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by Bent Lorentzen

A sample chapter from the POV of one of the four main characters

Debbie stayed on the shoulder of Route 31 after disconnecting with Don and Charlene. Charlene was unlike any of Don's parade of girlfriends. There was something rich and powerful in an earthy way about her. The bonding between the pair was thick in the Saab's air, poignantly reminding her of her first months with Craig. She closed her eyes, hearing several Canada geese honking overhead, and let a tear fall free. Sighing, she suddenly remembered how Craig's face had lit up when that woman, that tall woman, had walked in barefoot. . . God, it had been a long time since she'd been jealous of another woman.

The thickness of her emotions worked like a warm blanket on a cold windy night. She began to daydream about happier, earlier days, coming to focus on a dinner date a month into their relationship. The memory was active. She could hear the background murmur in the Italian restaurant, see Boston Common, smell the basil wafting in the air . . . feel Craig's energy as he spoke.

And she had felt encouraged by his eyes to challenge him: "But galaxies are accelerating apart. Don't the black holes sitting in them accelerate apart also?"

"Yes, an evaporating black hole. One that eventually fades to nothingness through the Hawking radiation. No, I mean, for every one of those types there's an infinity of infinitesimal points that are the shadow embers of infinite mass occupying no real place or time as understood by the best of last century's theorists. As the universe expands, they remain fixed to the space-time fabric that existed at the moment of their collapse. Most of these black hole things sit at the core of our universe, which is the same thing as saying they exist uniformly within everything everywhere at all times, from the biggest galaxy to the tiniest particle, perhaps even the spirit. That's a paradox I wouldn't wish my worst enemy to contemplate." An impish smile grew. "Under the right conditions, we can create the circumstance that generates them."

She remembered, word for word, how she had jumped right into his field of thinking: "So that's why there's all this dark matter?"

He had smiled at that, in a way that had made her feel warm all over. "Yes. But don't tell anyone."

"So what you're really saying is that the work you guys are doing doesn't begin to address what you understand of things?"

Craig had smiled again. "You blow me away. I'm smart enough not to get laughed out of Harvard. I got another reason too. Remember me talking about Tesla?"

"The Tesla coil guy? The one you said Westinghouse stole the idea of alternating current?"

"One time, in New York, his neighbors complained to the cops that he was making their apartment building shake like in an earthquake. When they came, they found him smashing his latest invention, some kind of harmonics generator that could tune itself to the molecular disintegration frequency of stuff like steel beams and concrete-"

"So this thing you've figured out can actually be applied in the here and now?"

"Yeah, if we ever get to build a powerful enough cyclotron in a low gravity environment."

A whippoorwill's soulful cry forced open her eyes. The sun had set and a quarter moon hung hauntingly above a stark, motionless pine. She shook her head, trying to free up some of her sadness, and put the car in gear.

The drive back to Boston didn't go well either. Near Concord she was startled out of a melancholic stupor by the approach of bright lights in her rear-view mirror. More like a wall of lights, wider than the eastbound lanes of Route Two, the threatening beacons rapidly bore down on her. Several motorists in front of her reacted in various ways, some slowing down and pulling well onto the shoulder while others sped up. She maintained her speed, keeping a fearful eye on the mirror. When it seemed that she would be swallowed up in the brilliant wall of headlights, the first inkling of what this was came to her.

Accompanying the lights came a roaring, throttling noise: motorcycles. A cavalcade of them.

Frantically, she began to pull onto the shoulder but quickly changed her mind. It was too late. The cycles were doing well over a hundred-fifty, and hogged the full breadth of the highway, including the shoulders. She was swallowed up in noise and light in the next instant. Several dozen Harleys, classics and the dazzling new turbine breed, enveloped the car. Grizzled, wild men in leather glared at her, making perverted gestures as they roared by, slowing just enough to let their images sear into her mind.

One bike, UV light blazing from its composite frame, crept up to within a foot of her door. Its rider reached over with brass knuckles and tapped her window. She pretended not to notice, clenching her steering wheel as if to let go meant instant death. Sweat poured from every inch of her skin.

These were the PAWNEES, their club insignias blazing in glowpaint on their leather jackets. Her mind raced, as the tapping on her window seemed about to smash the glass. How could they hurl down the highway, around her and each other, like that? She remembered TV images of their deeds, and class discussions on their appeal and proliferation among America's emerging, embittered subcultural groups.

The guy with brass knuckles throttled ahead, the blur of his comrades creating a frenzied pastel in the dark, and took a position directly in front of the Saab. He rose out of his seat, hooked a boot on the seat-bar and extended the other out into the wind. Horrified, she saw that his leather pants were slit, exposing his crotch. Before she knew what had happened, a moist lump of brown splattered across her windshield.

