S.W. Tanpepper's GAMELAND: Season Two Omnibus (Episodes 9-11) (12 page)

“Lie down. On your back. Feet to my left, please.”

“I thought I was finished.”

“Please, just follow the instructions.”

“But—”

“I don't want to have to call for restraints.”

Jessie did as she asked, suddenly aware of the camera mounted in the corner of the ceiling.
Restraints?
Her mind was screaming at her to run, but to where? She'd never get out of the building.

Thomas turned to his right and pulled the machine against the side of the bed, positioning it close to Jessie's head.

“What's that?”

“Continuity scanner,” he replied.

Jessie was surprised that he even bothered to respond. She could hear the quiet beeps of Thomas tapping on the screen.

“It's a simple test to measure signal receptivity across the stream spectrum,” he told her. Then, dropping his voice to a whisper, he added, “Just relax. You'll be fine.”

He extracted a set of electrodes from a compartment on the side of the instrument and unfurled them, inserting one end of each into the matching ports on the front. At the other end, the cables were attached to a plastic band. “Lift,” he said, and then fit the band around Jessie's head just above her ears. “Turn onto your right side.”

Jessie felt a splash of coldness on her neck. She heard the sound of tape being stripped from a roll. Thomas was sticking something to her neck at the site of her implant scar. “Okay, on your back again.”

Jessie rolled back. She didn't look at him. Instead, she made herself focus on a spot in the ceiling away from the camera.

“Done.”

“That was quick.”

He grunted. “That was just the set up. Checking skin conductance . . . . Good. Doctor Forrester will be right in.”

“Doctor? Is he— I mean, am I getting a new—?”

Thomas stopped her with a raised hand. “
She
is not a medical doctor. She's an engineer. Just follow her instructions and it'll all be over soon.”

The woman who walked in a few minutes later stared intensely at the machine. Her gaze shifted briefly to the tablet in her hands, which she then set on Jessie's stomach. No greeting or introduction.

She leaned over and flipped a switch on the machine. Jessie expected it to hum or whine, but it didn't make a sound. “Good Link-to-implant continuity,” she recited to herself. “Relax, please, Miss Daniels.”

“Missus,” Jessie said, nervously. She swallowed, cringing inwardly.

“
Missus
Daniels. I just need to confirm network patency. I'll send your devices a simple instruction. You may feel a strange sensation, a fullness inside your head, maybe even a little dizziness. It'll only last for a moment. Ready?”

Jessie nodded.

There was a click, then a sharp pain pierced Jessie's skull, starting in the back of her head and shooting forward. She cried out and tried to sit up. But just as quickly, the pain faded.

“That hurt?”

“A little,” Jessie gasped, surprised that the engineer actually looked startled. “What the hell was that?”

The woman didn't answer. She recorded something on the tablet.

The pain was completely gone, but it left behind a dull throbbing ache behind Jessie's eyes, and there was that high-pitched buzzing sound in her ears again.

The engineer squinted at the screen on the machine. Finally, she reached over and adjusted something, then shook her head. She made another adjustment.

New worry began to bloom inside of Jessie.

Another tap and the buzzing vanished, much to Jessie's relief. Only the throbbing remained. Doctor Forrester mumbled something under her breath.

“Is everything all right?” Jessie asked.

“You may sit up now.”

After she did, Doctor Forrester removed the headband and carefully peeled the tape off of Jessie's neck.

“Both your implant and communication devices are functional. There's good neuroleptic connectivity, and communication between them is actually better than one hundred percent efficiency. However, there are dead spots with both your implant and Link devices at certain frequencies along the stream spectrum. It doesn't appear to be hardware related.”

“How can you tell?”

“The gaps match up between your devices, which suggests a programming issue rather than anything mechanical. I think this may be why the firmware diagnostic was requested.”

Jessie frowned. “But my Link works fine. I can ping out and receive pings—”

The engineer held up her hand to stop her. “The inter-Link communications frequencies aren't affected. The gaps are concentrated in the secure streams, including the frequencies Arc monitors for implant activation and post-mortem control. Communication with your devices is fine, but when I attempt to send a command to modulate activity, I'm impeded.”

