Simple (2 page)

That was two years ago now, and although the battle isn’t over, what’s left of the human race has been reduced to squatters living on the run.  I never stay in one place very long, and I never, ever, take a person at face value.  Simples look way too much like people.  They’re black, white, fat, thin, short, tall, young, old…and they are everywhere.  There are ways to tell them apart from humans, but you’d better be able to do it quick.  One way is their eyes.  Their blinking patterns aren’t always quite right, but you have to be able to watch them closely and long enough to really catch that.  In addition, their pupils don’t dilate, so if you’re in the dark and you have a flashlight, that’s great.  Another is their fingernails.  They don’t look completely natural.  Another more obscure sign is a pencil eraser sized port imbedded in the top of the head.  This is rarely visible though, because there are few bald simps, and hair covers it.  The best way to tell is what I call the scream test.  Since they don’t feel pain and they don’t have fear, anything you can do to create the proper response from a distance is a good indicator. That’s why I keep a slingshot in my back pocket.  It’s saved my ass more than a few times and it works well because my ammunition is anything that I can pick up quickly.

I threw my right leg over the side of the guardrail of what was once a freeway, and walked another thirty minutes to reach my goal: a collapsed overpass.  It was the only source of shade, and I hoped that in the confines of the rubble I would be able to hide long enough to get a little sleep.  As I drew closer, I noticed a very faint humming sound that sent a fresh dose of adrenaline pumping through my veins.  Quickly, I dropped into a crouch and duck-walked to an area where the sound seemed to be emanating from.  I dropped to my stomach and crawled in on the flat cement as far as I could go before it dropped off.  The sound was definitely louder.  I leaned over so that I could look down below.  There, about six feet down, tucked in a little concrete cubby, was a figure.  I squinted, trying to get my eyes to adjust, and then it moved.  I rolled on my side, held my breath, and prayed I hadn’t been heard as I desperately tried to yank my flashlight from the clip that dangled from my belt loop.  If it was a simp, I needed to kill it before it killed me.

Fortunately, he/it was too focused on the laptop perched on his lap.  The fact that he had a laptop almost guaranteed he was a simp.  No one had electronic devices.  Cell phones, iPods, computers…those were yesterday’s toys.  The internet was no longer a safe place to play.  Interest dissolved years ago when we learned they were able to use it to track us. Electronic devices were gigantic homing beacons, and only a simp would be comfortable with one on his lap like that.  I stretched my fingers out to grasp a small hunk of cement, just big enough for my slingshot and made sure it was right within reach.  Then, I clicked on my flashlight and stuck it between my teeth. Grasping the handle of my slingshot; I loaded my ammo and drew back.  The light caught his attention immediately and he jumped up, dropping his laptop to the dirt. 

I had just enough time to see his pupils shrink before I dropped my arms. “What the hell are you doing?”  I shouted.

“Me?  What the hell are you doing?  Were you seriously going to hit me with that thing?  You’re an asshole!  You could have hit the screen!”  He disregarded me and collected his laptop as if it were a crying infant in need of soothing.  I grabbed my possessions and worked my way down to him while he continued to mutter his displeasure with my presence.

I jumped down when I was at a safer distance.  “Nice cubby you have here,”  I said, brushing my hands off on my jeans.  It was strange to hear my own voice and I absently realized how gravelly it sounded.  I hadn’t spoken a word to anyone in days. 

He raked his hand through his rooster hair and shot me a frustrated frown.  “Have you not been listening to me?  You have to go!  This is my place right now, and I’m very busy.  I don’t have time for this, and I need to concentrate!”

His voice echoed in the small space and his pitch was high enough to grate on my nerves.  “Okay, listen to me.  I don’t know where you got that, but it’s dangerous, and you need to get rid of it before you get yourself killed.”  I wasn’t really up to being motherly, but I did care if his dense actions put me in jeopardy. 

“I’m not an idiot. I’m not traceable.  I can IP hop faster than anyone could trace a packet, and I’m fully encrypted.” He said this as if I had a damn clue what he was talking about.

“I don’t know what you just said, but if you have a brain in that goober head of yours, you’ll shut that down and get as far away from it as you can.”

“Not going to happen,” he said, repositioning himself to the dirt and resuming his clacking on the keys.

“Okay, let’s try this again.” I said, raising my slingshot and directing my aim toward his head. “I’m going to say this one more time. Power that piece of shit down.”

