Independence Day Plague (13 page)

Mitchell turned off the InterRadio on the com-unit and removed it from his ear as he weaved his way through the crowds at the Anacostia Metro Station. Only one battered looking taxi waited at the station’s exit. Mitchell passed it by. Taking a taxi through the impoverished district pegged him as a tourist or one of the cult-style religious fanatics that sometimes flowed through these neighborhoods looking for converts.

Back-to-basics religious groups were on the rise with the promise of salvation and the simple life. Mitchell heard about the rising popularity of cult groups while working at BL-4. The evangelical movement flooded the airwaves and 'nets with the messages of equal parts doom and salvation. Their pervasiveness flowed through all levels of society as driftless people sought for some tangible philosophy to grasp. Reasoning implied that, like the rising number of shut-ins, back-to-Earth greenies and drug abusers, the cults acted as just another way of dropping out of an overly stressed society.

He didn’t mind being taken for a Jesus freak most of the time. The mindless smile and Luddite attitude mask fit his features easily. Most people in this area avoided eye contact, not wanting to be drawn into a protracted conversation. However, the real missionaries that dropped into the impoverished areas tended to move in packs for safety. Belief in Jesus didn’t stop armed robbers or rapists.

However, today Mitchell avoided playing the potential victim. Today he carried too much contraband cash to be robbed. Dressed in shabby jeans and an oversized button-down shirt, he hunched his shoulders and walked head down. His light brown hair had grown long down his neck and looked unwashed. To visually blend into the gang-riddled area, he glued a fake pleasure unit onto his head. The wire ran from the base of the skull to the three-inch wide metal circuitry glued just below and behind his right ear. The circuit itself was a dud but at first glance looked like any other sensory-implant. The torn and stained clothing, along with a few false piercings around the eyes and nose gave the whole effect of an old burnout.

Mitchell knew very little about Macon Foster, the man he sought out. Geller left some notes of a few of his underworld contacts but very little about Macon. Many of the other suppliers met cautiously with him, ready to bolt until he waved the old bills at them. Mitchell used them to live on fake ID cards for a few months, but now he needed detailed information he couldn’t get himself. In the old list, Macon’s name had “hacker/supplier-unusual items” next to an email and password. Internet searches on the name came up mostly empty. Mitchell wrote to the email, used the password and signed it Geller. The response only stated a time and address.

The shut-in lived ten blocks away from the station in a red brick, three-storey that looked so distressed that it was one wall crack shy of being condemned. Squatters and burnouts littered the steps of the building and inside of the door. Gang symbols scrawled across the brick façade so pervasively that no red peeked through below the seven foot height.

Mitchell stepped into the doorless entrance and around the derelict bodies that occupied the bottom floor rooms. He climbed the sagging stairs, trying hard not to breathe in the urine and vomit smells. Rounding the corner, he heard steps that jerked him to a stop. He looked up at the gun-toting youth on the second story landing.

“
What the fuck do you want?” the kid snarled, raising the shotgun.

Mitchell raised his hands, palms out and away from his body. “Easy boss, I’ve got some business with Macon.”

“
I don’t give a fuck what you got, dumb-ass.”

Mitchell watched his movements without meeting his eyes. The boy’s eyes stretched wide, showing a lot of white in the dark face. When he twitched his head, bright metal gleamed behind his right ear and flat against an inflamed section of his shaved skull. The boy twitched from the new wiring and probably something pharmaceutical. Mitchell briefly wondered why the kid hadn't filled the stairway with dead bodies.

“
Perhaps I’ve come to the wrong place.” Mitchell ducked his head down and, keeping his hands outward away from his body, he began slowly to walk backwards down the stairs.

The click of the gun cocking made him freeze. “Too late! What’s the word, mother-fucker?”

“
Master-Blaster,” Mitchell grimaced and thought wryly that it said something when a person fashioned themselves after a megalomaniac midget from an old nihilist film. A few nervous seconds passed as he waited for a response.

