Insider X (27 page)

47

NA DIDN’T BELIEVE what she was seeing.  She was in the elevator lobby.  She had pushed the button for the fifth floor and gotten off.  She was looking out the same window, just a few more floors up so she could get a better view.

She had been curious to see more of what was in front of the building.  She wanted to see Chen and An drive away.  To see how the gates opened; observe what type of security was in front of the building.  This close to the wall, this was one of the better spots to observe and look for a way out of here.  Look for a place where she could escape.  Leave Facility 67096.  Leave this ugly place.

But what she was seeing now was not a way out. 

Oh.  My.  God.

Na covered her mouth with her hand.

Chen and An had just been pushed into a large hole where they were pouring concrete.

48

Hive

THERE WAS A red flag next to one of the viewports open on his screens.  The soldier watching his monitors hadn’t noticed it, yet.  He was in the last hour of his twelve-hour shift.  Today had dragged on interminably for him.  It hadn’t helped that this morning he’d started his shift with only three hours of sleep.

All during his shift today his three-month-old daughter had been on his mind.  Worry and stress had been with him.  He wished he could call his wife to check on her.  To see if she was doing any better.  But, of course, phone calls during shift were not allowed.

He felt so helpless.  Last night had been just terrible.  His daughter, just like the last ten nights, had labored so hard to breathe.  That little chest of hers heaving with each tiny breath.  For a while he was afraid his daughter wasn’t going to make it.

His wife had cried.  He felt responsible.  This was his fault.  If only he could afford a better air filter system for their apartment.  But this job didn’t pay enough.  They were barely making it, as it was.

He cursed his lot.  He felt trapped here.  Chained to his station.  Forced to do his duty.  Forced to ignore those things that held meaning for him.  His family.  His precious family.  He knew even thinking about them would be forbidden, if his superiors were able to see his thoughts.

His wife and daughter had no place in Hive.  Hive was cold and sterile.  Not a place for thoughts of his lovely wife or his beautiful daughter.

He had a quota to achieve.  That was all that mattered to his superiors.  A certain number of audits had to be done each day, and they wanted results.

It was all about results.

So, for most of the day he’d been doing audits.  Monitoring what was being typed.  Verifying the websites being visited were in synch with the tasks on his charges’ lists. Anything out of order was to be flagged.  Further scrutinized.  Picked apart and analyzed.  All to look for improprieties.  Anything that would indicate subversive material was being disseminated secretly.

His charges could be sneaky.  It was impossible to know who was a traitor.  Who was not loyal to the cause.

It galled him to think about it.  That some of these privileged kids could be so ungrateful.  They were given every luxury in here.  Everything they could possibly want at their young age.  It was no secret what these kids made to do their duty.  Their salaries were ten times his.

All the men in Hive knew this.  And all the men in Hive were jealous of this.  With that type of money, he could do so much.  He could afford a better apartment with better air.  The doctors said it was just asthma.  She will be fine.  She will get through this.

But it would be so much easier with more money, he realized.  He could afford better air.  He could ensure everything would be fine.  He could give her a better life.  A better life for his wife too.

But that was not his luck.  Not his fate.  He was on the other side of the screen.

Watching.  Monitoring.  Doing audits.

It was not an easy thing he did.  All the text his charges wrote began to run together in his head after ten minutes; let alone after eight or ten hours.  He had nightmares sometimes where it was just text.  Text text text!  Text following him.  Chastising him.  Where he was the target.  Not somebody else.  But him.  Where the netizens in the world were all targeting him.  “Human-flesh searching” is what it was called.  Outing someone’s identity online, so the wrath of the masses could converge and feast on that person’s entrails.

A nightmare.  Just a nightmare.  Like this job sometimes.

It had taken longer today than usual to achieve his quota.  But he was done now.  No more audits today.  He could just watch.  Relax some.  Watch his charges.  Watch for anything out of order.

This part of his duty he did not mind.  It was a welcome diversion, in fact.  A part he compartmentalized and kept separate from his family.  All thoughts of his family could leave his head now.  So could all worries; all stress.  Just leave.  Give him this quiet; this peace.

There were times he felt guilty doing this—going to this place in his head.  Very guilty.  He knew this was wrong, but he chose not to dwell on it.  Tried not to think about it.  Tried not to let it bother him.  Because there was a part of him that very much enjoyed this part of his job.  Because he was a man, after all.  And there were many times he didn’t feel like a man.  But right now he did.  He felt very much like a man.

A man in charge.  A man with power to see what he wanted to see.

Hmm.  What was this?  He sat upright in his chair.  One of his charges was getting off the elevator.  The bar at the bottom of the viewport told him this wasn’t her floor.  She lived on the sixtieth floor.  And this was the fifth floor.

Now what was she doing?

The girl stepped off and took a few steps into the elevator lobby.  She didn’t head towards the corridor, but went the other direction.  She stopped and just stood there.

It looked to him like she was waiting.  Waiting for somebody, perhaps?  He watched her.  She was very beautiful.

He was definitely alert now.  Not even remotely tired anymore.

He noticed there was a red flag at the corner of her viewport.  Hmm; he’d missed that.  He clicked it.  It brought up the notes from the man he’d relieved. 

The man’s notes were brief:

[possible runner]

Okay… that didn’t tell him anything.  He saw that note all the time.  Everyone here was paranoid that everybody was a runner.  If he had ten
jiao
for every time he saw that note, he’d be a rich man.

She was still standing there.  No…  actually… it seemed she was looking out the window.  She put her hand to her mouth.

He fiddled with the controls for the vid feed and zoomed in on her pretty face—closer to that pretty hand on that pretty mouth.  The girl wasn’t yawning.  She…

She looked upset.

