Freelancer (16 page)

Kari sent an order, and all the soldiers were instantly replaced with copies of Henderson.
There, that feels a little better.
The Henderson soldiers broke formation and sprinted to various firing positions, where they lowered their weapons and joined the fight.

This shouldn’t take too long.
Kari watched as the Hendersons used their mind chips to communicate and slowly and silently move forward together. They held their ground for a few minutes and then pressed forward again.
Oh, come on already.
Kari got tired of waiting, pulled up her gun, and shot the closest Henderson in the leg.

A second later, Kari’s persona was separated from her simulated body as the other Hendersons quickly dispatched the traitor. Kari ordered herself a new body; this time, she was a medic carrying her new device. The Hendersons waived her forward to their wounded comrade. Kari rushed forward and pulled out a few standard medical devices and quickly closed the wound where the Henderson’s leg used to connect to the rest of his body. Despite her desire not to, Kari also administered a painkiller.

Now for the real field test.
Kari pulled out a small disk from her backpack and tapped its button in the center. The disk expanded outward rapidly, growing to the size of the fallen soldier. It hovered in the air for a moment before diving down and cutting into the ground below the wounded Henderson. It then lifted the soldier from the earth and floated slightly above the ground.

I might need to increase the power on these. If a soldier were heavy enough, it may have problems lifting him over rough terrain.
Kari inserted a review point into the simulation and ordered the device to carry the soldier back to the nearest medical center. She smiled proudly as the wounded Henderson floated away from the front lines.

Screams alerted Kari that another Henderson had been hit.
Excellent timing.
She pulled out another disk and walked over to the newly fallen soldier. The simulation froze.

“What is this?” Henderson said, furious.

“Well, you see, you’ve been shot, and I’m trying to save your life by using my new invention.” Kari explained as if she were talking to a child.

“You’ve spent all this time making a better stretcher?” Henderson’s voice was the perfect mix of rage and disbelief.

“Absolutely. In just a few weeks, I’ve created a far-superior way to extract wounded soldiers from a battlefield. It’ll probably save a bunch of lives.”

“I thought I had made it quite clear that you were to invent things that were going to help us end this conflict with the Middle States.”

“And I did! Think of all the soldiers you can save with this. You can fix them up and send them right back into the fight!”

“You know that’s not what we wanted.”

“I thought it was exactly what you wanted, to be honest. I thought you cared about saving the lives of US soldiers.”

“Yes, by preventing them from being shot in the first place, by defeating the enemy,” Henderson said. His patience hadn’t returned yet.

“I’m sorry I can’t invent a way for people who are supposed to be adults to get together and talk about their differences in a reasonable fashion. But perhaps you could use the stretcher as a table for them to talk at?”
The real way to save lives would be not to fight at all.

After a moment of silence, Kari’s access to her development environment was revoked. She blinked and was back in her cell, lying on her bed once more. Several minutes later, her door opened, and Henderson stormed into the room. Kari greeted him with a smile.

“This isn’t a game. Lives are being lost out there,” Henderson said.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. The Internet reception here is horrible. I haven’t been able to check the news,” Kari said.

“Careful,” Henderson said.
Fair enough.

“This felt like the best way for me to contribute,” Kari said, this time without the sarcasm.

“Well, if this is the best you have, it’s not going to be enough to secure a pardon for your parents,” Henderson said.

“They were supposed to have been released already.” Kari growled at him.
I should have known.

“These things take time, and you really aren’t helping,” Henderson said.

“Not helping? I’ve given you a dozen designs already!”

“True. But none of them are the golden ticket I promised my superiors. I told them you were a modern-day Tesla or da Vinci. I told them you could create something that would change the rules, something that would help us reunite the states. So far, you’ve given me some improvements on things we already have and a hover stretcher.”

“I’m sorry, I never made the claim to be able to do that,” Kari said. “I innovate. I take things that exist and make them better. If you wanted a weapon-inventing genius, you enslaved the wrong girl.”

