Data Runner (23 page)

“What's that supposed to mean?” I whisper.

“It means that Martin Baxter isn't the only one Tolan is after,” Snake answers.

Sandrine restrains a smile. “
À tout à l'heure, mon chéri
.”

One week later, Cass and I sit on the rusted merry-go-round in the run-down old playground of Brentwood. Or I should say,
Burntwood
. Barely a week gone by and the nickname given to Brentwood by the media has already stuck, even among the people living here.

We had a service for Pace early that morning, which is why I'm still wearing my black suit. Dexter was there too, but he had to leave in a hurry. Our town may have been burned but the rest of the world kept on. Still plenty of data needing transport, still plenty of loads to be run. Not that my wing had buzzed once since Tolan's press conference, but if there was an official dismissal from Arcadian, I was still waiting to get it.

Cass looks around the playground. “So I guess this is one of the few places that didn't get touched by the fire.”

“Only because there was never any water here to begin with. The kids always had to bring their own.”

“I heard there'll be some money coming in from the settlement. Maybe even enough to rebuild the town.”

“Maybe.”

“You don't think so?”

I shrug. “Money doesn't make a community, it breaks it. The first time Blackburn destroyed this town by poisoning the water supply, everyone took their settlement checks and left. Then we moved in. Now they've done it again, and once again there's a settlement deal on the table. Maybe some folks like Mr. Chupick will reinvest it into Brentwood, but if I know most of the people around here—for sure the ones who are walking around calling their home
Burntwood
—they're going to take the buyout and leave. And all of this,” I wave my hand at the last remains of a town that has seen more than its fair share of disaster, “will be left to weather into the ground.”

“But you and Martin will still be here.”

I shrug, remembering Mr. Chupick's words when I asked him why he never left Brentwood. “Where would we go?”

“Hey, don't look so glum. In spite of the fire, you did help bring down Blackburn. That's no small feat.”

Another shrug. “Does it make any difference?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Does it make any difference whether our national security is under the thumb of Christopher Blackburn or Miles Tolan? The megas are like a Hydra. You cut off one head and two more pop up to take its place. It's the definition of futility.”

“No,” says Cass. “No, that's not right. It's a difficult struggle but it isn't futile. Hercules did it.”

“Hercules wasn't real.”

“Neither was the Hydra.”

The merry-go-round squeaks as I toe it around one arc minute at a time. Cass falls silent. I know she has something on her mind, something that's been on her mind the entire afternoon, I've just been waiting for her to get to it.

“There's something I have to tell you,” she says finally. “Cyril is moving me off the Free City beat. I'm going to be running internationally.”

“As of when?”

“As of right now. I leave for London tonight. It's a big step up from point-to-point. Huge. The loads are even more high-value and the stretches much longer…”

“But the pay is much better,” I finish.

Cass smiles, and in that smile I can see how much she enjoys what she does. Sure she does it for the money, we all do, but for her the promotion is also a validation. She's incredibly good at what she does. Getting the chance to run the global sneakernet is proof of that.

“Hey, you're a great runner,” she says. “I'm sure it's only a matter of time until you get the same bump. We'll be running side-by-side again in no time. Then you can teach me some more of those moves.”

I return the smile halfheartedly. Cass thought it was funny that I got my picture broadcast all over the news stream. Just like me, she didn't realize the broader implications of what that meant. I don't say anything. She's on top of the world right now, and I don't want to ruin that. “Yeah, I'm sure you're right.”

“Yeah, I'm sure I am.” She ruffles my hair with both her hands. “You're the Carrion. You'll be flying the Eurozone in no time.”

Ever since the construction site, I have imagined kissing her again. I imagined every little detail. The where and the when and even the how. Whether it was day or night, even the awkward moment just before. But now that the moment is finally here, there is this giant chasm between us that I never could have imagined in a million years. I never thought that the next time I kissed Cassandra Evers, it would be a kiss goodbye. Over the past six weeks I was hit by a lot of things I never saw coming, but none of them punched me in the gut like this one. She's the first girl I ever really liked.

In the distance, I see the spec of a vehicle coming our way.

A long wet kiss that tastes like raspberries. Three short pecks from her lips to mine. Another long one from me to her. Two more short ones that are both me and her. She puts her hand on my cheek and touches her forehead to mine. The electricity gives me goose bumps.

One more time, for the last time, Cass kisses me goodbye. “See you soon, Jack.”

Before I even have a chance to process what's happening, the black SUV with darkened windows pulls up. Bulletproof glass from what I can tell. I know who it is even before the back door opens and he gets out. Cyril.

“How's it going, Jack?” he asks as he holds the door open for Red Tail.

She gets in without looking back.

“You tell me.”

I fully expect his trademark smirk, and he doesn't disappoint. “You're quite the trend these days,” he says.

“That wasn't my fault.”