Hmm?  Was it something she’d seen out the window?  He pulled up other vid feeds to see what she was looking at.  With a few clicks of his mouse new viewports displayed on his screen.  All of them showed the area in front of Tower 9.  The place was a construction zone with unpaved areas and piles of building supplies.  Nothing to see now.  The workers…?  He couldn’t see any.  There didn’t appear to be anybody on the site.

Wait.

There was somebody.  More than one, in fact.  Two men.  They were standing by a sedan.  And now a third.  He was walking around the car.  All three of the men got in the vehicle.

Hmm.  Didn’t seem to be anything unusual.  Just one of the security patrols doing their normal rounds.  He tapped a few keys to bring up the video footage from a minute ago.  Let’s see if that showed something else?

The vid feed pulled up, but it was only static.  Blue wavy screen.  Huh?  What was this?  He tapped some keys and pulled up a different camera.

Same result.  More blue wavy screen.  Now this was getting odd.

Peripheral vision.  Movement… other viewport.  His eyes flicked back to the girl in the elevator lobby.  She was getting on the elevator.

Where was she going now?  He switched to the vid feed for the elevator cab and watched as the girl pushed another button.

49

Four stooges

THE BABY WAS certainly ugly, but it wasn’t all that.  The more Mei had shared in the beginning, the more options had presented themselves.  There were plenty of opportunities to exploit.  They just had to pick one.  Once that was done, they’d determined the plan.

They’d done the usual.  Gone over it.  Picked it apart.  Found the holes.  Gone over it again.  First and second time was at Pizza Hut.  Something about food that got the juices flowing.

Third and fourth time had been at Mei’s “me house”.  With new intel, had come some adjustments.  All that fire hose of sewage had been somethin’ else.

Johnny Two-cakes had let them see some more of the feed before they’d left.  He’d shown the comments that were being left for the dead.  Thing had a name.  It was called ‘RIP trolling’.   RIP, as in ‘rest in peace’.

The Online Blue Army was profaning the dead.  Leaving comments on memorial pages for the recently departed.  Regular Americans who’d lost a loved one had to see the shit that was being left on their son’s or daughter’s pages.

Comments like:
She was a whore.  Greased my willie several times.

Good riddance.  World’s a better place without that sort of white trash.

Parents should be ashamed of themselves.  They caused her death not keeping her in line.  Girl was dating nigg3Rs.  She had it coming.

There were hundreds of those sorts of posts being put up on different websites.  The Online Blue Army spared no one.  Memorial pages for soldiers killed in battle, or kids lost in the prime of their lives, or people who’d given back to the community in so many ways, or grandmothers who attended church everyday and had hearts of gold, or men who’d worked hard all their lives supporting their family, or women who had volunteered in soup kitchens on their days off, or pastors who had baptized over three thousand babies…

Didn’t matter.  All were free game.  They were all shit on by the Online Blue Army.  All desecrated by fake posts.

The family of a soldier who’d lost his life in the line of duty had to see posts like:

He was a fucking baby killer.  RIP mother fucker!

Little Johnny was a coward.  Served with the bastard.  Glad to see him dead.

Chester Puller, my ass.  Dude was a yella belly when the shit got real.  Deep six and piss on you, Johnny, for what you did.  You deserve this for those kids you killed.

It was nonstop.  Some of the lingo was obviously meant to sound like what fellow soldiers might say.  The Online Blue Army was posing as other soldiers.  Using profile names like ‘jarhead’, ‘honest marine’, ‘good cookie’, ‘Molly Marine’…

All those fake names and fake posts.  Fuckers were taking pot shots at the dead and their grieving families.  All those families had to see that shit.  Endure that shit.  They’d lost their boy, or their dad, or their daughter, and they had to read that garbage.  Read that shit.

Made Marks want to change the plan right then and there.  Nuke the fuckers.  Turn the whole place to glass.

Johnny Two-cakes had just nodded.  “It gets to you, I know,” he’d said.

Facility 67096 didn’t play around.  They went straight for the jugular.  Knew how to put the hurt on.

Well…

It was payback time.  Their propaganda machine had done enough damage.  Torn out enough hearts.  Stomped on the wrong flag.  Pissed on the wrong country.  And bullied the wrong fucking guy.

Uncle Sammy had friends.  Lots of friends.

They let Mei drive.  Figured they’d let her do the talking too.  Girl needed a job to do.

Marks got his head in a better place during the ride.  Didn’t want all that shit throwing him off his game.  Trash talk could do that, if you let it get to you. 

They were just words.  They had no power unless you gave them power.  He did his usual Zen thing.  Focused the mind on other stuff.  Got his koan on.  The paradoxical string of questions in this case:

Is hate real?  Or is it just a mind thing?  Can one love their enemy, if they know the truth?

Deep.

As a meditative technique it got results.  Just about worked.  All that hate just faded away.  Mei had her own process, as well.  Before an op she liked to redirect.  Get the mind thinking about something else.

As for Lip?  Lip had his own way at dealing with elevated emotions and pre-op jitters.  It usually entailed him trying out new material.  A few jokes right before they got to the target.

“What did the zombie mom say to her zombie son right before he went to the playground with all the other kids?” Lip said.

“I don’t know.  What?” Marks said.

“Now son, don’t play with your food,” Lip said.

“I don’t get it,” Marks said.

“The kids on the playground were humans, not zombies,” Lip said.

“Still don’t get it,” Marks said.

Mei laughed.  She did her redirecting thing a bit later.  It was a timing thing for her.  Whatever worked.

Bottom line: They were ready by the time Mei pulled up to the gatehouse.  Or as ready as they were going to be.

Game on.