“Or what?”

“Do I look like I’m bluffing?”

“No, but you don’t understand.  I’m not putting you or anyone else in danger.  I know what I’m doing. I was a senior developer for IDE, Inc., and I am this close,” he held up his thumb and index finger a half an inch apart.

“This close to what?”  I snapped.

“To hacking the gateway.” I dropped my wrist.

“Talk.”

“Well, okay.  See, the main DNS server is behind the firewall, well – two layers of firewalls technically, but there’s a secondary…”

I held up a hand, “Could you drop the geek speak?”

“Oh, sorry,” he scratched his head and then tried again, “If I can re-route the servers, I can set in a new data path with my own code and force a simp update that would wipe Yen’s virus.”

I laughed.  “You’re pretty full of shit, you know that?  Are you always this delusional?”

“I’m not delusional.  It’s totally possible, and I’m really busy.  Could you just go find another hole to crawl in?  I’m done trying to talk to you.  I don’t need you here. I was here first, so just,” he waved his hand toward the direction I’d come, “just go someplace else.”

“Don’t piss me off.  I’m hungry, hot, and seriously over-tired.  I will launch a piece of cement at your head if you don’t do what I say.”

He reached for a duffle bag to his right.

“Keep your damn hands where I can see them!” I snapped.

“Chill,” he said, and tossed me an orange.  Since I was still holding my slingshot it hit me in the right breast and landed on the dirt at my feet.

“Oh, wow.  Sorry.”

I shoved my slingshot back in my pocket and bent down to pick up the orange.  Peeling back the skin, I glared at him. “What makes you think you can do something when no one else has been able to in the last two years?

“It takes time, and most of the developers who worked at IDE, Inc., are dead.  I’m not saying that others haven’t tried.  I mean, I know that I’m not the only one – but I have inside information, and that gives me an advantage.”

I took a seat on the ground across from him and popped a chunk of orange in my mouth. “Then why haven’t you done it yet?”  I said, with my mouth still full.  I had to admit, the sweet flavor was refreshing.

“I told you, it takes time, and I had some other things going on.”

“What other things?” 

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Okay, cool. Whatever.  We all have stories like that.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly.  We sat in silence for a few minutes and I polished off the last segment of fruit, wishing for another one as I wiped my sticky fingers on my jeans.

“So what’s your name?” he asked.

“I’m Hailey Pachello.”

“Gizzard,” he said, extending his fair-skinned, bony hand.

“Gizzard huh?”

“Yep. Leonard Gizzard O’Malley,” he said with a grin that made him look much younger.

“Why Gizzard?”

“It’s a nickname.”

“No. Really?”  I laughed, and he did too.

Gizzard, I learned, was twenty-five.  Just a year younger than me and he’d already gone to college and had a master’s degree in computer programming.  I’d spent the last year in the old world the same way I’d spent every year since I was a sixteen year old kid, working at my dad’s deli.  Before the war, it was one of the last places in town that didn’t have any simp employees.  We didn’t need them and my dad didn’t like them.  I’d never gone up for re-education because I didn’t have to.  My stomach rumbled at the thought of our fresh sausage and cheeses.

“So, how long have you been traveling alone?”  I asked.

“It’s been six months, three days, and approximately fourteen hours.”

“Are you kidding me?  You have it down to the hour?”

“You would too,” he said dully.

“It’s been almost two years for me,” I offered.  Gizzard nodded and stared off at a memory.

“I’d give anything to undo that day.”

I tried to think of the right words to say, but nothing came out so I just nodded in agreement.  Everyone had lost someone in all of this.  Most people had stories that would make you forget how to sleep at night.  The simps were brutal and their lack of sympathy, empathy, or any other emotion made them evil beyond human comprehension.  I had a neighbor that watched as a simp ripped his wife’s heart out of her chest while she was sleeping on the couch.  The worst part was, the simp was their eight-year-old synthetic “daughter.”  The simp kid stood there with her mother’s heart in her hand and said some line from an old western movie before asking for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, (simps have complex synthetic digestive systems with disposable waste sacks.  Another upgrade from IDE, Inc.).  He took the kid out with a butter knife through the base of her skull.  The sad part was, he actually grieved over her as if she’d been real.  It made me sick to watch him get choked up over it.

“How are you connecting to the internet?”  I asked.

“I’m working off a wireless router.  We’re close enough for me to get a signal from here.”