A door opened above and to the right. A tenor voice rang out. “Shit, Tyrone, how the hell am I to do business if you keep scaring the fucking customers away?” The tenor voice sounded educated with an accent. “Let him up. Mr. Whitebread and I have an appointment.”

Tyrone stepped aside, shotgun held upright, and glared as Mitchell passed him. As Mitchell climbed the stairs, he noted the cameras on the landing and opposite walls. Macon or someone working with him monitored the entrances.

The graffiti covered door swung inward easily. Stepping through, Mitchell gaped at the room. The dirt and trash ended in the hall. The cream colored, large inner room looked more like an upscale apartment than the inside of a slum building. A glass partition sliced the southern corner away from the rest. Inside the partition, the pristine room included a medical style, reclining chair, precision machines and trays of tools scattered across the bench. On the east wall, flickering screens silently filled a desk and two dark bookcases. Murmuring voices came from a small bank of seven police radio scanners lining the top of the bookcases.

“
Welcome stranger to the reality of beyond.” The tall back chair by the computer screens swiveled. When the thin figure stood up, wires that Mitchell had assumed fed into the chair rose with him. The colored coils wrapped around his thin waist as a sagging belt and then continued up his back before disappearing under a mass of black dreadlocks. Mitchell had seen many wireheads since coming to DC. They littered the streets and subway systems. Macon’s implant looked far more intricate and massive. The man’s brown eyes stayed glassy and unfocused as he spoke.

“
Chill, clone-man. Haven’t you ever seen implants before?”

Mitchell smile wryly, “Nothing like that.” He pointed towards Macon's head. “We didn't have wireheads where I used to live. Folks on the streets here usually only have a few copper wires behind their ear and a battery pack down their shirt. Does it hurt?”

“
No. The average street-Jack integrates with the pleasure implants. I sometimes help others plug in theirs,” he pointed to the surgical area, “but I don’t bother with the pleasure shit. That’s for the waste-oid druggie elite. I've hardwired into straight temporal lobe stuff, making me one with the machine.” He spread his arms wide turning slowly back to the shelves of flickering monitors.

Mitchell straightened up out of the submissive hunch. He moved closer to Macon, looking over the wire pathway. Multiple connections stood out just under the hairline from over the back of his skull. The color-coded wiring weaved together into the thick cord running down his back. “It is honestly the most impressive thing I’ve seen in a long time. Can you unplug?”

“
Nothing out there worth seeing anymore that I can’t see through the ‘net. The lines run long enough to give me full range of my domicile and the local little Hitlers keep me stocked with delivery boys and the occasional worldly wench. I’m telling you, old man, it's true nirvana at a hundred gigahertz speed.”

“
Why do you need the armed guard?” Mitchell jerked a thumb back towards the doorway.

Macon shrugged. His shoulders looked skeletal through the white cotton shirt next to the thick cords of muscle in his neck. Cream-colored tie-up sweat pants completed the picture. “The gangs and drug factories work on the third floor. They use me for info and we have a mutually beneficial arrangement. They also keep the entrance heavily fortified with firepower. I live in peace and get the comforts of modern life for the occasional exchange of hack-hosted information.”

Mitchell nodded, “Sounds like a good arrangement.”

Macon watched him for a few moments motionless, head tilted to one side, eyes glazed. Finally, he became animate again, crossing the room, dragging the cords behind him. “Down to business, clone-man.”

“
Why do you call me that?” Mitchell carefully kept his tone neutral.

Macon smiled, “It's you, completely. Your attitude gives you away. Your eyes shine, obviously free of the wonderful world of modern meds. You look smarter than the average Jesus Freak that comes around. No obvious wire, shiv, or gun or my downstairs detector would have gone off. You stand up straight so you’re not the beaten gang wannabe. Besides which, you’re too old. All that adds up to you being a cop.” He gestured at the screens, “which I would have downloaded before you ever left the Metro. That leaves corporate clone or one really fucked up man who wandered into the wrong neighborhood.”

