Pop Travel (17 page)

The kid barely nodded, his face blanching at the admission. This kid needed to find a new line of work.

“Fine. You can tell PTI I’m onto them. And I better not catch you in my shadow again. You hear?”

He nodded vigorously.

“Now scram!” Cooper yelled and gave him a shove toward the stairs to get him started.

Cooper watched the youth stumble into a jog down the stairs.
What’s wrong with kids these days?
This couldn’t be the guy from the airport, but at least now he knew one of the powers hunting for the evidence. Cooper doubted they were the only ones.

Blake heard the altercation up the stairs and waited on the landing below them. He held a sleek electrogun poised as the punk came flying around the corner and stopped short with a gasp.

Before the kid could turn and run back up, Blake blasted him, sending him into convulsions before he finally lay still. No one invaded his turf.

fter securing the room as well as he could, and covering the webcam, Cooper spoke the CC imager to life and asked for the news. They were hyping the Creator’s birthday bash, announcing all the famous guests.
La dee dah.

“Room service.” The hotel’s room service menu appeared in a new frame. Using the desk touchpad, he tapped in his order for dinner.

Twenty minutes later, the doorbell buzzed.

“Hold on a minute.” Cooper stepped over to the gun on the bedside table and threw a towel over it. He would have to clean off his prints and dispose of that. Guns were cowardly and vulgar, and some electroguns could cause brain damage. Cooper was a martial arts man.

After touching the peep screen to confirm it really was room service at the door, Cooper stepped into the hall. He took the tray from the waiter and thumb-stamped the bill. He didn’t need any more surprises.

Though he was famished, his stomach gurgled out of worry, not for food. He had to digest recent events. He considered the towel with the gun underneath it. Surely, PTI sent that guy to scare him or just get the drives he had, not kill him.
You keep telling yourself that, Coop
. Maybe he should go back to scenario one and dump the drives. But he couldn’t. If he just let it go on, Dawson could be next. He had to find the root of the problem. Dawson wouldn’t stop popping without proof.
And they’d probably kill me anyway.

At least all the action kept him from feeling sorry for himself, for a while.

Hunger took over. As he dug into his meal, he found a handwritten message on one of the napkins. It said, “Drop investigation. For your brother’s sake.”

Cooper got a chill.
No! No way!
He rushed over to the gun, ready to sink to their level. But he had no idea who he would shoot. He couldn’t lose his head. They were just trying to scare him. It worked.

He called Dawson.

“Hey, bro,” Dawson answered. Cooper could see behind his brother the furnishings of a hotel room surrounding him as well, and heard one of Dawson’s aides in the background.

“Thanks for the ticket and the room. How’s it going?”

“No problem. The Ritz is nice, eh?”

“I would’ve been happy at the Quality Inn. It was closer to the mall. Where are you?”
I’m fine! I’m worried about you!

“You’re welcome. And the Ritz is across the street from the pop station, plus I get a good rate. I’m on the road.”

“Where on the road?”

Dawson didn’t sound like he was in trouble. That was a good sign.

“We’re stuck in Rapid City, South Dakota of all places. Got an urgent call from the mayor about a problem with his Econ Car order so we popped into town only to find it was a mistake. And now the travelport is down. Technical difficulties. Wouldn’t you know it? Right in the middle of nowhere. Who’d’ve thought you could still get stranded in this day and age?”

Unless someone was sending Cooper a message of what they could do to Dawson. There was no mistake.

Cooper desperately wanted to warn Dawson, but he might trigger whoever was listening to do something stupid. And if Dawson knew, he’d call in the Marines and nothing would be resolved. Cooper’s best chance at stopping this was the cloak and dagger route. The less Dawson knew, the better.

“Yeah, that’s weird. I bet it will be up and running in no time.”

“We could always rent a car, but I would miss the rest of my tour. Epsen is pulling out what little hair he has left.”

“You need to take it easy on the popping. Have you had any more headaches?” The hit man had been a trivial annoyance. He didn’t care about his own well-being anymore. Worrying about Dawson kept him going.

“No, I feel fine. Coop, it’s a necessity. You’ll see it’s not so bad when you pop to the party. Do you have a plan?”

“I’ll figure it out when I get there.”

“Seat of the pants, eh? Sounds good. Just watch your butt and stay out of trouble. Better yet, get a linkage,” he joked with a wink.

Cooper had no need for the complication of a new relationship. If he made it through this mess alive, maybe he’d consider calling Geri.

“Don’t worry about me, D. I’m the older brother, remember?” Cooper picked up the napkin and read it again.
They couldn’t touch Dawson or they’d blow their own cover, right?

