And now that TRACE had not only the brain power, but ready access to okcillium—enough that they could use it for something other than “clean” bombs, a few neat gadgets, and impressive parlor tricks—the technological leap forward in the last few years had been remarkable.
Amos Troyer leaned back in his chair. For an instant his mind flashed back to the Battle of Lawton, when Transport had surrounded the entire Southern Oklahoma Militia and defeat had been nigh; and he—just a young Amish teenager holding a World-War-II-era rifle with no ammunition left in it—had taken a battle knife from a dead Transport soldier, thinking it would be the last tool he’d ever use before dying. Terrified and clutching that knife, he’d closed his eyes and imagined his older brother Jed, sleeping peacefully in a spaceship bound for a virginal planet lush with verdant life. That thought had given him comfort when he thought his own days were numbered.
Amos felt like closing his eyes now. Here on this ship, an old man, and a tired one at that, he could imagine the end of the war, and his own inevitable exodus from power. Whoever and whatever government formed in the vacuum left by the destruction of Transport—whenever that occurred—would have access to technology the likes of which no people anywhere had ever mastered. That fact meant that when this war was over, freedom would face an even greater peril than it had ever faced before. Irony, like sin, never rests. The technology to control and destroy people always has in it the seeds of tyranny, and is forever subject to the lowest angels of human nature. And now he, Amos Troyer, controlled that power; and it frightened him more than he’d ever admit to his subordinates.
The SOMA opened his desk to grab a Q tablet, and as he reached for the pill, he saw the old battle knife—the same blade he’d relied on those many years ago outside Lawton, Oklahoma, when he knew for sure that he was going to die. The knife he’d used to kill countless men in his determination to set other people free.
Thou Shalt Not Kill.
The phrase rang in his mind again whenever he looked at the weapon. He unsheathed the blade, held it up before his face, and studied it. Though he knew every ding and every scratch on its surface, it always caused his heart to skip whenever he held it. Slowly, he slid the knife back into the sheath and then exhaled. He threw the pill into his mouth and chewed it up quickly, then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Almost immediately his young avatar appeared in his BICE control room. Through the fog, he heard someone enter his office and say, “Sir, your report—”, but he held up his hand to silence and dismiss the ensign, and his surroundings became quiet again. The almond bitterness on his tongue always accompanied the peace that flooded him when he was on Q.
For a moment, he felt his consciousness existing in three places. The feeling of being in his office, reclining in his chair, faded first. He was also in his BICE room, watching as his filing cube floated in the center of the space. His third self was, for a moment, back in Old Pennsylvania, with the young boys playing corner ball after a wedding, but that memory faded quickly too. In short order his consciousness was one again, and he was fully present in the darkness of his BICE control room.
He reached out and turned the floating cube with his hand, and when the far face of the cube came to the front, he saw that one of the drawers glowed, indicating he had an important message.
DB
Amos looked down at himself—at his avatar—and saw that he was his youthful, muscular, and vibrant self, so he immediately changed his avatar to match his sixty-seven-year-old reality. Then he flicked open the file, and when that cube instantly appeared and enlarged, he flicked his wrist to open the Direct Message square. In a flash, Dawn was standing in front of him. For the first time, he saw her in the new form and dress she’d adopted for her avatar. She was translucent, but appeared clad in Amish garb: a dark blue dress with white cape and apron. Her avatar appeared to sleep, but her right hand glowed, indicating that there was no stored message. Dawn, wherever she was, was waiting for him to appear so that she could talk to the SOMA directly.
Dawn’s avatar awoke and became solid. She nodded her head at her commanding officer and said, “Sir.” The resistance had long given up formal ranks, addresses, and salutes—other than the simple terms of address “sir” and “ma’am,” which were usually reserved for officers.
Dawn and Amos had once been very close friends, especially after the commander of the Southern Oklahoma Militia had presided over her wedding to Ben Beachy. Ben, another young former Amishman, had been exiled to Oklahoma after being arrested for bartering with individuals wanted by the government for aiding the resistance—and he had lived a life that, until its violent end, had closely modeled Amos’s own. Since those early days, Amos’s and Dawn’s fates had taken them down very different paths, but the SOMA still had a fondness and a paternal affection for Dawn—even if the nature of their working relationship added a certain stress and awkwardness to their friendship.
“You have a report for me?” Amos said.
Dawn nodded and assumed an “at ease” stance that looked strange and ironic in the dress she’d chosen for her avatar. “As you know, sir, civilian Internet communications have been spotty since the bomb went off. It’s fortunate that we were able to mirror so many of Transport’s data hubs before it happened. And thanks to our recent technological advances, we’ve been able to re-route our own data quicker than we’d originally thought. Between TOBS and the Corinth, we’re now nearly one hundred percent independent of terrestrial systems and hubs.”
“Good.” Amos waved for Dawn to continue.
“I’m in contact with Jedediah. We’re making progress through his BICE, but I still don’t know what he remembers when he’s awake in the real world. Transport is trying hard to reconnect with him, but thus far I’ve been able to block and confuse their attempts, and I’ve given them clues to suggest that the fault lies with the bomb’s substantial damage to the Internet infrastructure. But that little trick won’t work much longer. Their data flow looks like they’ve called out all the dogs, and their spiders are searching hard for whatever’s causing the disruption. If they have one programmer who’s half as good as I am, they’ll have it figured out soon enough.”
Dawn called up an image that expanded until it took up half of the control room and the screen filled with lighted lines, glowing cables, through which data bits were flowing. The flow didn’t look like water in a pipeline, but like little glowing bullets, all of different colors—some larger and some smaller—streaming down each of the cables. Data trackers, taking the form of small mechanized spiders with glowing eyes, were scouring each line. Each spider would skitter a few steps, then stop and analyze the information bullets as they passed. The animation was a real-time representation of Transport’s search for the interruption in their communications with Jedediah Troyer. “This is only one hub. Imagine this on a global scale,” Dawn said.
Amos nodded. “Have you left any clues that will lead them to you?”
“I hope not, sir.” She shifted her weight, a sign of nervousness. “I can’t know how good their techs are. If they suck, like they usually do, we have a little time, but not much.”