“Can the programming be fixed?”

The engineer looked perplexed. “Not the firmware. It'd be easier to replace the devices. There are some fixes we can try before we get to that, though, like realigning the receivers in each device, fine-tuning them.”

She shrugged. “If they're out of sync, it's the first I've ever heard of it. But it's not impossible. Without a more thorough examination—” She checked the time on her Link. “Unfortunately, I don't have time, as I have another appointment.”

She stood up, muttering, “When will people learn not to tamper?”

She replaced the cables and headband in the machine. “Arc is messing with their Stream protocols, so maybe they introduced a new bug in the signal sequencing. You may just happen to be the first we've seen.” She sighed. “I hope not, though, since that'll mean another delay in achieving our inoculation goals.”

Jessie watched as she paced in a tight circle, tapping busily on her tablet and speaking more to herself. “I'm submitting a work order for an application update for both devices. If we're talking about an alignment issue, then this should fix the problem. At the very least, it'll get you up to date with the new standards.”

“When do I have to do that? Will I have to come back?”

“The update will initiate as soon as Arc processes the work order and inputs your device identifier codes into the system, which I just sent. Usually takes about ten minutes to clear. Once the alignment program starts, it'll run in the background for a couple hours. Did you drive here?”

Jessie shook her head. “I rode the bus.”

“Perfect. I won't have to keep you here then. I'll let the front desk know. You're free to leave. I advise you to go straight home, maybe even to bed, as you'll likely experience periods of disorientation while the update installs and the stream frequencies realign. Once completed, you should receive a confirmatory ping.”

“And if it doesn't work?”

“More tests maybe. Honestly, though, it'd be just as easy to replace your devices.”

She stepped toward the door. “Remember, no driving or operating heavy machinery for the next few hours, Miss Daniels.”

Jessie didn't bother correcting her this time. She just wanted to get the hell out of there.

‡ ‡ ‡

The soonest bus leaving Hartford for Greenwich wasn't scheduled for another half hour. There was a three and a half hour gap, so if Jessie missed it, she wouldn't get home until after six.

Her stomach hurt, less so from hunger than from stress, and her face and neck ached from clenching her jaw during the examination. She debated whether it was a good idea to eat something. Did she want to be caught on the bus with a touchy stomach? On the other hand, all she'd had was a few spoonfuls of cereal six hours ago. It wasn't good to keep starving herself.

The expensive cafes nearby were beyond her financial reach, and, besides, she wasn't dressed appropriately for them. She instead headed for the curbside kiosks. There was a ruckus down the street— a small group of protesters shouting and holding hands. As they marched past, Jessie could see that they were chanting angrily about the new federal mandates, though it was impossible to tell from the signs they were holding if they were anti-government or anti-implant. Several bystanders pretended not to notice. Others watched them cautiously, and one man muttered that they were shills hired by Arc.

One of the vendors emerged from the back of her cart and charged into the street, threatening that she was going to call the police, but an officer standing nearby didn't seem all that interested in interfering.

Jessie's link pinged. She recognized Arc's familiar logo and quickly read the message:

<< STATUS UPDATE: NEW CLIENT FILE OPENED. INITIAL REVIEW COMPLETE. QUEUE POSITION ASSIGNMENT PENDING. >>

Does that mean the stream alignment's started?

Her head didn't feel any different. There wasn't any of the buzzing or the throbbing.

“Can I help you?”

She realized she'd stopped in front of a fruit cart. A middle-aged man with a fat nose and thick cheeks was smiling at her. He wiped away a bead of sweat with a bandana, and asked, “Are you going to buy anything?”

Jessie stammered for a moment, aware of the growing line of people behind her, and chose a small apple. Swallowing her resentment for the five dollars it was going to cost her, she paid for it, mumbling, “Thank you,” and hurried away.

