The Bar Code Tattoo (7 page)

“Don’t laugh,” Nedra snapped. “Maybe it does. AgroGlobal owns every dairy farm on earth and all their cows are transgenic, which means they’ve
been altered to produce more milk. As far as I’m concerned, Global-1
is
the devil.”

“Who’s ready for this?” Allyson asked, tapping the case she held.

“I am,” Nedra said quickly.

Allyson opened the case and slid out a small metal piece that looked like a computer mouse with a monitor in it. She held it up to her eye and clicked a button.

“What is that?” Kayla whispered to Zekeal.

“A virtual reality headset,” he told her. “Allyson’s father has no idea she takes it out. She had to sneak to load her eye scan into the lock just so we could unlock the case. She’s such a genius, she was able to do it.”

“What do you use it for?” Kayla asked.

“You’ll see,” Zekeal said.

August lifted the virtual reality helmet off his head. “Your turn,” he said, handing it to Kayla.

“All right,” she agreed. “What’s going to happen when I turn it on?”

He turned a dial. “I set it to take you to the next resistance frequency we can pick up. They change depending on who’s sending. But basically you should have the sensation that you’re inside a resistance website.”

“Where did you just go?” Zekeal asked August.

“I was attending a meeting of resisters in Canada. They were all talking French. I had no idea what they were saying.” He laughed. “It was kind of final level, anyway. They were all so excited.”

Kayla glanced at Mfumbe for reassurance. Her eyes asked him if she should try it, and he nodded. She placed the helmet on her head.

August told her what buttons to press and soon the helmet was humming on her head. The vibration ran down along behind her ears and traveled through her jaw. She shut her eyes as the sensation continued down the back of her neck.

Lights filled the blackness behind her eyes and
formed blobs that crossed and blended into new colors. Sometimes they separated, reminding her of the films she’d seen in science depicting cell division.

She began trembling as the vibration from the helmet overtook her whole body.

Then, somehow, she was on a rock outcropping on a mountain. Below stretched a mountain range so vast and far-reaching that it seemed to go on forever, until it faded into ethereal blue. Somehow she’d lost the helmet.

To her right, a woman with long black hair sat beside a small fire. She wore a cowboy hat that boasted a wide band of gorgeous feathers, as well as jeans and a heavy woolen poncho. She held a bundle of grasses and herbs that she waved over the fire, sending out plumes of white smoke and a pleasing herbal smell. With eyes tightly shut, she chanted a wild, poignant call that seemed to emanate from the center of her being.

Kayla stepped closer. The sound of her footfall on the gravel-strewn rock caused the woman to slowly open her eyes. She fixed on Kayla but betrayed no emotion.

Kayla felt awkward under the scrutiny of such an unwavering gaze, but only a little. A larger part of her was too fascinated with this situation and this person to be overly self-conscious.

The woman beckoned and Kayla sat across the
fire from her. “I’ve felt you calling me, so I called to you,” the woman said in a smooth, deep voice.

“I … called you?” Kayla questioned. What was she talking about? She didn’t even know who this was.

“My name is Eutonah. You want to know about the soul.”

Kayla breathed in sharply. “How did you know that?” she asked.

“We’re all part of the same dream. Those who know how to listen can hear,” Eutonah replied. “The soul is the original being — what the being was before it entered the earthly plane, what it will be again when the earthly plane is done with.”

Kayla felt as if she were in a dream. It was the same as a dream, where something made no sense and yet seemed perfectly logical at the same time. “How do you know it’s there?” she asked. “The soul, I mean. There’s no proof it even exists.”

“You are your soul. There is no
it
other than you.”

“Where am I?”

“Remember this place,” Eutonah said. “Imprint it in your mind’s eye so that your internal guidance will enable you to find it again when you need to. Remember the white face.” Getting up, she walked off down a dirt trail until she disappeared into a pine forest.

The icy wind blew up the back of Kayla’s shirt
and she shivered again. The wind blew so hard and cold that she squeezed her eyes shut …

… and was back in the warehouse, the helmet on her head. “Where did I go?” she asked, lifting it from her head. “I met an amazing woman. I was in the mountains somewhere.”