Henderson clinched his teeth, and his eyes filled with fire.

“If I were wrong about what you are capable of, then that’s my mistake. But, for your parents’ sake, I hope you are the one who is wrong about yourself and I am the right one,” Henderson said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kari responded. The anger and fire that infected Henderson was spreading to her now. She didn’t take kindly to her parents being threatened.

“It means that if you don’t give me something in the next two weeks that I can use to significantly change the battlefield, then your parents will never see the light of day again.” He turned and left the room before Kari could respond with the proper curse words.

Kari screamed her response to Henderson a moment later, but she feared it was too late for him to hear it. She lay back on her bed, opened a programming window, and started writing code as fast as she could.

“What are you doing?” asked one of Henderson’s monitoring agents. Kari executed the code snippet she had just written. Instantly, her connection to the Internet was restored, and she sent out commands to bring in as much news as possible.

“Henderson just threatened my parents’ lives if I don’t create something to change the battlefield, and I can’t do that unless I know what’s going on in the war.” Kari shouted her response as if she were still speaking to Henderson. Her connection was cut a few seconds later, but she had already downloaded the news she wanted. She wrote more lines of code and cut through the defenses the monitors who controlled the capabilities of her mind chip had just reestablished.

“You’re not allowed to go on the net,” the agent said.

“Then why don’t you stop me?”
Have they really forgotten how good of a hacker I am? The only reason I haven’t been on the net is because I was playing by the rules of their game. They change the rules, and then so do I.

Kari saw them attempt to sever her connection again, but this time they weren’t successful. She pulled in more news and information as fast as she could. She also logged into Sarah’s network accounts after she found that hers had all been deactivated. She quickly searched for any comments about David’s family or an arrest. Instead, all she found was Sarah’s most recent post, which was garnering a lot of attention.

“Is anyone really surprised that Kari and David’s families are missing? I tried to tell you all that they had secrets.”

Aubrey seemed to be the lone person who tried to defend Kari in the lengthy conversation, but it was obvious she was taking a lot of heat for even trying.
Remind me to send her something nice when I’m out of here.
Kari hated Sarah, and she wouldn’t stand for Sarah attacking Aubrey on her behalf. She quickly typed a message on the thread from Sarah’s account.

“Because I don’t believe in secrets anymore, here are the login credentials to all my personal accounts. Feel free to see what I’ve been hiding!”

Kari posted all the credentials to Sarah’s accounts that she could remember—and she had a great memory. She knew she had only a matter of seconds before the monitors figured out a way to cut her off from the Internet, but this had felt like a good use of time.
That’s for all the crap you’ve given me over the years. I wanted to leave you alone, but you just wouldn’t have that, would you? You and Henderson should be friends; you’d get along great.

There were only two ways Henderson could have her cut off from the Internet now: he could either send someone physically into the room and knock her out and remove her processing unit again, or he could drop a communication bubble over the prison. But using the bubble would cut him and his agents off from the Internet as well. The door to her cell opened again; they had once again chosen the brute-force approach.

“If you take the processing unit from me again, I won’t be able to do what Henderson wants me to do,” Kari said to both the enforcement officer who was entering the room and the people monitoring her activity.

“I’ve been instructed to accept that scenario,” the officer responded. He stepped closer.

“Wait,” Kari said desperately. “How about I give you some security software that will keep even me from hacking through? You can use it, have better security, and be guaranteed that I can’t do this again.” The enforcement officer stepped forward and struck her on the side of the head with a shock stick.

They really like their blunt-force trauma here.

Kari’s head hurt. Again. When she awakened, she found the mind chip was still connected to the processing unit behind her ear. The enforcement officer who had struck her stood next to her bed with his shock stick out and ready. Sitting across the room from Kari was a small man on the plain chair that her captors always brought in when someone wanted to talk. He was middle aged, his hair was graying, and his face was starting to wrinkle, but he looked at her with respect.

“Good, you’re awake.”

