Revolution World (22 page)

They ate and chatted companionably, gently bickering over what movie they should watch. They kept discarding movies as being too interesting for their boring date.

"Oh, I almost forgot," said Seth after they had eaten and were washing up the dishes. He ran out to his car and returned with a bottle. "I brought over this bottle of tequila. A client in Austin sent it to me after we set up some systems for him. Want to try it?" He passed her the bottle.

"Oh my God, Seth. This is pure blue agave tequila from before The Troubles." She gasped and held the bottle up like it was the Holy Grail.

"Oh really? Is that good?" he asked with interest.

"Good? Are you kidding? We mere mortals are not fit to be in the same room with this bottle. The blue agaves all died in The Troubles," she said, staring at the bottle in a reverie. "What we make tequila with now is the closest we could get, but this right here is the real thing. I didn't think there were any more bottles of this stuff left in the whole world."

"Awesome," Seth said, pulling out some glasses. "Lime and salt, you think? Or should we just sip it straight?"

"We can't drink this. It would be like drinking 'The Mona Lisa,' or something," Clio was scandalized.

"Why not? That's what it's for and I find myself with a powerful thirst," Seth replied, handing her a glass.

"You make a fine point. I'll get the lime," she said, rushing outside to grab limes off the tree in her yard.

They sat down and slowly sipped the tequila. Clio's eyes rolled back in her head. Seth let out a long slow breath.

"They should serve this stuff with a fire extinguisher," he said.

"That's the end of our boring date," Clio laughed. Seth looked at her with alarm. "No, I am not even remotely suggesting you leave. It's just that there's no way it will be boring anymore." Clio threw the bottle cap out a window.

Chronologically, only a few hours had passed, but for Seth and Clio it had been an epoch. The living room was strewn with pillows and socks. The kitchen was covered in globs of pie. Water dripped from the curtains and a washcloth was stuck to the ceiling. A boring movie played on the wallscreen, forgotten. They lay in each other's arms in Clio's front yard, staring at the spinning stars.

"I think I still have pie in my hair," slurred Clio sleepily.

"
Mmmm
, you smell good enough to eat," murmured Seth kissing the top of her head. He thought perhaps they should move inside before they fell asleep out here, but that would involve effort and he couldn't be bothered right now.

"Could you really redirect India's nukes?" she asked.

He almost giggled, but then decided that giggling was not manly. "Oh sure. India's are the easiest. There's practically no security on those things. Most security systems can't keep out anyone who really wants to get in. Except mine, of course. Most security systems are like a huge padlock on a flimsy door. You want to break in? All you have to do is bring a screwdriver and take off the hinges. If someone really wants to get in, they can usually find a way. No, the best security systems usually involve some misdirection."

"That's scary," she replied with sleep in her voice.

He shrugged slightly so as not to disrupt her head on his shoulder. "We have to protect ourselves. Omerta is a tiny country with no military. So we poke around in other people's systems to make sure no one is planning on bothering us. And we make sure we can borrow some weapons if we get in a jam. It's only theoretical. Plus, I get really bored in my office."

She laughed. "You get bored at work so you hack into India's missile defense system? Wow. And they complain about my experiments. What's a few ninja Pomeranians next to reshuffling the satellite network?"

He grinned with pride, but really didn't want to talk now. He wanted to smooch Clio and lie under the stars. She smiled at him and laid her head down on his shoulder.

"I'm not dating Jason, you know. Well, I did, but that was years ago. No interest in repeating that experiment. The results were conclusive," she said into his chest. "Not dating anyone."

Inside he did a little happy dance. He hadn't wanted to ruin the magic of the night by asking about Jason. "You are dating me," he replied, nuzzling her neck.

"I am?" she said with a smile in her voice.

"Oh yes, you definitely are." He playfully nipped at the nape of her neck.

"Well, alright."

A little while later, they paused for breath and Seth asked, "Then what were you doing with him that night at the football game?"

"What? Oh that. We are working on a little project," she replied.

