Jed’s eyebrows lowered and he narrowed his eyes. “How can it be 2121? I’d be… I’d be… somewhere around seventy years old!”
“You slept for a very long time.”
“I’m sleeping now,” Jed said. “This is a dream.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s real.” Dawn reached over and took his hand in hers. “You have a BICE unit in your head, and I’ve hacked into it. Transport hasn’t connected with you in a while. They’ve been busy ever since they destroyed their own city with an okcillium bomb.”
“If I’ve been asleep for that long,” Jed asked, “then why has the technology basically stayed the same?”
“Well, it’s not exactly the same. This is a pretty advanced implanted reality system right here. Better than anything from the old world, but you wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“But there are airbuses, BICEs, Q, TRIDs. I just thought the future would be more… different.”
“There are reasons for that,” Dawn said. “Not the least of which is this war. But with access to okcillium now, TRACE is making advances greater than you can imagine.”
Jed shrugged. “Well, I’m probably not the best judge of any of that.” He looked at the minimized scene of his barn, and then he touched it and enlarged it just a bit. He flicked his finger, and the scene played forward. He watched himself boarding an airbus out on the lane, and then things started to occur to him. Forgotten memories began to surface, but they were random, and he wasn’t sure how he knew things. He just knew them.
“But I’m not on Q now. I haven’t smelled the orange zest smell,” he said. He minimized the scene again and looked at Dawn.
She closed her eyes for a second and then opened them again. “The Yoders have been bringing you your meals, haven’t they?”
“Yes, but—”
“Your food is laced with Q. You probably haven’t noticed it because they kept you on it during your entire sleep cycle.”
“The Yoders are working for Transport?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. And they aren’t the only government spies who’ve infiltrated the Amish community.”
Jed was silent a while. Once again he enlarged the image of the farm and activated it—and watched as the airbus lifted off and departed. Then he flicked his finger and the scene disappeared. Dawn was still in front of him, still in her Amish dress. He shook his head, then looked down at her. “Do you know who they all are? The spies?”
“No, not all of them.” Dawn said. “I’m doing the best I can with what I have to work with. Things are… tricky right now. With the bombing of the City, the war has moved into a new and more dangerous phase.”
“And you’re saying Transport bombed their own city? Why would they do that?” Jed asked.
Dawn responded with a question. “Who are the Amish saying did it?”
Jed took a deep breath. “According to Matthias, most of them think the rebels did it.”
“Exactly,” Dawn said. “And are the Amish still trading with the rebels?”
“I don’t know,” Jed said. “Probably not as much as they were.”
“Now you’re answering your own questions. That’s why Transport did it. They did it because they were going to lose the City anyway. The writing was on the wall. They didn’t want to turn it over to TRACE, so they blew it up and blamed it on their enemy. It’s called a ‘false flag’ attack. It’s as old as war itself.”
“So Transport just killed all those people? Even people that supported them? And all the Amish who were there?”
“They did.”
Jed walked past Dawn, and with his hand he enlarged the white screen. He played with its size and then, without knowing just how he did it, he brought up his BICE control console. His was preset and organized in the form of a huge wall of drawers, like a filing cabinet. With his mind he changed the format so that the information bits appeared as envelopes, and then as glowing red dots, and then milk cows in stalls. All the while, as he played with his BICE control setup, Dawn just looked on patiently and did not interrupt.
After a few minutes, Jed changed the control icons back to drawers and then turned to Dawn. “It’s a lot to take in,” he said finally.
“I know it is,” she said.
“The year 2121 you say?”
“Yes.”
Jed reached out and opened a drawer with BICE Control Programs written on it. “How does this work? This information system in my head?”
“It integrates into your brain functions. Every brain deals with the information differently—so the question is hard to answer. Sometimes the brain takes the new reality and input and creates its own system of dealing with it.”
Jed was nodding now. “Like when Carl Miller got kicked in the head by a horse?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Dawn said.
“Well, due to the pressure and damage in his brain, doctors had to remove almost a quarter of it. They said he’d never talk again, and that the part of his brain that controlled walking was located in the portion that was removed, so… you know… he had to live in a wheelchair. Then… it’s weird, but a few years later he started walking and talking again. The doctors said that his brain rewired itself. That it doesn’t always happen, but it happens often enough.”
“Yes,” Dawn said. “It’s like with Carl Miller, then. Every brain is different, and not every person processes information in the same way.”
“Why are you so good at it?” Jed asked.
“I don’t know,” Dawn said, and as she spoke she brought up an animated schematic, which looked to Jed like an aerial view of a big city at night from high in an airbus. The lights moved somewhat chaotically, but at the same time they all seemed to follow paths and get where they needed to go. “I just see the information flow, like maybe when you’re milking a cow or out plowing Matthias’s field—how you just see what you should do, and all of your senses work together to show you what’s happening and what you should do next.”
“Can you show me how to do that?” Jed asked.
“I’ve been showing you—mostly while you’ve been sleeping. You’ll recall more and more of what I’ve taught you when you need the information.”
“I just wish you could stay here and teach me,” Jed said.
Dawn was silent for a minute before she spoke again.
“Jed?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the stories your parents would teach you as a child about the early Anabaptists—the early Amish—and how they’d meet for worship out in the woods, or in a secluded barn?”
“Of course,” Jed said. “We’re all raised with stories of persecution. To remind us that it can come back at any time.”
Dawn nodded. “Right. And do you remember anything about those stories of secret, underground meetings that applies to what we’re learning now about your BICE?”
“I don’t know,” Jed said. “What… what do you want me to say?”
“Think about it.”
Jed tried to imagine those meetings, when the Amish were being pursued by the Catholics or the Protestants, and how they’d always try to find a place where they could flee quickly if need be. “There was always a way out. Always a place to run.”
Dawn smiled. “Exactly, Jed. In programming we call those routes a ‘back door.’ And a back door goes both ways. It can be a secret way back into a program, or a secret way to get out.”
Jed nodded, but he wasn’t yet sure what she was trying to tell him.
“Always remember that just about every system, every program, has a back door. Almost invariably. All of this technology was designed by people, and many of those people had the same fears, and the same spirit of independence and freedom, that our—that your—ancestors had.”