Debbie screamed. Tears poured from her eyes, blurring her already impacted vision. She screamed and screamed and screamed. The rider sat back down just as she thought to turn on the windshield washer, smearing feces across the glass. He briefly turned to her, smirking, and roared ahead to join the fray. Though the incident could only have lasted a minute, hours seemed to have passed. Finally, the last rider roared by. In their wake, a half dozen state police cruisers screamed by, blue lights flashing, but totally unconcerned with her. Through the partially opened sunroof, she heard the approaching thump of helicopter blades.

Debbie slowed, finally pulling to the shoulder. She let out a long held breath and collapsed over the wheel. The tears came slowly at first, then more rapidly, until exhaustion forced closed her eyes. Then came the comfort of sleep.

She heard the tapping at her window as from a great distance. For a moment she thought it was a dream, then the dream turned to a nightmare, then she remembered. She woke up screaming!

But the policewoman gazing down at her had only compassion in her eyes. Debbie pushed the window button and it slid down noiselessly, but she could say nothing. The cold air outside cleared her mind, as did the occasional whoosh of a passing motorist.

"Honey," said the officer. "Are you alright? You're not hurt or anything, are you?"

Debbie wiped the tears from her eyes, heaved out a breath. "No, thank you."

The policewoman squinched her nose, eyeing the stain on the Saab's windshield. "They smeared you. If you want, you can press charges. If you can identify who did it."

"They all look the same. A-are you going to arrest them all."

"Honey, wish we could. They certainly broke a lot of laws but if we were to stop them here on the highway, it would pose an even greater public safety problem. It's a difficult issue." The state policewoman looked back on the highway, sighed, and said, "Well, if you're OK, why don't you get going. There's a McDonalds down the next exit. Why don't you stop there and have a coffee. --Where you headed?"

"Boston. Cambridge. Well, actually, Brookline."

"Well, I'm about due for a break. Want to follow me?"

"Yeah, I guess."

Rolling up the window and watching the trim, compact figure of the policewoman return to her Mustang, Debbie closed the sunroof. She pushed hard the stalk jutting from the steering wheel as if to force more solvent out of the windshield washer. The Mustang shut its intimidating blue flashers and lurched forward. Debbie followed her to McDonalds.

There was no line as Debbie inserted her bank card into the quaintly decorated server wall. Soon, the holographic image of an order taker appeared on the wall. She responded to the virtual person's cues. In less than a minute, a small door slid open from the wall and a tray with hot coffee, cream, and apple pie slid out.

Sitting next to the trooper, Debbie extended her hand. "I'm sorry. I never introduced myself. My name is--"

"Well, you ought to be Craig Seskevitch, according to the plates I ran through DMV. But Mr. Seskevitch listed you on his insurance. Nice to meet you, Deborah June Jones." She smiled coyly as she took Debbie's hand. "My name is Carla Simons. Sergeant Carla Simons."

Debbie let out a slight gasp and sat. Stirring the cream into her coffee, she asked, "What else do you know about me?"

"Not much, really." She raised her eyebrows as if to judge something from Debbie. Then she said, "But hopefully soon, there will be no more secrets in the world."

Debbie sighed. Another one, she thought. "You're talking about the implant Congress is debating?"

Carla caught Debbie's drift. Sipping her black coffee carefully, she asked, "You don't much like the idea, do you?"

"Don't get me wrong, Sergeant--"

"Carla. Call me Carla."

"I respect what you have to deal with. God, I'm sure I'd feel the same were I in your shoes."

"Would you, really?" A faint bitterness escaped Carla's eyes. "My grandfather was a New York City cop. He got killed in a gang turf war down in the Alphabet Village. I remember how much he hated rogue cops, like with what happened to Rodney King or that guy that screwed up the, Christ what was his name? O.J. --Oh yeah, that cop who made a mess of the State's case against O.J. You know, my dad is a Mass State Trooper like me. Actually, a detective. He got shot, too. But survived. Pulled over a suspicious car on the Pike back when he was doing highway duty, and got a nine millimeter through his cheek. Car was loaded with crack, vibe, and shit. The kid that shot my dad was eight years old. The kid's dad was driving. The whole family belonged to some weird cult from the boondocks of the Berkshires." Carla suddenly looked up from staring at the table and realized she had been rambling. "Sorry."

Debbie smiled, enthralled by what she'd just heard. "It's OK. Sometimes, when I watch the news on the web, I wonder if President Daniels isn't right. Get everybody hardwired into a mainframe, and let the Fed be on top of every loony out there. God, my granddad tells me that the daily stats of kids getting killed in New York, L.A., and even Boston is like how he used to watch the evening news during the height of the Vietnam War."