"What kind of project?" he asked idly. Some sort of charity work, he thought. That Jason really wasn't such a bad guy. Just a bit too touchy-feely, Seth decided generously.

"It's a secret," she giggled.

"Oh come on."

"No really," she said more clearly. "I can't tell."

"Have some more tequila."

"Okay."

They happily discovered that the bottle, which Clio insisted she would enshrine above her kitchen sink, still had a few more drinks in it. Seth experienced a brief and unlikely moment of clarity.

"Wait a minute. Are you working with Jason on a project for that terrorist group?" He realized that he still hadn't gotten around to discussing her connection to that group. How dare that jerk Jason involve her with dangerous criminals?

"Resistance fighters," she corrected. She drew herself up and pointed an accusing finger at him. She staggered a bit as she did this, ruining the effect. "You can't deny that someone needs to resist the government. It's barbaric the way the US treats its citizens. Somebody needs to do something. Might as well be me."

"I don't deny that things cannot continue the way they are, but not you," he pleaded. "Anybody but you. You could get hurt. You could get arrested. Let the politicians and the government work this out. You need to stay safe."

Clio shook her head sleepily. "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. It's worth a little risk," she said, absently picking grass out of her hair.

"You can accomplish these things without risk. I did," he countered triumphantly. "I wrote a script that hacks into the US government, pulls out the names of all the foreign nationals they have kidnapped, and let's their governments know where they are being held and how they are doing. Now the US takes fewer people because they know that they can't do it secretly. Lots of change for very little risk." Seth watched Clio's eyes go round as her mouth formed an 'O.' He had obviously made his point. Perhaps they could get back to the kissing soon.

"You did that? I always wondered who was behind that. Pure genius. That was really you?" she asked breathlessly. "All by yourself?"

Under the force of her gaze, Seth was powerless to resist the urge to brag. "Well, most of it. Max helped a little although he made me swear never to tell."

"You are a resistance fighter too," she declared, hugging him happily.

"What? Me? Oh no. Just patching a faulty system. What use would a resistance movement have for a guy like me anyway?" he said modestly, hugging her back and running his hands through her thick hair. He was pretty sure they were headed in a more hormonal direction soon.

"Are you joking?" she cried, pulling him up off the grass and into the house. Seth complied happily. "The Resistance desperately needs a guy like you. Come see what you've already done."

When they got into the house, Seth tried to start kissing her again, but she pushed him away and began fumbling with her handheld. "Just a second, sweetie, I want to show you this."

Seth did not wish to appear overly anxious, but by his calculations, they were very close to her bedroom right now. That knowledge was driving all coherent thought out of his head. He sat down and watched her. She turned on a little box that he recognized as a scrambler. He had hardwired scramblers into the wall at Omerta, but why would she think she needed to block spyware right now?

After a few muted curses, the wallscreen flickered on. "Look," she declared.

"It's your Revolution World game," he said, confused.

"No, it's my terrorist cell," she said with a flourish. "We've used your in-game security function to organize a resistance movement."

Seth frowned through the haze of hormones and alcohol that had been so thick all evening, trying to concentrate on what she just said. She couldn't possibly mean what it sounded like. Clio entered the game. The wall screen showed a little room that used every security feature he had built into the game.

The game balked at the virtual door sensing Seth in the real life room, but Seth gave his override access code and it let them both in. He nodded approvingly. The game would not have let her access to this room with someone sitting next to her that wasn't allowed. He was glad that feature worked, but also glad he had the override code. That didn't stop the sinking sense of impending doom.

"See? We started with just a little extra security so we could gripe about the government without worrying who was listening. Then we got organized," she was telling him. "First, it was just funny to start rumors about a Texas terrorist group that was targeting government buildings and foreign businesses. You know, 'Yankees go home.' That kind of thing. Then we thought it wasn't such a bad idea. We'd get rid of all the carpetbaggers by encouraging them to move away someplace safer."

"You are using a game called Revolution World to plan a revolution," he said with disbelief.

