Air Force One, Conclusion (3)
"The helicopters are preparing to land," the machine says. "I will keep you informed as necessary." "Johnny!" Mick says, but he hears the line cut off, the Bolo’s voice replaced by the chance noise of the ether. "God damn it!" he says, leaning forward to slap the console with one hand. He looks up, wild-eyed and frustrated. Ahead, through the control room’s wide windshield, the moon is halfway up the sky and emerging from clouds. Mick pushes himself back into the seat, and reaches for his cigarettes. The red annunciator on the section of the copilot’s screen devoted to communications begins blinking again. After watching it for a few seconds, Mick leans forward to touch it. "Hello, Colonel Tennen, or whoever the hell you are," he says. "I trust you have noted that we have followed your instructions," the Colonel’s voice returns from the instrument panel’s speaker, small in the wide darkness of the control room. "All helicopters are now secured with blades folded. We certainly cannot launch one in less than the time it would take you to —" "Do some bad piloting?" Mick suggests. "Yes. Now I hope I can persuade you to consider other possibilities. We still have several hours before we overfly the truck stop. Can we at least talk now? I am aware that you believe me to be a Foreign Command operative impersonating a US military officer. That is not true. The situation is far more complex than that. I gather that you have understood as much from my display of — interesting technology. Surely you are at least curious about these matters. I will hold nothing back from you now. There is no point in it." You bet I’m curious. But don’t call me ‘Shirley’. "You know, it’s kind of funny," Mick replies, and pauses again to exhale smoke from a new cigarette, "but now that you mention it — I actually couldn’t care less." "Mick," the Colonel says, "whatever else you may think me, please do not imagine that I am a child. It is obvious to me that you understand very well the significance of controlling this aircraft. It is equally obvious that you believe me and my men to be a threat to your family. Perhaps even to what remains of your world. I assure you, with all my heart, that nothing could be further from the truth." "But I do understand," the voice continues, "perfectly well, that you have no real intention either of handing this aircraft over to us or of simply allowing us to leave. Once you have used it as far as possible to ensure the safety of your family, you will destroy the aircraft and all of us with it, yourself included. "Please," the old man says, "in the few hours we have remaining will you at least allow me to plead for the lives of my men?" Mick blinks and looks away from the panel. The copilot remains seated against the wall where Mick moved him in order to claim his chair, looking like a drunken bum fallen who has fallen asleep, head back and mouth open to snore — shadows hiding the mummification of his features. "Yes," Mick says quietly. "We can talk." Jack Arnet looks down the longest line of trucks he has ever seen. There are a dozen rigs lined up single file, their engines running, carrying all the remaining customers of the Wolverine and all the salvageable cargoes of the twenty rigs that stood in the lot two short nights ago when the first sound of jet engines echoed over the parking lot, stranding them like a hurricane driving fishermen onto uncharted rocks. The eight rigs that will be left behind are those that their owners judged would not survive the trip, much of which will be essentially off-road. Before they go ten miles north, there will be places where the fields will actually be safer than the roads, as long as it doesn’t rain again before the freeze comes. The Michigan winters have been far harsher on the shallowly built surface roads than on the big interstates. There’s no choice in the matter, however. I-75 goes straight through the worst parts of Gang territory, while 94 and 96 are east-west roads and thus useless. And there is no doubt concerning their direction. Since the fight, nobody has any remaining doubt concerning the wisdom of leaving the area and heading north as fast as humanly possible. "I hit the son of a bitch," one man had said, afterwards. "Right there," jabbing a finger at the right side of his chest. "And I’m not saying maybe. I put a twelve gauge slug through the bastard, and I seen where it hit. It kicked him right back against the damn wall! I didn’t miss him, and I didn’t fuckin’ graze him either! So does he go down, though? Hell no! The son of a bitch just looks up at me like, ‘Man that really pissed me off’, you know? He woulda put me down if they hadn’t a gotten called back right then." "I’ll tell you what," he had concluded, "I seen some freaky shit on the road, you know? But after this, man, I seen enough, you know what I’m saying? I don’t need no more of it, and I sure as shit don’t need to run into those fuckers again, whoever the fuck they were. Annie’s saying ‘We got a great place up North, let’s go.’ I say fuck yes, man." Jack raises one arm and waits to get everybody’s attention, lit by the few trucks that still have effective headlights. Then he gestures decisively forward, and turns back to walk over invisible earth to his rig where Anne is waiting in his passenger seat. She, like the men, is as ready as she’ll ever be to actually pull up stakes and go. Smelling the diesel exhaust that drifts before him on the wind, Jack only hopes that it will be that easy. They won’t be getting another chance. ———————————————————————————— The War ———————————————————————————— "I am, indeed a Colonel in the United States Air Force," Tennen’s voice enters the dark control room through the console speakers and reflects from the room-wide curve of seamless windscreen. "Although it is not too surprising that your friend failed to find me in his databases; information about me and my peers and associates has always been severely restricted." "OK," Mick interrupts, "you can stop right there. I do know something about software, right? And more than a little about military systems from before the War. The idea that you could ‘severely limit access’ to information about yourself is just bullshit. It’s not like there was one big database running on a machine-farm in a sub-basement somewhere. There were hundreds of different types of databases distributed all over the planet. Some of them stored in smart weapons systems that needed top secret personnel data just to do battlefield biometric IFF to decide whether they should salute you or blow your ass off. "Half the time," he continues, "the Pentagon literally did not know where different data were even stored. These guys were doing statistical studies to predict diffusion rates through the system for data of different security levels. And that was before the whole thing was compromised by Foreign Command! You guys were stealing data by the terabyte for years before the Second War even started. And the control protocols that you were using probably made ours look like the very model of precision and efficiency — as opposed to the clusterfuck from hell that they actually were." "And now," the innkeeper continues, "you’re telling me that you really are an Air Force Colonel who my buddy just can’t seem to find in thousands of old databases because of your extra-super-ultra security." "Dang." He pauses in the process of lighting another cigarette and smiles. "You are going to have to do a lot better than that." "Very well," Tennen says. "I believe I can do somewhat better. Since my first claim seems to have amused you so much, perhaps we can test the entertainment value of my next statement. Not only am I the United States Air Force officer that I claim to be, I have indeed also served as a Brigadier General of the Foreign Command, as your friend has apparently, and unfortunately for all of us, discovered. "That fact is, in itself, unremarkable since most high-ranking Foreign Command officers were of course US military officers before the rebellion. In my case, however, I held both offices simultaneously, for the entire duration of what you call the Second War, with the full knowledge and approval of my superiors on both sides of that conflict. "And, in case that claim is not yet sufficiently entertaining, let me further assure you that the data security I mentioned was indeed implemented and maintained in spite of the complexity of the systems that proliferated before the Two Wars. "Our security was, in fact, maintained by a very large set of what you would call software viruses, distributed throughout a majority of all military and civilian computer systems worldwide — and, by the way, quite without regard for national boundaries. This viral system essentially constitutes a distributed, highly redundant medium-grade intelligence, whose parts communicated to each other indetectably in small data packets scattered across the entire gamut of all human electronic communication. "This system," the old man continues, "or a very low-resolution version of it, was first introduced into standard operating systems and computing hardware in the late nineteen-fifties — more than sixty years ago, at a time when human programmers were struggling to understand the most fundamental issues of programming languages and timesharing systems on simple, single-processor machines. "Since that time, as human computing and communication capabilities have continued, with our help, to double every twelve to eighteen months, we simply expanded the system’s capabilities