Con Code Read online

Most importantly, I need them to get me inside the building so I can locate my data stick and download all the files into the currently running donor program inside Geo’s iceberg of a facility. Certainly, the excavated depths of that hill house active donor games. I have no time to waste.

  I fight my urge to choke them into telling me about where they came from and why they need to talk to Geo, fairly certain my game programming is taking over. I can walk this line. Obtaining information and controlling human assets doesn’t have to mean body count. I’m not saying it won’t, but it probably doesn’t have to.

  None of the goods surrounding me match the woman and her companion. But I can’t approach them with a gaping bite out of my own wrist and wires loose. I slip back into the space between two vendors. A long sleeve sweater knit in muted gray and off-white wool looks to be my best option for covering my self-inflicted wound. I scold myself to think things through before taking action, to be human. Be more human. Think. Think before acting. At least before violently acting.

  The sweater pings several skin sensors at once. It must be intolerable for humans to wear this stuff. Why do they? It not only itches, little hairs poke, and the material chafes coarse fibers everywhere it connects with bare skin. What it lacks in wearability, it makes up for in sleeve length. Thankfully, the sleeves fall to my knuckles, covering my wrists entirely.

  Conversation between the woman and her associate doesn’t rise above the crowd. I’ve lost them over my distraction with the irritating sweater. Also, the climate is hot. Though I don’t suffer temperate discomfort, I’m aware of the melty feeling from hot wool on rubber-like skin. I smell of wet animal and burnt plastic combined. This sweater makes no sense. Why do they sell clothing like this?

  Stop being distracted. I remind myself. There is no focus switch inside my head. I walk behind some markets and re-emerge into the pathway standing straighter, more dignified, though with a slight torque of my neck where the top of the sweater rubs just above my clavicle framework.

  The woman and man stand several yards away. An open vehicle door greets them at the curb defining a walking street verses a driving street. I move quickly to catch them before the door closes. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation.”

  The broad rim of the woman’s hat lifts. Sunlight burns away the flattering shadowed filter her brim provides. Her sharp features and smooth skin stretch tight over her pointed nose. Up close, she looks stretched, unnatural. “Yes?” Her dark eyes scan me in the top-to-bottom, one-shot method I’ve come to recognize as a judgment instead of a collection of data. “Who are you?”

  “I work with Geovanni.”

  The woman’s tight skin attempts to lift her painted on eyebrows. She manages to open her eyes a little wider. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we were meeting anyone here. I thought…” She checks with her companion out the side of her eye.

  “I wasn’t aware either, Ma’am,” he responds.

  All of my systems push harder. Unable to control the rush of transmission fluids lubricating my joints and nervous system, I pretend to breathe, expanding and contracting my chest cavity. It’s weirdly calming. My ear tubes expand, something pops where the pressure builds too high. I step closer. All I want is information, I remind myself. I’m not here to eliminate these people.

  “It wasn’t a planned meeting,” I lie. The driver of the vehicle jots his head between the two of us with a confused expression. He doesn’t speak English. “But I did order the driver.”

  “Malik?” her voice rises to a tone that means her companion is failing her.

  “I called a car, Ma’am. I assure you.”

  Not wanting to get into a fight over the car and unsure how to sway the situation to my favor—to be honest, I still don’t know what my end-goal is here—I change tactic. “I’m sorry to get off to the wrong foot. You know how it is, ordering transportation.” I extend my non-maimed hand. “I’m…” I can’t say, Jennie. They know Geo, what if they know who I am? Recognize my name from television coverage? I don’t look exactly like the girl who went in the building thanks to all the recent upgrades, but my name has been passed around like a juicy secret. “I’m sorry, the sun is so hot.” That sounds human, good stall me. Jennie came from the Gencode nickname I grew to identify as myself while inside the game. But, I was never Gencode. The only code that ever marred my skin was Con. “I’m Connie. Mind if we share the ride?” I gently release my hand, careful not to show too much strength in the grip of my handshake.