He waited for her to tell him not to be silly. The whole thing was ludicrous. She laughed and he slumped back with relief.

"Oh, not a revolution," she said. "No, that would require the whole state to be in on it, the Texas legislature, the governor and just everybody. Even then, I don't think a revolution would be possible. No, we are just aiming to be a vocal minority for change."

That was not at all what he had been hoping to hear. "You bomb people? You take part in terrorist bombings?" he thought maybe his voiced cracked a little there.

"We don't really," she beamed at him. "That's the beauty of it. Usually someone has a building they wanted to demolish anyway, so we blow it. Or else we blow up a truck in someone's parking lot and say the terrorists were demonstrating their hatred of some business or another. There's this group of guys that specializes in faking 'terrorists accidents.' So that it looks like they made a mistake and the bomb didn't go off. You'd be surprised how well that works."

"That's great," he said in a strangled voice. "So you've never hurt anyone?" She nodded, pleased that he'd grasped that.

"Wait a second," he suddenly had a thought. "The Texas terrorists kidnap people all the time. Is that you guys? Why would you do that?"

She opened her mouth and then stopped. She gave him a hard look. "I'm telling you things that could get me and a whole bunch of nice people killed."

"I know," he said, totally overwhelmed.

"Do you ever get the feeling that you are locked into some crazy destiny? And no matter what you do, you can't escape where fate is taking you?" Clio asked him.

"Yeah," Seth replied. "I've felt that way ever since the Board of Directors mentioned scouting Texas. Like I've just got to be here in the thick of all this stuff. I don't seem to have a choice in the matter."

"And we are getting washed away by events that are greater than us," replied Clio.

She sat next to him on the couch and they stared at the wall, both feeling the tingling joy of inebriation drain away.

"Why can't we have a boring date?" Clio asked the wall plaintively.

Seth threw his head back and laughed. As he did it, he realized he had never performed that specific action before. A hopeful smile played at her lips while she toyed with the almost empty bottle of tequila. Well, he thought, change can be good.

"I suspect boring is impossible when we are in same room," he mused. He took the tequila bottle and tossed what was left in it straight down his throat.

"Ok, I'm in. Sign me up for a heaping helping of resistance fighting," he said after the tequila stopped burning his throat. "Do you want me to swear a blood oath or something? Or hey, I bet I could write a blood oath script into the game." He paused to consider that.

Clio let out a squeal and launched herself at him. After thoroughly smothering him in kisses to which he did not object, she sat up. "Are you sure?"

He was really sure he wanted nothing to do with all this, but if the line was to be drawn in the sand, then he wanted to be standing on the same side as Clio. And this way he could keep an eye on her. He gave her the most confident grin he could muster up and nodded.

There was more squealing and more smooching. After a bit, Seth insisted on full details of Clio's resistance group.

"Well, the thing you see the most is the 'Terrorist attacks,' but much of our time is spent spreading disinformation about the conditions in Texas," she said as she proposed Seth's inclusion to the group. He raised an eyebrow.

"Actually I guess I don't really have to submit your name for approval,' she said. "Since you made the system, you can probably set that up yourself."

He nodded. "Yes, but it's better to go through the normal route. We don't want any of your terrorist buddies to get twitchy trigger fingers."

"Good point," she countered. "Anyway, we do things like alter geological surveys of water or other natural resources to make it look like we have less than we do. For example, we alter records to make it look like a mine was depleted when it's not. Things like that. If the government doesn't think you have anything, they won't try to take it away from you."

Seth scratched his head. What she said implied a fairly large conspiracy with people placed inside several government bureaucracies.

"We've also been reporting huge increases in crime and poverty, but it's all fake," she continued as she idly played through a skirmish in Revolution World. "We want the rest of the world to think Texas is a worthless cesspit. We want them to leave us alone. So we make it as unpleasant as possible to come here. Remember how they treated you when you and Max came to survey sites? Our plan almost worked too well that day." She grinned at him impishly and squeezed his hand.