Mitchell nodded, “You’re perceptive.”

“
In my business, you gotta be. Now, you introduced yourself as Mr. Geller.”

Mitchell drew in a deep breath. “I’m not Geller. I know you’ve dealt with him through the Internet. He’s dead and left me instructions on how to get to you.”

Macon smiled, “I knew you weren’t Geller coming in. No one gets through that door without me shuffling them through the ‘net. Also, I know Geller from long ago. Strangely enough, I don’t get a hit at all off of your face.” He gestured to the bank of screens. The center one flashed up a picture of Mitchell’s face from outside as he looked up at the building. “Being 'netless is practically unheard of unless you’re from some lost African tribe or Mars. Everyone’s in the system one-way or the other. That made me curious enough to meet you. You’re a true null. You want to explain that, clone-man?”

“
Actually, I’m dead.”

“
Is that a fact? Not good enough, dead-man. A search would still have gotten security card numbers. Dead people's faces still flow through the net with death certificates, obits, wills, that kind of crap.” Macon pulled his hand out of the loose pant pockets. The small black pistol gleamed. “Try again.”

“
You said you knew Geller?” Mitchell reached into his back pocket to pull his wallet out. Macon raised the pistol, pointing at his stomach. “It’s okay. I’m just pulling out some ID.” He pulled out Geller’s driver’s license and social security cards and slowly handed them to Macon. “Try those numbers and see what you get.”

Macon looked at the cards and then his eyes went glassy again. Mitchell looked at the screens and saw Geller’s face flash up on three of them. The center screen flickered rapidly, too fast for Mitchell to read.

Macon spoke softly, “Well, how about that.” His eyes focused again. “Ray’s not on the ‘net anymore. No ID’s, banks, school records… nothing.”

Mitchell said, “He had a wife and five kids. None of them exist anymore.”

“
I knew about the wife, Jennifer.”

“
My name is James Oliver Mitchell. I did my graduate work at Johns Hopkins twenty-four years ago. I’ve lived in Dawson, North Dakota for twenty-three years. My wife's name was Caroline Sealy Mitchell. She worked as a world-class vet with a specialty in primates. My daughter’s name was Katherine. Run a search on all of us. None of us exist anymore.”

The video monitors flickered faster again. Hints of pictures and words twitched across the screens. “Just ghosts to the machine?”

“
Something like that. You might find something if you can get into the records at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Some records may exist there.”

“
Oh, I’ll try, ghost-man. How do you explain this?” Macon turned and faced him, eyes clear and sharp and pistol trained on Mitchell's stomach.

“
People in high places didn’t want us to exist anymore. They erased us.”

“
What happened to Geller?”

“
Same people killed him along with all his family.”

“
I don’t usually do business with the dead. If they wanted you gone and you're still eating and breathing, then you’re a dangerous man to know. What do you want?”

“
I need information on specific people. I’ll give you the names later. Most of the information is probably government classified, high security stuff. I also need twelve disposable com-units phones with strong email capacity, clean numbers and untraceable. Finally, two useable food cards and bankcards. I’ll give you a micro-drive of information. I need the information on it dumped on every Internet, Hypernet, and Xnet system worldwide. It needs to be done on midnight on July 4
^th
. No sooner and no later. Can you handle that?”

“
It’s possible. Anything’s possible for the right price.”

“
Will you do it?”

Macon didn’t answer immediately. He glanced over at the screen bank. The videos slowed down to an almost readable rate as they flickered from website to website. He turned to face Mitchell once more. “How did Geller die?”

Mitchell frowned. “Why does it matter?”

“
It just does.”

“
He died from blood loss due to a terrible disease. His family went the same way.” Mitchell’s voice became cold. “What’s it to you?”

“
He's my uncle.” Macon pocketed the pistol again. “The family's not exactly social network material and we lost touch with them many years ago. About five years back, he contacted me again. Said he was worried about the future.”