August took the helmet from her and examined its readout. Mfumbe looked on with him. “I never saw these numbers before,” August said.

“
What
numbers?” Kayla asked.

“The numbers on the helmet tell what virtual reality site you’ve been at. It sounds like you traveled to the Adirondack Mountains. A lot of resistance groups live around there,” Zekeal told her.

The Adirondacks? Kayla remembered that her father had maps of the Adirondacks at the time he died. Her mother had thought he was planning a vacation. “Why would resisters go to the Adirondacks?” she asked.

“It’s easy to hide up in the mountains,” Mfumbe explained, “and they’re close to Canada. If things really went bad, you could get into Canada inside a day. Canada doesn’t have the bar code yet.”

“Yeah, but these numbers are new. It’s a site we’ve never been to before,” August said. He looked to Kayla. “What exactly did you see?”

She described the location and the woman.

“I’ve heard about Eutonah. She’s a Cherokee shaman and a bar code resister.” Allyson said. “She was putting out articles warning against the bar
code when the thing was still in Asia. There’s a mystical angle to everything she writes. The article I read was about how you can resist the bar code with your mind.”

“How do you do that?” Nedra asked, clearly skeptical.

“Well, according to Eutonah, we all have undeveloped telepathic and telekinetic powers,” Allyson said. “She claims we can all learn to access those abilities.”

“So what are we supposed to do, float the bar codes off everyone’s wrist with our brain waves?” Nedra scoffed.

Allyson stayed cool. “She says the power of our minds is so powerful it’s atomic. And it’s true. We’re atoms. That’s what we’re made of.”

Kayla closed her eyes and imagined Gene Drake deflecting the guards’ bullets with the power of his mind. If only he’d been able to. Then maybe he could have closed down the post office and they would have brought in reporters. Then he’d have told the world what he knew about the bar code.

“That’s just nuts.” Nedra spat out the words. “I don’t believe you even saw her, Kayla. You probably just read an article and dreamed up the whole thing to get attention.”

“That’s not true. She was real,” Kayla insisted. “She told me to remember the white face. Does that mean anything to any of you?”

They glanced one to the other, then shook their heads. “No,” said August, “but maybe we
should
remember it, just in case we need to know it later on.”

“That’s crazy. She didn’t see anybody,” Nedra insisted.

“How do
you
know Kayla didn’t meet her?” Mfumbe argued with Nedra. “The Adirondacks is resistance central. Some of those groups are nutty, walking around the woods with machine guns, or trying to contact passing spaceships. But it’s the center of everything. If you need to know something about the bar code resistance, eventually you have to touch base in the Adirondacks.”

“You know,” August said, “now that you mention the Adirondacks … I want to talk to you guys about something. I mean … I
don’t
want to talk about this, because I hope this doesn’t happen, but I think we have to….” He breathed deeply, as if to steady his nerves. “What if this all starts to go down badly? It could, you know.”

“What do you mean?” Zekeal asked.

“Say Dave Young can’t make a difference and Global-1, or the government or whoever, starts coming after resisters,” August said.

“I don’t think that will happen,” Allyson replied.

“Okay … I hope you’re right, but if it does, I think we should have a plan,” August said. “Someone to contact or someplace to meet.”

“What about the Adirondacks?” Mfumbe sug
gested. “It would be a good place. You could follow the Superlink straight up. Eventually you’d run into other people who would be sympathetic to you. It wouldn’t be too hard to find help.”

“If it’s so easy, then Global-1 could find you, too,” Nedra pointed out.

“The Adirondacks are huge,” Zekeal said. “They wouldn’t find you that easily. But, for the same reason, we’d never find each other. We’ve got to have a specific spot.”

Kayla thought about the place where she’d just been. Eutonah had said she’d need to find it. Would she someday meet this group there? Was her future already that intertwined with theirs?

“I’ll get some maps,” August volunteered, “and then we can pick a place to meet.”

“August,” Allyson said abruptly. “Is there any more space available in the ’zine?”