“Who said anything about fault? There's no one to blame, it's just the way things played out.”

I have to hand it to him, the man is nothing if not pragmatic.

“It's quite unfortunate, though. I had very high hopes for you. You could have been one of the great ones, Jack.”

“It's not over yet, Cyril. I still can be if you'll just give me the chance.” But the look on his face says it all. “This is so unfair.”

“Who said anything about fair?” he replies. “Do you remember what I said to you when you asked me why we were so hard to locate?”

“You said they can't compromise what they can't find.”

“That's right. So what does that say about a data runner whose face has become the bitstream of the month?”

It says he's about as useful as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. “So that's it?”

“That's it. I really hate to do this, Jack, but consider yourself clipped.”

And just like that, Cyril lets me go.

“Wait.” I pull up my sleeve to reveal the Carrion Crow on my arm with a cortex chip for an eye. “What about your gear?”

But Cyril just smirks. “Keep it.”

I stand there confused.

“You're a smart kid,” he says. “I'm sure you'll find some use for it.” Cyril opens the door of the SUV just enough for himself but not enough for me to see Red Tail sitting inside. “By the way,” he says, “I had to find a new assistant to replace that little prick Bigsby.”

I acknowledge the information with a perfunctory nod. What do I care? It has nothing to do with me.

Cyril taps the driver side window. The door opens and out pops—

“Dex! What the hell?”

This time it's not a smirk but a full-on smile that Cyril offers as Dexter takes the door from his hand. “I'll give you two a minute,” he says and disappears into the vehicle. Dexter checks to make sure Cyril's leg is clear and shuts the door behind him.

“Dex!” The excitement is genuine, bittersweet but genuine. “When did this happen?”

“This morning.” Dexter pulls up his sleeve to reveal the fresh scorpion ink across his thick forearm. It is a very large bird in flight. Wings arched high. Beak large and designed for tearing. Something fierce and aggressive that you wouldn't want swooping down on you in anger. Clearly it is a bird that has been on this planet for a very long time, with no plans on going anywhere anytime soon. “Griffon Vulture,” he says. “What do you think?”

Griffon Vulture. From what I see on his arm, it looks like a bird that is equally adept at fight as flight. “I think it suits you.”

Dexter lowers his sleeve. “Hey, Jack. It's too bad it had to turn out like this. I was hoping we could run together like before.”

“That would've been nice.”

It's funny. Sometimes people drift apart slowly, over time. Like when the close friends you start high school with become the distant strangers you don't even recognize on graduation day. But sometimes it's just the onslaught of circumstance that pulls people apart—not over the passage of time, but all at once.

“I was really looking forward to showing you this next time I saw you,” says Dex with a sentiment I recognize at once. It was the exact same sentiment I had while saying goodbye to Cass. Dexter never imagined that the next time he saw me would be like this.

“Don't sweat it,” I say. “Just remember, you're the one representing the Dragons on the sneakernet now. Do us proud.”

“Always.”

A moment passes that is only broken by the sound of knuckles tapping the other side of the tinted window. Dexter motions that he has to go. He gets into the driver's seat of the SUV with Cyril and Cass in the back as I turn in the other direction. But just before he leaves, Dexter rolls down the window. “Hey, Jack!”

I turn back.

“You know that getting clipped isn't any kind of limit…it's just another plateau.”

I suppose I already knew that, but hearing it brings a smile to my face.

“Be sure to look after the Dragons. You're the club captain now.”

“I will.” But there's something else I want to say to Dex. Something to encourage him the way he's always encouraged me. A few words of wisdom to encapsulate everything I've learned about the sneakernet. Unfortunately, I have no such words, and I can't find them quickly enough, so I settle for the next best thing. “Hey, Griffon!”

He looks over his shoulder as the vehicle pulls away.

“You watch your back out there!”

It takes more than a week to get the house back in order—first from being ransacked, then from being burned. Structurally, we're in pretty good shape. All the bathrooms and most of the kitchen will have to be redone, but the rooms without wet walls have only cosmetic damage. The bannisters on the main staircase have all turned powdery black, and all the walls are stained brown from water and smoke, and no matter how much air freshener we use the whole thing smells like a wet chimney, but in the end the house is still standing. Just like Martin and me.

Now, down in the basement, through a giant hole that was once a heavy door guarded by a biometric security pad, Martin manages to get his systems back up and running. Back online. Hardwired directly into the aggrenet. And for the first time, standing there looking at it from the top of the stairs, I see Martin's basement for what it really is. Not a workshop at all.

“So this is the Morlock lair,” I say. “Where the mythical Moreau controls the undernet.”