“You sure look older. And be sure to go over the pop ticket info. If you don’t cross your t’s and dot your i’s, you don’t go.”

“Great. I will. Call and let me know how you get out of Dodge.”

“Sure thing. Good luck.”

They disconnected.
You, too.

Threatening Dawson only fueled Cooper’s drive to take down the pompous assholes responsible. Who do they think they are? It also gave him more courage to go through with a dreaded pop.

As he picked at his sandwich, Cooper opened the pop travel ticket on his QV and read it over. It had a micro-destination code, his name and ID#, plus instructions and warnings. It read,

One use pop travel. Friday, July 26, 2080

Departure station:
Peachtree Street, Downtown Atlanta, GA

Departure time:
3:20 p.m.

Destination:
Beasley Hills Plantation, Albany, GA

Arrive 45 minutes early to check in. You will undergo a brief pre-pop medical examination by a certified physician.

Go to
PopTravel.com
to fill out and submit the medical exam questionnaire.

It is strongly recommended you
DO NOT POP
if you are: pregnant, epileptic or have been experiencing frequent migraines or seizures.

Any belongings larger than the indicated measurements will require a separate ticket.

Using pop travel is done at the risk of the traveler.

For any other questions or concerns go to
PopTravel.com
.

“That’s encouraging,” Cooper said aloud.
I can’t believe I’m doing this
. He shut the screen with a quick poke, as if a laser would reach out and zap him through the ticket. Thinking about the pop made him nauseous and he pushed away his sandwich. Dawson said it was nothing. He seemed fine.
I wonder how that guy in the video felt before he disintegrated.

Cooper stopped sneering at his QV and turned to the imager.
Better get this over with
.

He shrank the news feed but left it running in the background. Time to start the unavoidable pop travel preliminaries.

“Open Qnet. Pop travel dot com.” The website came up. It dripped with happiness, so inviting and pleasant with puffy white clouds, blue skies, and smiling faces. He gaped at the magnitude of its irony and muted the mellow music streaming with the slideshow of excited travelers being greeted by attractive travelport staff at locations around the world.

“Welcome to Pop Travel International. The Future is Now,” it advertised.

“More like, ‘The future ENDS now’,” Cooper chided the image.

His fingers rebelliously pounded around on the touchpad to find the pre-pop questionnaire form. He spoke the answers to the prompts in a soft tone, hoping not to be heard. But when his response failed, the prompt would just patiently and politely ask again. Resistance was futile.

As he divulged his medical history, he felt the pop anxiety build. His stomach tightened, and his breath came in short bursts. He fought to keep it under control with deep intakes and managed to complete the form.

Next, he had to read more instructions and advice requiring his thumbprint.
This means we aren’t responsible if you don’t make it.
His angst started again. He wasn’t worried about dying, so much as feeling it. If he survived the pop, maybe his pieces would be mismatched, leaving him to live his life deformed or a conscious pile of goo. Sitting on the edge of his seat, he started to hyperventilate. The video of the exploding traveler replayed in his head.
That could be me!

Grasping for control, Cooper tightly gripped the arms of his chair and squeezed his eyes shut. He used the calming technique he had mastered in law school, taking himself back to his early days of dealing with jitters before a tough case against a mega-corp, like PTI. He concentrated on clearing his mind.
Focus on the goal. Think of all the innocent people. And Dawson. They need you.
He relaxed his body, one muscle at a time.

When he opened his eyes, he glared at the image.
You can’t beat me.
He gave his thumbprint in the last box and pressed
send
. Not realizing he had been holding his breath, he exhaled, relieved to have that out of the way.

To take his mind off the looming pop, he focused on his plans. Now that he knew a little more about the plantation, he could examine pictures on the Qnet to get a better gist of the layout and buildings he saw. In the backgrounds of party photos, Cooper identified pieces of the manor house and grounds. In one photo, he thought he caught a flash of red glinting in the distance, maybe a laser fence. Guards decorated the surroundings as well, blending into the background. They wore black suits and sunglasses, similar to secret service. No doubt the same men in black who had interviewed the missing persons’ loved ones.

After finishing his sandwich, he wanted to go to sleep. Still shaky from the pop anxiety, he searched “Beasley Hills Plantation history.” In 1835, good old Graham Beasley and his wife, Hannah, built their dream home and grew cotton on a large plot of land she brought as her dowry, along with a family of slaves. Poor Hannah had ten children in twelve years and died as the youngest, Mary, was born…

Cooper was out.