  The man, Malik, might be a robot for how little he moves. Seriously, I’m not sure he’s breathing. “Ma’am?” he stands close to her side, between the open door and the woman, like he thinks I’m going to leap impulsively inside the vehicle.

  “Oh, I don’t care. Just get me out of this sun.” She slides onto the seat, sticking to the leather material and leaving a momentary heat signature where her palm touches.

  “Together?” The driver walks to the passenger side of the vehicle to open the front passenger door for me.

  I nod a ‘thanks’ and practice a demure smile I’ve been working on from observing Abby with Ben. The driver responds by closing my door before I’m completely inside, knocking my right thigh with the interior handle. I let the smile drop from my lips. Maybe I just need more practice.

  No one speaks once all the doors close. The car circles around different grades of the off-white structures before finally turning onto a road lining up with the ‘black glass building’. The lack of conversation in the car has an unpleasant effect on passenger vision. I notice the driver staring down at my left forearm more than three times. There’s an odd bulge in the fabric where ragged skin won’t lay smooth no matter how often I rub my working hand over the top of the sleeve to encourage it to cooperate. We need a sound distraction.

  “Investors?” I ask, turning slightly so the passengers in the back know I’m addressing them. The motion also gives me a chance to move my left hand under my butt. I’ve seen people sit on their hands frequently. I have no idea why they do it. It’s not good for finger circulation, I’m certain. Since my fingers aren’t entirely responsive in that hand yet anyway and I’m imitating human behavior, it’s a brilliant move for me.

  The woman and Malik avoid my deliberate move to engage them in conversation by turning their heads— severely so there’s no mistaking the intent behind their neck strain— to stare out the window. Either way, I get my needed distraction.

  “What’s going on ahead?” the woman asks.

  Large crowds block the road. It’s not right in front of us yet and I had forgotten about the obstacle of dealing with whatever faction currently riots against Geovanni. There’s got to be a way to use the chaos to my advantage. “You haven’t heard about the riots?” I say.

  “Geo didn’t mention it when we talked last night.” The woman retracts her head from the windows, squaring herself to me as though I might have some solution to the annoyance she finds in a crowd.

  The driver slows down, even though we’re nowhere near the maw of people.

  “You’ll be fine.” I motion for the driver to continue forward. I question if it’s the smart thing to do, but instinct tells me this woman responds to confidence. She shifts in my direction, as though I’m the compass of her well-being in this vehicle.

  “The crowd looks imposing,” she says.

  I don’t know what variables I’m working with, thus can’t determine the risk of using the mass of disgruntled people as cover. If the Commander were here, he’d have a plan. I never thought I’d say this, but I miss the Commander’s insane strategizing. What he lacked in empathy he made up for in elaborate determination to be on top of every situation. I could use him right now, if only to know which side I’m on.

  The problem with not having a plan centers around the fact that I don’t have a plan. I also lack anyone with whom I trust to strategize. The woman in the back seat with Malik continues to shuffle her sitting position to look out the left window
when the car climbs the hill and the crowd is most visible on that side, then to the right of the car, forcing Malik to flatten himself against the seat so she can angle herself to observing the crowd from this side.

  “What kind of bad publicity is this?”

  “I don’t know, Ma’am.” Malik relaxes when she shifts back to the left window.

  She’s not the only one whose anxiety rises as our elevation increases. The driver keeps one eye on the hoard of picketers and one eye on the roadway ahead. We pass a pull-out option for slow cars to allow other drivers to pass. The car swerves so that its tires cross the threshold of changing our minds, but then he yanks the wheel back to center.

  “What kind of publicity were you hoping for?” I ask.

  “An investment opportunity,” she says.

  The tips of my right fingers press against the glass like I can tap and bop the heads of the rioters as one plays whack-a-mole. Bop, bop, bop. “I hope you have good insurance.”

  The car turns for the last circle around the hill before reaching the top, with its flat parking, Ace sentinel, and the building where an angel once stood.