Martin looks up to see me looking down from above. “The best way to hide the truth is to shroud it in myth,” he says as he continues ratcheting together a switch. “And for the record, Moreau does not control the undernet. He has his thumb on the pulse, just like a good sysop should, but the undernet is out there. You, Dexter, Red Tail, Snake, you're not just surfers on someone else's infrastructure, you guys are the nodes and relays that make up the undernet. That's what separates it from the aggregate Internet. That's what makes it better. It isn't owned. It's the sum of its parts.” Martin stops to consider this as he moves to another screw and continues ratcheting. “It's more than the sum of its parts.”

I take an eyes-wide-open look at what Martin has done with the place. It's just a musty little basement enclosed by dirty walls, but it's enough, and it's private. If nothing else, it's a place where a man like him can work. Whether it's Martin Baxter or the shadow they call Moreau, it's a place where he can really get something done. And isn't that all a mind like his ever really needs out of real estate?

“So we're definitely staying then? We're not going to take the money and run?”

Martin confirms. “It's where we belong. Moreau can be much more effective out here and protected. You were right about this being our home, Jack. Leaving is the easy way out.”

I descend the stairs to Martin's worktable. “You know, you still owe me a reason.”

“Reason for what?”

I shake my head. No more question games. “You know what I'm talking about.”

“You want to know about Genie.”

I have all the pieces; I'm just missing the big picture. “You said something about her finding out the truth about Grumwell. And then Snake said that taking over Blackburn was all part of some plan. The doctrine? That's what you were talking about, wasn't it? That was the thing that Genie found out.”

Martin nods. “It's called the
Grumwell Doctrine
, and it is the unwavering belief that the only successful global empire can be the empire of the corporation. Put simply, it is Arthur Grumwell's plan to take over the world, to acquire whatever he can and destroy whatever he can't until the world's largest private enterprise is also its biggest global superpower. The Grumwell Doctrine is his personal mission to create the next world empire under the banner of a single corporation. His corporation.”

“How come I've never heard any of that?”

“Because Grumwell is exceptionally good at selling everything they do. You saw how everybody reacted to Miles's speech the other day. He painted Grumwell as the great savior that the Alliance so desperately needed, and everybody just cheered. The public loves Grumwell, and Miles uses that affinity to his advantage. Grumwell's greatest asset is the awe they inspire; with that they can get away with almost anything.”

“Even taking over the world.”

“Even taking over the world.”

“And when Genie was the CSO of Grumwell, she found out about the doctrine.”

“She did.”

“And she wanted no part of it?”

Martin shakes his head. “If it was that simple, she could have just quit, walked away, and been done with it. But the thing about Genie, and certainly the reason I fell for her the first time I ever met her, is that she has a fire inside her. When she has a passion for something, there is nothing in the world that can stop her from pursuing it. Genie couldn't just walk away. She couldn't just stand by and let it all happen. But she couldn't put you in danger either, so after I scrubbed her identity, Genie did the hardest thing she ever had to do in her life. She kissed you goodbye and went off to form the Outliers.”

At once I recall Red Tail's story. “Genevive Bonillia is the gypsy woman who marched into the squatter settlements to form the resistance.”

Martin nods. “It's a Castilian name, but the roots are Romani. Her family truncated it when they immigrated to North America from the Eastern Eurozone, so when it came time to give her a new identity, we just reverted back to the old one.”

“So, I'm part gypsy?”

“The correct term is
Romani
,” says Martin. “And yes, that's the other half of the blood pumping through your veins.”

I'm stunned. Genie. Genevive. The Outliers. They're all the same. Just like Martin, Moreau, and Morlock.

“I want you to know something,” Martin continues. “She did it for you. For all of us. She left so that we could all have a better future. On the surface, the Outliers may seem like just another protest group fighting for rights to things now owned by private enterprise, things like the water we drink and the air that we breathe, but deep down they are so much more. The Outliers are an uprising. A revolution. They are the all-out resistance to the Grumwell Doctrine, and their goal is to bring back the constitution of the Old-50. A true government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people. Only this time we won't make the mistake of allowing the corporations to disguise themselves as people and usurp the whole thing.”

“And how does Morlock fit into all of this?”

“That was my idea. I couldn't let Genevive fight this battle all on her own, but I couldn't put you in danger either. Then one night I was reading you to sleep with
The Time Machine
and I came up with the idea of creating a singular beast made up of millions of individuals. People just like you and me. A beast that will continue to grow no matter how many nodes they stamp out. A beast that will spread itself around the entire globe. That is the digital resistance.”

I think I understand. “Genevive Bonillia does it with boots on the ground, Moreau does it with little bits of zeroes and ones.”

“Precisely.”

“And she's still out there doing it?”

“For security reasons she stays hidden, but just like Moreau and Morlock, Genevive Bonillia leads the Outliers from within.” Martin moves the switch aside and gets started on another piece of equipment. “So how did it go with Hermes Agency?”

“As expected.” Back when Dexter was running for them, they would have given anything to get me on board. Now they won't even touch me. No one will. “You really have no idea why Tolan did that?”

