Freedom (29 page)

DIA: “Why are you doing this?”

BCM: “My clients are simply defending their property—they own the genes being stolen by the Daemon’s operatives. They own the networks and software it has compromised. They own the global brands it has undermined. Representative government doesn’t have the will to defeat this threat.”

DIA (to the NSA director): “Have him arrested!”

The BCM representative gestured to the phone near the NSA director’s chair.

BCM: “It’s your call. Try to arrest our people. Try to have the military interfere with our security operations. I think you’ll find that no one in your government has the stomach for it. We are not the enemy of America.”

NSA: “I don’t know what you are. But some people in government still take seriously their oath to uphold the Constitution.”

The NSA director picked up the phone and started dialing.

J
on Ross moved through the crowd that had gathered around a soup kitchen. Grim-looking, recently middle-class refugees surged toward the queues. He could see the isolated D-Space call-outs of darknet members keeping order.

“Form four lines! Four lines, please!”

Ross stood up on the bumper of an abandoned car and gazed across a vast tent city, accumulated like so much plaque at the confluence of two interstate highways outside of Des Moines, Iowa. It was actually a mixed tent/car/RV city. He estimated several thousand makeshift campsites. There was music, the buzz of voices, dogs barking, and the shouts of children playing in the maze of humanity. The acrid smell of people cooking over magazine-and-newspaper fires filled the air.

Ross searched for a path through the crowd and noticed a current of people flowing along a makeshift lane. He headed toward it, inching his way through a mass of people. He caught most of a conversation at the end of a soup kitchen line as he edged past. . . .

“Where were you headed?”

“We were trying to reach Ohio—my sister’s in Columbus—but the bastards privatized the interstate. The tolls are insane.”

“We couldn’t afford gas. I’ve been trying to trade my truck for a motorcycle. You know anybody who has one?”

“No, sorry. . . .”

Ross reached the pathway and started passing individual camps—recent arrivals to homelessness. People with Infinitis and Lexus sedans. Furniture piled into the backs of expensive, crew-cab pickup trucks. A few people even had living room sets with sofas and matching chairs set up beneath tarps. Others used high-end camping gear meant for a trip to the lake. Still others sat, looking dazed and lost, in well-appointed camping trailers and motor homes. An economic hurricane had passed through these people’s lives, and they were still in shock.

Ross did see one burgeoning business rising out of the ashes of consumer culture. Several heavily armed men were standing atop a container truck as brokers at the open doorway haggled with refugees. A banner hanging along the side read: WE BUY WATCHES AND JEWELRY. Ross had seen them in every tent city—hustlers repatriating luxury items for sale back to Asian markets, where the real money was. High-value items worth their shipping weight.

Meanwhile, the bulky stuff—the plasma-screen televisions and furniture—was all winding up in piles, sold cheap to be stripped of metals and fabrics, and wood. Already trash was accumulating into mounds—some of it burning.

Ross finally reached the edge of a darknet medical clinic. A cluster of call-outs hovered there in D-Space. He did a quick search and suddenly his target flashed—a second-level Horticulturalist named
Hank_19
.

In a few moments Ross approached a weathered but hardy-lo oking man in his forties wearing a baseball cap, jeans, and a work shirt. He was lowering boxes off the back of a thirty-year-old stake bed truck into the waiting hands of clinic workers.

Ross waved, and Hank_19 waved back.

“You still headed to Greeley?”

“Yeah, just as soon as we drop off these supplies.”

“I appreciate the ride. Gas shortages have made traveling difficult.” Ross joined the crew off-loading and in a few minutes they had cleared the truck bed. Hank_19 wiped his brow and hopped off the tailgate. “Damn it’s hot.” He extended his calloused hand. “Henry Fossen. Call me Hank.”

Ross shook his hand. “You don’t go in for darknet handles, I take it.”

“My father gave me my name, and I intend to use it. I would’ve just selected the handle ‘Hank,’ but eighteen Hanks already beat me to it. You got a real name?”

“Jon.”

“All right,
Jon
no-last-name.” He looked up at Ross’s call-out. “I guess a twelfth-level Rogue’s gotta be secretive. What the hell’s a ‘Rogue’ do on the darknet, anyway?” He slammed the tailgate closed. “I thought rogues were bad guys.”

Ross laughed. “In the darknet we’re more like scouts. We infiltrate systems and facilities, and we detect threats to the network. Move about unseen, that sort of thing.”

“Oh,
reconnaissance
.”

“You could say that.”

“My boy’s in a recon regiment overseas.”

“I hope he comes home safe.”

“So do I. And I hope we get this economic mess sorted out before then.” He glanced up at Ross’s call-out again. “Well, you’ve got a four-and-a-half-star reputation on a three K base—which means you must be doing something right. Hop in.”

Fossen whistled to two younger men cradling scoped AR-15 rifles. They wore tactical gear and body armor—fourth-level Fighters with Scandinavian-sounding network handles. They had been busy talking to a young nurse at the aid station. They nodded to Fossen and came running, hopping up into the cargo bed.

Ross got into the cab with Fossen, and they were soon easing the old Ford stake bed through the tent city crowd.

Ross gestured to the truck. “Biodiesel?”

“No. Dimethyl ether. They split the water in Greeley with wind turbine electricity and add the hydrogen to something to create hydrocarbons. Makes a pretty good diesel fuel. I still don’t quite understand it. I had no idea half this stuff existed until a few months ago.”

“So, the guards . . . are you expecting trouble?”

He shook his head. “No. The town council requires armed escorts down to the city. A lot of desperate folks out here. But there’s a darknet recruiting station to the right. Hopefully it’ll get people sorted out in the next few months.”