smoothly. In the six decades since the system’s introduction, there have been — I believe it is no more than ten or twenty incidents in which human engineers noticed anomalies in machine code or circuitry that might have led to the discovery of the smallest part of our system. In every case, the man involved was killed in a perfectly ordinary accident or died of a sudden heart attack, usually within hours of his discovery. "I hope that you can understand the necessity of those few deaths. My people value human life, and the precious intelligence that arises from it, above all else. Wasting that life — that life-force — needlessly, is a sin to us. Perhaps the only real sin which we recognize. Yet we kill when we must, because we are indeed soldiers in a War. It is a war that engulfed your world many millennial ago, thousands of years before the beginning of any surviving human history. It has raged every since, in secret, or disguised as human conflicts. "At stake in this war," Tennen voice echoes from the invisible glass of the windscreen, beyond which shine the waiting stars, "is the future of your species. The outcome will determine whether you will be allowed to take your place in the community of civilizations in this galaxy. "In this struggle, by the way," the Colonel says, "you have always been on my side. So please understand my dismay at seeing you killing my men — men who have served with me for a very long time, and all because of what was essentially my misjudgment about how much to reveal to you, and how quickly." Tennen’s voice falls silent, and Mick remembers to light the cigarette that he’s been holding. "Well?" the Colonel asks. "How am I doing now?" Mick exhales smoke slowly. "Pretty good," he says. "You know — the guys at the truck stop used to eat this stuff up. You shoulda been there, you woulda been a star." "So," the Colonel says, "do you believe some of my stories but not others? Do you not mind believing that a secret lab hidden in the wilderness created desk lamps that shine forever — at a time when we cannot even muster the organization necessary to grow enough potatoes to feed the staff that such an institution would obviously require? "I know that you saw the effects of my shield during the fight. Do you also believe that our secret labs developed force fields in the last ten years? Or have you simply decided to ignore that particular detail? How do you choose so easily what to believe, and what to dismiss? "Please," he says. "Think about what I am saying — without anger and Without fear. So much depends on what you do now. Please — at least do not act lightly." "All right," Mick says, "you definitely have some technology that I don’t understand. That’s true. But what are you telling me now? That you’re an alien who looks like a man who’s fighting some other aliens who, no doubt, also look like men? And this has been going on for — oh, six or seven thousand years? That’s a lot to swallow." "Forgive me," the Colonel says, "I referred to ‘human’ technology. It is — a way that we speak sometimes, among ourselves. But I am not an ‘alien’. I am a man, like you, although older. My people and those whom we resist are here because we have always been here. It is our world, too." He stops, and Mick frowns in the glow of the instruments’ light. He tosses the last bit of his cigarette to the metal floor and slowly steps on the glowing ember. "Can you tell me," Tennen insists, "that you have never suspected that there was more to this world — that there was nothing more behind the great sweep of events than what you read about in USA Today? Do you truly believe that it was only good luck and hard work that allowed humans to go from Kitty Hawk to the Sea of Tranquility in seventy years? Or from DOS to your Bolo friend in less than thirty?" Tennen is silent for a moment, allowing time for what he has said to fully register. Mick sits in the copilot’s chair, frozen halfway to reaching for another smoke. He lowers his arm and leans back, looking at the glowing console as if it were a snake, preparing to strike. "Yes," the Colonel says. "I know the nature of your ‘friend’ at the other end of the radio. Now I know — now that it is too late. If only I had paid attention earlier — but Page and his men mesmerized me with their presence. They and I had been adversaries for so long, without ever actually meeting. I bent all my abilities toward penetrating their minds, toward discovering whether they knew my identity — to finding out whence their support came, and how powerful it might be. "Thus I fell into their trap, and was nearly destroyed by it even in the very moment that I believed I had beaten them at last. It was they, was it not, who gave you the data files containing my image to send to your friend Johnny? They