with just a hint of apology. "Thanks for helping out, but it's no big deal. We were at the Chocolate Bar tonight." Some of the desserts offered at the Chocolate Bar were intoxicating, and it was not uncommon for college students to get ill after a visit. The officer gave Hanna an understanding look.

"You young ladies take care of him for me," he said, seemingly satisfied. He shook his head at Jeremy and walked back to his car.

"No, not again," Jeremy groaned. He had rolled his head over the back of the park bench and was looking into the sky. The officer apparently thought he was having a wave of nausea from over-indulgence and chuckled to himself. But what pulled the color from Jeremy's face was what he saw.

Another phantom was slowly cruising down the street about 100 feet in the air, scanning the ground, looking for something. Jeremy quickly got up from the park bench and sat under a tree, but as he did he saw another image coming up the street from another direction, several blocks down. They hadn't seen him yet, and the tree wasn't going to provide adequate cover. 

"I need to hide," he said aloud, eyes darting back and forth. Fortunately the police officer was in his car now and didn't overhear him. "There're two of them right now, floating along up there," he said, pointing discreetly up with his head. MacKenzie foolishly looked up, and the phantom noticed her. It stared down at the three of them for a moment and then dove toward them at incredible speed. The other, still a few blocks away, followed.

Jeremy panicked. He got up and ran into the park, looking for somewhere to hide, darting from bush to bush. Hanna and MacKenzie followed as fast as they could. When MacKenzie caught up to him she just about screamed, "just close your eye. They're not really here. They can't hurt you."

Jeremy stopped and stood up straight, closing his left eye. He gave a weak smile, but kept opening and closing his left eye. "It's no use," he said in a defeated tone. "I can choose not to look at them if I want, but they still see me. They're right here," he said, pointing just to his left and right. The ruse that he couldn't see them wasn't going to work
anymore
. The images were staring at him intently, studying his face. Jeremy plopped down on the grass in surrender.

"What can I do?" he asked MacKenzie.

"I don't know, Jeremy, but they can't do anything to you, can they?"