Ross looked over to see a series of motor homes resembling bookmobiles. Dozens of call-outs clustered around them. Lines of civilians were waiting to be interviewed by the automated recruiting bot of the Daemon—what was known as The Voice. Ross had gone through a similar process, just not with such a crowd.

“This is just the first wave, I think. A lot more people are about to fall out of the old economy.”

“You think so?” Fossen brought the truck slowly through the crowd, people making way. He nodded to them genially. “I mean, how could we let this happen here in America?”

“It’s no accident. I’ve seen it before in other countries. It’s all about control. The powerful scaring people into submission.”

Fossen nodded. “I’ve had some experience with that. Just not on this scale.”

“This is nothing. The real shock is coming. Believe me.”

Fossen gestured to the tent city out the window. “
This
isn’t the real shock?”

“No. It’ll be much, much worse. They’ll try to psychologically traumatize the public into accepting a new social order.”

“And you know this because . . . ?”

“Firsthand experience.”

Fossen raised his eyebrows. “I can tell you’re going to be a barrel of fun on the way.”

After a few minutes Fossen finally brought them out of the crowd. As the old Ford picked up speed, the cab got much noisier, especially with the windows open, and they drove for a while without talking.

Eventually Fossen turned to his passenger, shouting, “So what brings a rogue to Greeley?”

“I’m looking for someone.”

“They in trouble?”

Ross shook his head. “No. I got word a few days ago that an old friend I thought was dead is actually alive.”

“That’s good news. Does he know you’re coming?”

“He moves around. He’s hard to get in touch with.”

“Maybe I’ve heard of him. What’s his name?”

“The Unnamed One.”

“That’s his
name
? ‘Unnamed One’?”

“You might know him better by his real name: Detective Pete Sebeck.”

Fossen just frowned. “The Daemon hoax guy? He’s not really dead?”

“You didn’t see the news feeds on his quest?”

“I don’t read news feeds much. Not enough time in the day lately. How do you know he’s in Greeley?”

“I’ve seen feed reports that say he’s in the area.”

“That’s new to me, but like I said, I don’t read the feeds much.” Fossen seemed to be pondering something. “I’m no expert, but can’t you just search for his coordinates if you know his handle?”

“He keeps them unlisted—I suspect because of all the press he’s been getting. A lot of people are following his quest.”

“So he’s on a
quest
—as in, heroic journey and all that?”

“They say he’s searching for something called the Cloud Gate. A portal that may unlock a higher level of the darknet.”

“Well, best of luck to him.”

“Apparently he’s also been appearing in places where paramilitary units have been operating—helping to develop a smart mob-alert system.”

“Well, we haven’t had any of that stuff occur near us. It’s been in Nebraska and Kansas mostly.”

Ross looked at the landscape and rows of abandoned houses with FOR SALE signs in suburban subdivisions. “They’re still foreclosing on houses out here?”

“No. I think people are just abandoning them. Off to find work or public relief facilities. Driving is no longer an option for most people, and there’s nothing to live on out here.”

“Is anyone swallowing the ‘illegals gone wild’ story?”

“I don’t know. I think people would have noticed armed gangs if they really existed.”

“Oh, they exist. They’re just not what the media claims.”

“Then what are they?”

“Paramilitary units. Terror squads.”

Fossen just gave him a look. “I think we would have noticed that, too.”

“Not if they move at night by helicopter.”

“Helicopter?”

Ross nodded. “They fly in low and fast. Drop in teams, advance on foot, then ex-fil by chopper. They’ve hung people. Burned houses. On television the next day you usually hear how gang violence is behind it. Senators calling for martial law. And checkpoints.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I’ve been tracking their movements for the last several months.”

Fossen just gave Ross a sideways look. “Are you pulling my leg?”

Ross pointed to Fossen’s call-out. “You joined the darknet recently.”

“Yeah. My daughter convinced me. She’s really something.”

“You have a farm?”

“Fifth generation—a ‘horticulturalist’ now, I guess. My daughter has made a lot of positive changes to our operation. You should come by and see it.”

“I’d like that.”

“Jenna’s rising fast in the Greeley holon. She’s leading two projects now—a biodiversity initiative and an education program.”

“You must be proud.”

“I’m proud of both my kids. Life is starting to make sense again for us. I just hope we can get other folks on the new economy in time.”

Fossen turned the old truck onto a county road and soon they were heading out into a veritable ocean of green corn plants stretching unbroken to the horizon. This road was even louder in the old truck, so Ross just watched the landscape roll by.

They occasionally passed through small, downscale towns. Ross was able to spot them at a distance not by their church steeples but by the local grain elevators—invariably a row of concrete tubes a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet tall looming like missile silos at the end of Main Street.

Between the towns they passed several abandoned farmhouses, crumbling in the prairie. The clapboard ruins were choked with bushes and collapsing in on themselves.

Ross shouted over the engine. “That doesn’t look recent. Why all the empty houses?”

Fossen leaned close. “Been happening for decades. Farms had to get big or go out of business. Market forces. The population of this county has dropped about a third in the last fifteen years or so. It’s coming back now, though.”

He slowed the truck down, and they turned this time onto a gravel road that was ramrod straight. They were traveling slower now, and it was much easier to talk.

“The fields look healthy.”

Fossen waved him off. “Those plants have as much to do with agriculture as a weight lifter on steroids has to do with physical fitness. See that?” He pointed out tiny plastic signs spaced ten yards apart running along the edges of the fields near the road. The signs stretched into the distance and all bore the image of a green leaf with a single dewdrop dripping from the tip. The text HALPERIN ORGANIX—MITROVEN 336 was written in a bold sans serif font beneath the logo. The signs looked cheerful, healthy, and inviting. “They’re all clones designed to maximize kernel production. In fact, ninety-eight percent of the crops grown in this country a century ago are now extinct.