did so, knowing exactly what the result would be, and how you would react. They used you, while I ignored you. "But—" he exhales slowly. "In any case, it matters little now. What matters is that I know about your pet now, although I did not know an hour ago. That is something more than another story, is it not? And yet you will doubt me. "Forgive me," he says, "but I must do this now. I know that my stories alone will not convince you. But, possibly one true demonstration—" "Excellent!" Mick says. "What do you want to demonstrate? More cool toys?" "No," Tennen says. "Something more than that, and something that cannot be falsified. Forgive me — but there is too much that you do not understand, and we have little time left." "As a child," he says, "in the first grade, you used to walk to school on a dirt road. In the summer they put oil on the road occasionally, to keep the dust down." "Oh, give me a damn break —" Mick begins, but Tennen raises his voice and talks over him. "One time after the oil truck passed your mother told your brother to stay away from the road, and he got the idea that it must be somehow dangerous. When you came home he called at you from across the street to stay on that side. He was afraid you would get stuck in the oil and a car would come and hit you. Do you remember that? Did you ever tell that to anyone? "Ah, but perhaps you did," Tennen answers his own question. "And you have simply forgotten. Your wife, perhaps? Or possibly your brother told someone before the destruction of Chicago. And perhaps I have a vast network of spies who magically discovered this information in the three days between the time I first heard of you and when I arrived at the Wolverine. Perhaps." "Then here is another detail for you," Tennen continues. "On that same afternoon, just before you heard your brother shouting to you, you saw a lineman — an electrical worker, up at the top of a wooden utility pole, working on an insulator. The kind that they used to use, made from a stack of gray ceramic discs. Blue sky, with one small white cloud." "Did you ever tell anyone that?" Tennen demands. "Mick, you must listen to me. Don’t let them win now, at the end!" The innkeeper punches the comm panel hard enough to hurt his hand, and the voice cuts off in mid-word. He sits, gripping the edges of the seat, breathing deeply, seeing that tall gray stack of discs in the sunlight of a late September day, the perfect blue sky behind it, and a single white cloud. The image, as fresh as the day it was made, is so perfectly innocent, compared to what the world has become, that it hurts him to recall it. What hurts more, though, is the knowledge that, somewhere in the last twelve years since Chicago, somewhere in the struggles to save his family amidst all the frequent terrors and rare and partial victories, somewhere in all of that — he has completely forgotten about his brother. "Hey Johnny, come back?" he says to the console. "Come on, big guy." He takes a breath. "Bolo Unit of the Line JNY-013, your commander orders you to initiate real-time two-way simulated analog voice communication immediately." He takes a drag on his cigarette. "Well fuck you then! Just talk to me Johnny!" he says. "OK — OK. I do not receive, but I transmit. I know you can hear me, buddy." He stops and runs a hand through his thin hair, stopping when he remembers that he is using the hand that is holding his smoke. "God damn, I am so tired pal. And — some things are happening up here." He stops to stare out the wide windscreen, losing himself in the stars, the moonlit clouds, the endless drone of the great aircraft. "I thought I knew what was going on. And — now — I guess I really don’t know." He laughs smoke. "And that just about sums up life, doesn’t it, big guy? You think you know, and then you don’t?" "And, you know, I’m just software too, pal. Just like you. A piece of software trying to do the right thing, you know? And, ah —. I guess I’m bigger than you are in some ways. I know that’s what you think, anyway. And that’s — oh, what the hell is that? I guess it’s a responsibility. Like having a daughter. You know, bringing somebody into the world. Or having a wife — going with somebody through the world." He blows out his breath. "Christ. And I think — you know — I think I’ve never done the right things with any of you. I mean," he laughs, "I already lost both of my girls, big guy. You know? I just — " He raises his hands, as though Johnny could see him, in an imploring gesture like a man might use on a wayward child, or a departing lover. Then his face contorts, and he strikes the unresponsive console with a sudden fist, leaving a tiny smear of blood on it. "God damn it! Do you think I crippled you? Well — I did! Did you
Copyright © 2000 Michael Goulish |