  “Get as close as you can,” I say in English, forgetting the driver doesn’t speak English.

  “Still discontent…” The driver speaks Spanish, but I understand him. He lets the sentence dangle like he can’t decide which concern he has gets top billing. It could be that there’s no room to turn around with the parking area overrun with picketers. It could be that people don’t look friendly. Or he could be concerned that we won’t pay him. I certainly don’t have any means to pay him.

  The road widens near the top. People rush the car before we reach any available parking.

  “Donor Rights,” one protestors sign reads. “Transparency in Digital Life.” Another sign has TDL, an acronym for the phrase on the previous sign. In large black letters. “Donor Families Have Rights Too.” I read as many signs as I can before the first person slaps the car. I never understood why Dr. Miller insisted on keeping me away from the crowds in Mexico, except that I thought he was ashamed of how poor at ‘human’ I was. I thought maybe he’d hoped to show a more promising product. But I get it now.

  The faces in the crowd are twisted with loss and blame. They’ve lost a family member who was on the verge of death but not yet dead. Sent to an early end for a gamble at the lottery of being whatever I am. Some faces show self-blame. The inward focus of sorrow and guilt shown in deep wrinkles, the pull of their mouth, and the weight of their shoulders. Others reflect an outward rage so broadly spread, I doubt they care who they target. They spray ‘angry’ with every sweeping glance and stomping foot. Shouting at the sky more than the black glass building before them.

  Very few members of the crowd have the physical traits of locals. Several languages mingle together. I wonder if the pair in the back seat would be with this mashup group outside if they’d only arrived earlier.

  “What is this?” the woman asks. Each word more pronounced than the one before it. I assume she’s talking about the car being banged against. “Go on. Keep going.” Her head appears between the front seats. She looks at me. “Tell him to keep going… through the crowd.” She orders.

  I calculate my odds to be better with the mass of people outside the vehicle than I am with the pair inside the car. I open the door into the crowd and push my way out. The door doesn’t shut behind me. Hands reach in for the driver and his passengers.

  “Friends?” I ask at large. “Quien es son?” I think I said, ‘Who are they?’ But I might have said, ‘Who is are?’ Understanding languages isn’t difficult for me, but speaking them, putting the sentences together in the correct order… For some reason that’s not part of my programming. Only decoding meaning. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so fast to split ways from Belen. I regret my choice to depart her company. “Who are all you people?”

  Someone behind a ‘Donor Rights Now’ poster peeks around one side. “Friends of the Newberrys.”

  I feel exposed and identifiable since I’m the one assumed to be Jillian, yet no one looks at me with eyes that narrow, or tilt their heads in an ‘I can’t quite place you, but I think I know you’ way. I swallow even though I don’t have spit in my mouth to dispose of. “Who?” I ask.

  “Jillian Newberry,” another rioter answers. “The Mexico donor. She was brought here for some kind of training, and when her family was flown down to help with her transition into life after intelligence transplant…” Someone else’s face turns from anger to sadness, crestfallen at the term ‘intelligence transplant’ like it’s a disease to be cured of. “…their plane crashed.”

  A third person jumps into the storytelling. “Not just crashed, like totally suspicious. And no one here will say anything about Jillian or what happened to her family. Like she’s just disappeared.”

  A gray-bearded gentleman with a lowered sign reading, ‘Fair Resources’ narrows his eyes at me—the first person to do so. “You really don’t know about any of this?”

  The car backs up. It’s blocked at the rear at this point, so the driver pulls forward again. The crowd gives only a little, mostly from him backing and them relaxing. The driver backs up again, then pulls forward, like he’s rocking his way through the crowd. Slowly, he back and forth maneuvers his way closer to the building.

  “Hey,” someone else shouts. “Phones are on. The burst is over.”