There was a small shady spot near the bus stop. The scraggly grass was trampled down and dry. Bits of plastic litter were scattered about. Some of it appeared to be several days old, and she wondered why the sanitation CUs hadn't picked it up. They usually did the downtown areas nightly.

Another ping, another message:

<< STATUS UPDATE: QUEUE POSITION #34. MATCH ASSIGNMENT REVIEW. >>

She had no idea what any of it meant, just hoped that it worked so she wouldn't have to come back.

At last the bus came. She got on and sat down with a relieved sigh. It wasn't until they started to pull away that she realized she'd left her uneaten apple at the base of the tree.

She kept waiting for the dizziness that the doctor had warned her about, but it didn't come. She just felt tired, tired and weak. Leaning her head against the window, she let her body relax until it was like she was falling, slipping through the hard plastic seat, down through the bus and road and into the earth. Her eyelids grew heavy and her head drooped. She didn't even notice when they entered the highway, although when a car honked at them, she looked up and saw the concrete and glass facades of the office buildings flashing past. The bus's motion was like the gentle rocking of a boat.

The monotony of downtown Hartford soon gave way to the drabness of the suburbs. She was only dimly aware of this transition. The sun switched sides of the bus, first casting her in shadow, then bathing her with warmth. Still, she didn't sleep. Her mind, though now free from the stress of the morning's appointment, seemed unable to settle. It flitted from one place to another— places filled with images of empty rooms and dimly lit hallways and shadowy figures. Eventually, these daydreams took her to even darker realms.

She was in a room, dimly lit, its dimensions uncertain. Her mother was sprawled out on the floor. Jessie could see that her clothes were torn. Her bare arms were thin and pale. The whiteness of her naked shoulder seemed to glow in the pale light. Jessie thought of the ashen skin of the Undead. The strap of her mother's worn bra was dirty and hung loose over her arm.

The walls, if there were any, were too deep in shadow to see. The ceiling, though also invisible, felt real. It had weight. It pressed down. Jessie felt like she needed to duck her head.

A filthy remnant of green shag carpet covered the floor; it was her mother's bed.

It's grass, not carpet.

She couldn't be sure. Her mother's face was smudged with soot. Her eyes were closed, and her hands were folded beneath her head. The red lipstick, always too thickly applied, in Jessie's opinion, was smeared. It streaked from one ear to the other.

She looks like a hooker.

It's just a dream.

She stepped closer and circled the prostrate figure. The ground beneath her feet was hard, uneven. The rasp of her boots scuffing—

“Last stop! Everyone off.”

Someone nudged her shoulder as they made their way down the aisle. Jessie blinked after them, the image of her dream still superimposed over the scene before her eyes.

“Hey!” the driver was saying, pointing at her. “You, too. Last stop! I'm going straight to the garage from here.”

Jessie was dimly aware of rising from her seat. She shuffled down the aisle and stepped off the bus, even as the dream image clung stubbornly to the air before her eyes. She turned left when her feet hit concrete.

The street was unfamiliar to her. She kept walking. Block after block, until she realized with a start that the dark room and her mother were gone. But the double image persisted. Now trees juxtaposed themselves over the urban landscape, a vibrant organic wilderness melting into a decaying urban one.

This is a hell of a strange dream.

Thick vines draped themselves over the burned out frames of buildings. Faded, hastily scrawled graffiti covered bricks and tree trunks alike. Creeper vines strangled rusted streetlamps. Green tendrils dangled everywhere, weeping dew, leaves, and frayed wiring.

Where am I?

She kept walking. Time slipped. The sun, high above her a moment before, disappeared in the shadow of a building she was passing, then reappeared low in the sky. The air was suddenly humid, thick with the smell of moss and water. She could smell the creek. And the sea.

Then, as stealthily as the double vision had come, it was abruptly gone. One image disappeared, and she was left with only the other.

Where the hell am I?

She turned slowly around, not recognizing the buildings leaning in close over her head, not liking their bland facades and the evening shadows spilling through their glassless cataract windows. Sheets of frayed plastic flapped out of several openings, like monstrous eyelashes.