He opened his ’zine files and checked. “I could probably piece together a column or so. Why?”

“When I was using the helmet, I got into a San Francisco website where they were discussing Tattoo Gen,” she said.

“I’ve heard of that,” Mfumbe said. “What did they say about it?”

“What is it?” Kayla asked.

“It’s a gung-ho youth group funded by Global-1,” Allyson explained. “They’re very into the bar code — a tattoo pride kind of thing.”

“That’s sick,” Zekeal said.

“It might be sick, but it’s real. The San Francisco group was saying that they’re very open in the Bay Area,” Allyson reported. “They wear these bar code T-shirts and highlight their tattoos in fluorescent colors. Lately, gangs of them have been wearing a red jumpsuit uniform and beating up anyone who’s not coded.”

“Is anyone doing anything to stop them?” Mfumbe asked.

“If they are, I haven’t heard about it. They said that here in the east, Tattoo Gen is much more undercover. They have a mission to seduce kids into getting the bar code. If they see someone who’s undecided, they befriend them and try to talk the person into it.”

“That’s so low,” Kayla said.

Allyson nodded. “I’d like to write an article in the ’zine exposing the group.”

“No one will believe you,” Nedra argued. “I’m not sure if I even believe you. I’ve never seen one of them.”

Allyson sighed, exasperated. “That’s the point, Nedra. You’re not
supposed
to see them. They’re undercover — at least on the East Coast.”

“I don’t believe it,” Nedra insisted.

“I can give you the space if you want it,” August told Allyson.

“I want it,” Allyson agreed as she placed the helmet back into the case.

Zekeal stood. “I’ve got to get home. If I don’t write that report for science, I’m not graduating.”

“Me, too,” Mfumbe agreed, folding his chair. The glowing light from the bare bulb guided them out of the warehouse until August shut it off with a remote clicker from the door.

Mfumbe locked the heavy door and afterward showed Kayla the metal key. “Can you believe people depended on these once?” he said. “This door is one of the last of its kind. It’s so primitive.”

Kayla studied the key he handed to her. “Where did you get this?”

“My dad owns this warehouse,” he told her. “He inherited it from his father. I think he’s forgotten all about it. I just took this key from his desk one day when I was a kid and I’ve been coming down here ever since.”

The group walked together past the clubs. Nedra headed for a sleek silver sports car. “Are you coming, Zeke?” she asked.

Zekeal looked trapped, shifting from foot to foot. “Yeah, sure,” he said with a quick wave to Kayla.

Nedra tossed a triumphant glance at Kayla before slipping into the car. Behind her, August and Allyson got into August’s beat-up 2010 magnetic Honda, one of the first of its kind ever made.

“I can drop you off,” Mfumbe offered.

“Thanks, but I’ll walk. I don’t live far.” She wanted to walk along the river and think about
everything — to brood about Zekeal jumping into the car with Nedra after all. How could she have so totally misread the situation?

“You sure?” Mfumbe checked.

She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”

He was nice, really nice, and she suddenly had the feeling that he might be interested in her, probably had been for a while now. He was attractive, too, with those striking light eyes against his dark skin. But it was Zekeal who made her heart race, who had gotten into her head. All she wanted now was time alone to replay the evening they’d spent together.

She walked back toward the river. The nuclear power plant lit her path for a long time, until its glare faded and gave way to the softer light of the full moon. As she went she relived the jolt of energy she’d felt as he’d turned her palm over, checking for the bar code. She went over everything: the vulnerable expression on his face when he’d talked about his family, the adrenaline-charged half second when she’d turned and seen he was the one who’d been following her, his calm command when he’d insisted she be allowed to stay at the meeting.

The bulletbus took nearly a half hour to come to its stop at the GlobalTrac station. By the time it let her off, she felt she’d been away from home for a long time — even though it had been only hours. So much had happened.

As she neared her house, she saw a figure by the halogen lamppost in front. The intense glow of the white light made him easy to see.

She hurried toward Zekeal, knowing exactly why he’d come — for her. He’d come for her.

He saw her running and walked quickly toward her. When they met, he held her and kissed her hard.