“I told you before, that's the way Miles operates. He will never drag you kicking and screaming, he'll simply remove all other options until you have no choice but to go to him. I don't know what his game is at the moment, but for now he's ensuring that all roads lead to Grumwell…for both of us.”

Martin is right about one thing. Whatever his game is, Miles Tolan has certainly backed me into a corner. I had already decided to keep running with Arcadian for a year or two to save up the money for NEIT. Now even that's not on the table anymore. I suppose I could still eke out a living proofing code, but after everything I had seen and done, after running the sneakernet, could I really resign myself to being Bartleby the Scrivener? The answer is as simple as looking at my parents. Martin could never do that, and apparently neither could Genie, so I guess that sort of mind-numbing task work just isn't in my DNA. I need something bigger.

“I've been thinking a lot about Zeno's Paradox lately,” I tell Martin.

“Which one?” he says. “There are nine of them.”

“Nine?”

“Yes, although most are restatements of the same principle, so reductively there are really only three.”

“I'm talking about the one where you're running for some goal, and before you can reach it, you first have to get halfway there. And before you can do that, you first have to get a quarter of the way there. Etcetera, etcetera.”

“The dichotomy paradox,” says Martin.

“Right. Anyway, I was thinking. The paradox is designed to show that a finite distance can never be crossed because it can be bisected infinitely. So no matter how far you travel, you're never more than halfway there, thus ensuring that you're never more than halfway to your goal. But the whole idea is really contingent upon the subject standing still the whole time, isn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if you stand there looking at all those half-distances you have to cross and keep adding them up in your mind, then of course any effort to achieve your goal would seem futile. I don't know, Martin, I think in a way the paradox is supposed to represent life. Every goal in life is unachievable if you just stand there focusing on the distance between you and it. But once you start moving, once you start crossing all those half-distances, picking up speed as they get smaller and smaller, you just do it. You set your mind to chasing down your goal and put yourself in motion. Let the math take care of itself.”

“It does.”

“What does?”

“The math. It does take care of itself. If you just apply a little bit of calculus, you see that the series
one over two to the nth
converges to zero.”

“Right,” I say realizing that Martin has just proven my point. “Because calculus is the mathematics of movement. The paradox only exists when you're standing still in Euclidean space. But once you start running and apply the mathematics of change, suddenly this insurmountable distance gets crushed under the curve of motion. It's like, the solution to the paradox isn't some complex mathematical proof—it's just to put one foot in front of the other and get moving, and that movement will carry you to the goal before you even realize the math says no.”

“That's a very interesting perspective,” says Martin, “but how does it apply to your current predicament?”

“It applies because that's what I have to do. No matter how far the goal may seem, no matter how much space there is in front of me, I just have to put one foot forward and start moving. And once I do that, I have to keep moving. Keep moving, keep going, using the momentum to my advantage. And I guess the distance will take care of itself.”

Martin stops what he's doing. He knows I'm about to lay something on him. “And what's the goal here, Jack?”

“Mr. Chupick already said that he would fix my attendance record so I wouldn't have to go through the motions of showing up anymore. But the truth is, school isn't just about showing up anymore. I have a commitment to the Dragons. With Dexter away and Pace gone, I'm afraid the club will fall apart without me. And the school could use my help fixing up the place. The whole town could. So maybe I'll work with Mr. Chupick for a while getting things back to normal. And while I'm doing that, maybe do some coursework through the university aggrenet portals. I may not get the grade or the credit, but it's like you said,
knowledge is the shared intellectual property of all who seek it
.”

“And after that?” Martin asks suspiciously.

After everything I've learned, there is no stopping me now. I can't just stand here staring at the distance between us knowing what I know. I can only move forward. And for me moving forward means only one thing. “I want to find her.”

He raises his eyebrows. “You can't be serious.” But he can see that I am. Martin taps the table twice like he wants another card. “Jack, I think you need to stop and think about this for a second.”

But stopping is exactly what I don't want to do, even for a second. Stopping will only make it seem too far away, too difficult, too insurmountable. Stopping will only make it seem futile because it's only when we stop that we realize we're never more than halfway there. So now I need to move.

When I first started on the undernet there was one thing that drove me more than anything—looking for Moreau—and I didn't stop until I found him. Even if he did turn out to be Martin, and the distance between us was zero the entire time, I found him. Now I need to find the other person I have always wondered about, the one who is little more than a distant memory.

“I'm serious,” I tell him, and the way I say it makes it perfectly clear that I am not seeking his permission.

Martin may think I am the same person I was before, but I'm not. Even if I'm not running data for Arcadian anymore, I am still a bird. I will always be a bird. That ink is permanent. And as a bird, the time has come for me to leave the nest.

“I'm going to find her, Martin. I'm going to find my mother.”