"So," said Carla, "you think it's wrong because of something out of Orwell's 1984?"

Not many cops could intelligently discuss that book. "Sort of."

"Hey, after my dad got shot, I decided. . ." Carla smiled. "And the year was 2001. I decided that I was going to be a liberal Democrat opposed to any further cuts in Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. When I was at Northeastern, I joined the protests against the linkup of federal law enforcement agencies with ComNet. To me, back then, that represented a serious breach of personal freedoms. You know, letting the Fed have instant access to credit histories, and letting the private sector have instant access to any sort of police or psych history on anybody."

"I remember the debate as a kid. Now, it's a fact of life. And I don't like that either. So what changed your mind?"

The grey hairs in Carla's ash blonde hair finally showed as she rubbed her head to think. "At the height of the anti-ComNet protest, I fell in love with a sociology professor who kind of was in charge of a group called SAC."

"Students Against ComNet?"

"Yeah. Well, one day, we were in bed and the cops busted in on us. Arrested him; took me in for questioning. Real embarrassing for my dad. Turned out he was some sort of serial molester. And it wasn't until his bank card trail cued a relatively primitive computer program to his activities which coincided with cross-country molestation cases." Carla rubbed her eyes with weariness. "God!" She shook her head. "And all the time I thought he was going to campuses to motivate students against this Big Brother bullshit, he was actually preying on little girls, spraying them with mind-voiders, taking them to hotel rooms and washing them down with mild acid to clear out his DNA markers after he'd already hurt and molested them. All I can think about are those poor girls, with most of their brain dendrites pruned by that awful gas, skin all burned from the acid, and left naked on the side of some highway. What do you think is the worse evil in modern society: sacrificing a little personal freedom, or getting perverts, drugs, and gangs off the streets?"

Debbie shrugged. Carla had a spellbinding way of getting to the quick of a story. "I studied the Clinton Administration, and what happened in Waco and Oregon Ridge. Then, let's not forget the Japanese and Germans middle of last century. You ever hear of George Santayana?"

"The rock group from the 1970's?"

"No, a Spanish-American poet. He was also a philosopher. He wrote that we're doomed to repeat history until we learn from it. Giving the Fed and multinational corporations almost unlimited power over our private lives is the same damn thing as when we had monarchies and papal serfdoms, or when Germany let Hitler do whatever he felt was in everyone's best interests. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

"God, I've gotten to hate cliched quotes like that."

Debbie didn't lose her rhythm. She and Craig had debated these issues with confederated enthusiasm tons of times with acquaintances. "Well, every side has its jingle. My fianc�-" She sighed. "Craig and I honestly feel that the shit hitting the fan in this world would end if we'd just take better care of our kids for a few generations. That means taking the risk that things might get worse before they get better, but at least we'll be raising a group of children who as adults might have solutions to our problems that we can't even fathom now-a-days on account of how deep in the shit we are. If we give up--"

Carla risked reaching across the table to touch Debbie's hand. "Miss, I believe in what you're saying. We need to raise our kids better. But that can still happen even if we pool modern technology to lock up or execute society's worst."

"I disagree. The fanatics of the dark ages burned a lot of people who dissented with the local government. If we keep incarcerating and executing people, what kind of message is that to our kids? Do as we say, not as we practice? Come on!"

Carla sighed and slowly shook her head. "Well, let's agree to disagree. It's a moot argument anyhow. I mean, honestly, the latest poll shows 80% are in favor of implantation. Won't be hard to do anyhow, with this new microbio-robotics pellet that's been developed."

"What's this?"

"Miss, you've not been watching everything on the web. The FDA is about to approve something that can be used as a tiny bullet which, once it's penetrated the skin, send out these programmed viruses that concentrate someplace in the brain and bioengineer a ComNet interfacer out of the local neural net. The interface signature would automatically log into several different mainframes through a weak signal easily picked up by any local comlink, amplified, and there you have it. Eventually, satellite controllers will be sensitive enough to pick up individual signatures in an instant anywhere."

"Wow," said Debbie. "I saw something on webTV about that, but so soon? Seriously? Who decides when somebody gets targeted with one of these?"

"It would probably work the same way as a digital tap request by the Fed before a judge. If there's enough probable cause--"

"But--"

A sudden squawking from Carla's shoulder com snapped Debbie out of a profound awe. She barely heard the dispatcher's voice describe a pursuit in progress in Lexington.

"Miss," said Carla, standing and suddenly becoming a state trooper again. "I've got to respond to this." She pulled a card from her neatly pressed shirt pocket. "Here's my card. Let's do this again, when I'm off-duty?"

"Yeah," said Debbie weakly.