  And then I remember, Geo has a weapon he can use against me. I really need to think things through. I should not have come back. Several members of the crowd pull out their devices and video, photo document, comment and post to social media and news outlets. The story is live again. At least, until Geo manages to recharge his pulse-thingy and I drop like a remote-control toy out of batteries.

  Add dismembering that pulse emitter to my to-do list to avoid that happening. But before I destroy it, I’d like to know if there’s a way I could manage something similar. Can I create an EMT-like burst affecting everyone and everything except me? For that matter, if I can throw signals out like an EMT, can I manipulate human reactions through signals? Can I program humans?

  The crowd tightens around the building, waiting for something to happen. I want in now, while their defenses are down and I’m up and running.

  “Once we get this story circulating again, we go in,” someone shouts from where they’ve climbed the deformed statue of Ace. “Charge the castle!”

  I need to find a way to block EMT attacks while learning how to develop my own signals to send out. I scan the humans closest to me, but can’t read anything beyond environmental percentages. Damn Faraday-caged brain.

  “Confiscate all their files,” someone hollers. Doesn’t really sound like a scary raid with words like confiscate being thrown around. “We want as much material as possible.”

  “What are you going to do with it?” I ask.

  “Destroy it.”

  The response is so matter of fact, it almost washes over me—the genocide of my kind. They’re murderous terrorists. I put one step distance between me and the destroyers, like that’ll cushion me from their intentions.

  I stumble over my language controls with what I can possibly do. Other than wait for them to exit with their bundles of data and take it by force, whatever force necessary. I don’t need language to annihilate these terrorists. I need weapons.

  Malik and his boss manage to reach the doors through the human blockage. The woman swings her purse side to side, not really deterring any negative attention. The people bugging her manage to bug her still. Obviously, these rioters don’t intend to harm anyone. Not any human anyone anyway. No one throws rocks at the glass exterior and there are rocks everywhere so it wouldn’t be hard to do. Still, the woman makes a show of swinging her purse wildly about.

  I squint to see if Geo greets them. A blurry form runs from the double doors off the grand lobby and sweeps the pair deeper inside the glass fortress. Unsure if they intend to come back out, I check to see where the car we arrive
d in ended up. The driver of our car tries to back out again, making slow progress through the crowd. Looking behind myself, out beyond the top of the hill where we stand, I notice more vehicles approaching.

  The circle of factories beyond the white city buildings emits more exhaust than when I first arrived. Or maybe I notice it more now. A full circle of smoke surrounding a yellowing city with its dark star at the center. I stand here looking down at the emissions like a fortress of mist blinding the world to what’s been happening here at the city center, whatever it is. My insides tell me something blocks my scanners from all that lies within the glass structure before me. Masters of hiding in plain sight.

  I try again to force a signal to radiate beyond the limits of my skull. Something clicks internally. Pain-like fire presses behind my ears and against the point where my spine meets the base of my skull. “AH!” I rip the glove-like skin off my hand and dig for something sharp. I have to relieve the pressure I’ve caused.

  “What the hell?”

  Someone at my side screams. “It’s a bot!”

  “I’m ID.” I use the abbreviation I assume they’re familiar with for Intelligence Donor, which is all I am. One of them. “Not scary.” I don’t have patience to defend myself. I have to relieve the pressure. “I’m one of you for hell’s sake.”

  So much for waiting to ransack their electronic loot. At this rate, I’ll never recover Ace and the others from the files I’ve accidentally trapped them in.

  People press in around me, grabbing for the covering I’ve ripped from my arm. “Bot!”

  I pull away and back toward the building, though I didn’t want to go back in. These idiots force me in that direction. I find the long skinny knife and plunge the sharp end into my head through where an ear canal should be, yet isn’t there. Pressure remains until I pull the knife out again. No blood spurts out, no whoosh of air. There’s no goo—not even a sound. But the pressure lifts, which is all I care about. I slump in relief and lean against the black glass doors. In my skin covered hand, I still hold the thin surgical tool. Those nearest me back away as if my relieved posture is somehow threatening.