Kari recognized the voice from the monitoring system.

“Yeah, thanks for the nap,” she said as she rubbed her head.

“My name is Udarh, and I am the head security engineer for this facility. I am here to review your security code to see if it’s something I want to implement. If it fails to pass my inspection, then the next time you hack into the Internet, you will be removed from this facility.” He talked as if he were reading a transcript.

I can only imagine what pleasantries “removed from this facility” might entail.

“It won’t disappoint you, Udarh. I wrote this for a client a year or so ago, and it took me four months to complete. It’s the best code I’ve ever written.”

“Why wasn’t this handed over to us before?”

“It’s hard to remember things when your head gets repeatedly smashed.” Kari continued to rub the swelling bruise on her head. Udarh stared at her. She continued. “You didn’t ask. But really it’s because I figured I could hack your system to get the news once or twice before I got in trouble. I didn’t want to lose that chance.”

Udarh nodded his understanding; he seemed to approve of the logic in her explanation. “Shall we get started with our review, then?” he asked eagerly.

“Sure, step back inside my mind,” Kari said. Udarh looked excited. Kari appreciated that; she was working with someone who would respect the quality of the code she had written, not just the outcome. That was a rare treat for a creative. “You’re going to love this.

“Incredible,” Udarh said. “Absolutely incredible.”

Kari laughed. “So, no more questions for me?”

“None at all,” Udarh said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Four months, you said?”

“Yes, four months of work, not counting school and my family vacation,” Kari responded. She liked Udarh. The past six hours had flown by while she’d showed him her security code. He’d consumed it like a child eating his birthday cake—a little overzealously. Every question, doubt, and concern that Kari had answered seemed to thrill him a little more. If she hadn’t been giving him the software for free, she was confident he would have purchased it for any price she named.

“Whom did you say you sold this to?” Udarh asked.

“I have no idea. Most of my clients like their anonymity,” Kari said.

“And you didn’t just hack them to find out?”

“Professional courtesy, if you will,” Kari responded with a smile.

“Well, I hope they paid you handsomely for it,” he said.

“They sure did. They even gave me a tip!” Kari said with another laugh. Udarh joined her for a moment as they laughed together. It was the closest thing to friendship that Kari had found in a long time.

“Thank you for showing this to me,” Udarh said after recovering from his laughter. “I will review it over the next several days before making a final decision on how we will use it going forward. Until then, unfortunately, if you try to access the Internet, they will have to use that shock stick on your poor head again.”

Udarh’s gratitude was apparent.
It’s nice to find someone who can appreciate my artwork.
Kari acknowledged her agreement, and Udarh and the enforcement officer left her alone in her cell once again.

Kari immediately checked to see if the news reports she had downloaded were still accessible to her. They had been deleted, as she had anticipated. She opened her development environment and began to work at a lightning-fast pace. She moved fast so that no monitoring agent would be able to keep up. Between valid actions, she would import a hidden, cached copy of the news reports she downloaded and would disperse it into her code manuals to read later. Anyone monitoring her would have to be very attentive to realize what she was doing.

Udarh is a good guy, but if he’s the best they have, I like my chances.

From what Kari could gather, the outside world was collapsing. The trade embargos by both sides had sent the world economy into a free fall. Civil war had broken out among the states in earnest. For the moment, however, both sides had agreed to minimize human involvement, calling it a “higher form of war.” Kari thought it sounded like a race to see which side could deplete the other’s resources first. She didn’t have too many details, but she didn’t think the Middle States could win such a contest.

Kari figured it would be hard to find any facts online, even if she hadn’t dispersed the news into technical documentation and spread it out in an unrecognizable fashion. News sites were simply a way to sell people what they wanted to hear. Most reports hinted that the Middle States had been having a surprising amount of success despite their much-smaller population and limited access to the outside world. Kari usually liked to piece together the news from firsthand accounts on the networks, but that was tricky and time consuming; therefore, during her brief time on the Internet, she had gone after the media reports instead.