“Close enough to what?”

“IDE, Inc. of course.”  He said, raising his skinny arms over his head to stretch.  I frowned. 

“How close?”

“It’s about twenty minutes south of here.”  I’d been walking right toward the most dangerous location in the city and hadn’t even known it.  I cursed, realizing that the sun was going down now.  I didn’t want to be anywhere near IDE, Inc., but I didn’t want to be out there walking in the dark.  Moreover, I really didn’t want to go back the way I’d come.  It had been a horrible experience and much of the way was a stretch of freeway, void of food or water resources.  My last bit of water had come from a cooler in an older motor home.  It was also the last place I’d had a shower. I shifted uncomfortably and went over my options. 

“You can stay here tonight,” Gizzard said.

“Well, that’s really generous of you.  Like I was going anywhere.”

Gizzard ignored my sarcasm and cracked open a warm liter bottle of orange soda.  “Sip?”  He asked after taking a big gulp and belching.

“No. Thanks.” He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

I rolled my eyes and busied myself with checking over my inventory of personal possessions.  In my pack I had a roll of gauze, my water bottle, a can of tuna, my sweatshirt, and a few other useless items.  A can-opener wasn’t one of them. 

Seeing my stash, Gizzard stopped clacking on his keyboard. 

“I’ve got a can-opener,” he said casually.

“Sweet.”  He tossed it to me and I made short work of opening the little can.  My mouth was watering by the time I got to the last click – and then I realized that it would be rude not to offer him some. 

“I’ve got a box of saltines.  We could make a little feast,” he suggested.  How could I say no?

“Sure, why not?”

We made a make-shift table out of a flat section of the broken concrete and enjoyed our meal of tuna, crackers, and warm orange soda.  It was nice to have some food in my stomach and, as much as I hated to admit it, it was nice to have human company.  It meant that I could actually get some sleep.  Gizzard shut down his laptop to preserve his battery and agreed to take the first watch.  There was no light, so I don’t know what he was planning to do, but I didn’t have the energy to care.  I snuggled my head against my pack and fell asleep faster than I had in months.

I woke up some time later to the sound of a struggle.  I scrambled for my flashlight and my weapon but it was so dark and my brain was still in a sleepy fog.  By the time I clicked on the flashlight, I saw the simp had Gizzard by the throat.  His large pupils met my light and a slow, satisfied smile played out across his synthetic lips.  His hair was peppered with realistic grey and he looked to be in his late forties.  His ugly man-made fingernails were digging into the sides of Leonard “Gizzard” O’Malley’s milky white neck.  Gizzard’s eyes were bulging out of their sockets, and I knew I had a short window before the simp crushed his windpipe.

“Let’s make a deal, always a winner, come on down!”  He hissed.  It was too dark to search for something to load in my slingshot and I doubted the effectiveness based on his size.  Going for my backup plan, I reached into my boot for my blade.  It wasn’t my weapon of choice, but I knew it would be more effective.  I threw it just as he opened his mouth to spew more game show crap.  The blade sank deep in his side and then he twitched like an epileptic before falling over.  Biogenetic fluid oozed from his wound and his wide-opened mouth.  “No deal, you sorry sack of wires.” 

“Thanks,” Gizzard said as he massaged his throat.  “I was sure that was the end for the Giz.”

“Not on my watch,” I said as I struggled to flip the game show host so that I could search his pockets for supplies.  Gizzard took his shoes, and I made out with a white bandana that was stuffed in his front pocket.  Huffing and puffing, we climbed out of our shelter to locate his vehicle.  A white van sat idling, with the headlights lighting a clear path for us. 

“Do you suppose there might be others in there?”  Gizzard’s high-pitched tone was a clear indication that he was afraid.  He clutched the straps of his pack, which held his precious laptop and stared at me with wide eyes. 

“Wait here,” I said leaving him behind a short barrier wall as I stomped off toward the van.  I motioned for Gizzard once I’d determined it was empty.  He slid into the passenger seat without a word.  Okay, so tech boy was not a knight in shining armor.  What else was new?  I was used to taking care of myself, and I would have parted ways right there but I didn’t feel right leaving him on the side of the road like that.  I’d get him someplace safe and then cut ties after the sun came up.  Driving was risky, but it was late, so the odds were in our favor.  Besides, I didn’t like the fact that game show host found us where we were.