Stones (Data) (25 page)

And he is going to pass right through the middle of one.

As he gets closer, a tent city spreads out in a circle a kilometer in diameter with the freeway cutting through the middle. Hundreds of dark spots dot the center like bacteria in a Petri dish.

He slows the truck to a crawl, and drives on, passing through the outer rim of the circle. Like it or not, he is already inside the camp. He feels like a virus invading a living cell. Youthful faces smile and wave at him as he passes.

At the center, a transport truck is stopped on the road directly in front of him, its side panels propped open with poles, its contents strewn on both sides of the freeway. Swarms of teenagers pull large containers marked
Perishable
off in either direction.

He stops the Chikara half a football field from the transport.

A group of twenty youths break off and move toward him in a slow flow.

Kent stares out the right and left windows. Dozens of burned-out cars lay upside down, scattered in the sagebrush. Jagged lines of grey smoke float up from some that are still smoldering. Closer now, he can see the dark spots for what they are, blackened piles of glass, aluminum, plastic. The building blocks of industrial society, melted and fused together with fire. Bluescreens, slates, light fixtures, gaming modules, holo-projectors. There is an amalgamation of ten thousand jaxes pushed together in a high pile, doused with petrol and put to the torch.

Somebody’s idea of a bonfire.

It confirms the rumors. These people hate technology. They burn and destroy it whenever possible.

He remembers a video interview of a woman from a freedom camp in Australia. She used the same word for the capitalist system that delivers leisure and addiction to the masses in every form imaginable.

The Complex
.

It might turn out to be a useful bit of knowledge.

A young man with a broad smile and missing teeth walks up to his window. A dirty stick, perhaps the remnants of a baseball bat, hangs from his hand. The others gather around the truck. Kent presses a button on the carcom and the window floats down to leave nothing but open air between him and the people of the freedom camp. He looks into the young man’s eyes. Clear and blue.

“Sir, good to see you out so early on this beautiful morning.” The youth’s deep tan and mass of blond dreads tied in a pony-tail tell the story of months in the wild. “Welcome to Camp Tranquility. I can see you’ve come here to be cleansed of Abomination. We’re always glad to help.” He points in a circle at the group surrounding the old Chikara. Their smiles reveal dust-caked teeth as they move in closer.

With his head close to Kent, the young man peers into the cab of the truck. A slate, two bottles of water and a military-grade GPS lay carelessly strewn on the seat. A jax pokes out of the upload slot on the carcom. The sound of whale calls and a buzzing shaver add to the ambience. The young man’s eyes slowly trace a line from the cab along the crinkled body panels and back to the red tarp covering the truck bed.

“Something don’t make sense here,” he says.

Kent watches the line traced by the young man’s eyes. “May I offer you some water.” He grabs a bottle and tosses it through the window to the young man.

Without taking his eyes off Kent, the young man catches it in his free hand, screws off the cap with a flick of his thumb, raises it to his cracked lips and drains it in a few audible gulps. Crushing the empty bottle in his fist, he hands it to the kid next to him.

“Thanks. That hit the spot.” He points the stick in the direction of the Chikara’s truck bed. “Just wondering. What you got here?” The young man licks his wet lips and starts walking to the back of the truck, dragging his stick along it metal side as he moves. “Mind if I take a look?”

“I’ll be happy to show you.” Kent pops the door open and walks to the tailgate. His nostrils pick up the caustic scent of burnt plastic and sweat as he moves through the crowd of dirty kids. He loosens the ties and pulls the tarp back a couple of feet to reveal a box of bottled water, a case of ramen noodles and two bags of rice.

“Where you going with this?” The young man smiles as he taps the stick on the box of ramen noodles.

“Heading East.” Kent looks down at dozens of dirty fingers moving across the noodles and rice. “To fight against
The Complex
.”

All eyes in the group snap back at him as the words leave his lips.

“What do you know about The Complex?” The young man steps closer to Kent, squinting up into his eyes.

“I was once part of it, lived within it. Embraced it.” Kent keeps his back to the rising sun and narrows his eyes to thin slits. “But it betrayed me, killed my wife and came after me and my son. I cast off its bonds and became free. Now I seek revenge.”

He hoped his act didn’t sound too fake. It was all true, with just a bit of bravado and drama thrown in to impress them.

“So, you claim to be a believer. We’ll see if you speak the truth.” The young man pulls a knife out of his belt and moves toward Kent.

He braces himself as the youth glides past him to the truck.

One by one, the young man cuts the ties holding the tarp in place and rips it away. Then he looks inside at cubes made of aluminum and glass covered with buttons and dials. Bluescreens. Ropes and harnesses. Plastic boxes full of battery packs and cables. Electronic sniffers. A cornucopia of technology.

The young man shakes his head. “You claim to be a believer, yet you carry the mark of Abomination with you.” His eyes meet Kent’s and look down at another jax hanging from his side pocket. “You are unclean. We will cleanse you of this Abomination. Join us and be free.” He nods at the others.

In silence, the group closes around the truck bed. Arms and hands reach in, and they begin to lift the boxes and equipment out with broad smiles still on their faces.

“Wait.” Kent raises his hands like a preacher about to deliver a sermon. “I’ve fought against The Complex for many years, from the edges. I turn its own weapons against it. I’m on my way to strike a blow at its heart. If you take my equipment and hold me back, you are friends of The Complex.”

They all stop and look to the young man with the stick in his hand.

“Leave the truck, for now.” The young man points his stick at the other kids, and they move back. “We’ll take you to Little John. He’ll know what to do.”

M
att stares at the white Stone balanced perfectly on the palm of his right hand. He moves it to his left hand, and it feels unbalanced, awkward, as if it
wants
to be in the other hand. With no conscious effort, his right hand moves as if on its own and retrieves the Stone.

A clear image passes through his mind. He’s dropping the Stone into the garbage at the airport. It disappears into a pile of trash. No mistake about it.

He threw the Stone away, and now it’s returned.

His fingers close around it. Rushing to the window, he heaves it open and draws his hand back. Conflict rips at his soul. Part of him wants to get rid of it again, to throw the Stone into the pond and put its mysteries behind him. But another part yearns to learn its secrets.

He thinks back on the Woman in the dream. No matter how much he tries, he can’t get her image out of his mind. A being of surpassing beauty. An angel. Or a goddess.

And no matter how much he tries to deny or forget it, he knows it is the same Woman that came to him when he was sixteen years old under an avalanche of snow at the bottom of Skull Pass.

He wonders. Are the dreams just random hallucinations triggered by excitement or fatigue?

Or is there more to it?

The Stone itself, hard and cool in his hand, seems to scream out the answer, tangible proof of what he saw. His fingers squeeze it until the blood drains from his knuckles. Its color fades from white to sky blue.

Surprised at the calmness that permeates his soul, Matt stares down at the Stone that has magically come back. He should be running through the streets, stark raving mad. Yet it feels right and comfortable, the way things should be. He has a strong compulsion to record the dream.

But first he needs to clear his head.

Dressing in running gear, he goes outside for an early morning jog. With the Stone in his right hand and the jax in his left, he moves around campus as his fingers type out bits and pieces of what he saw. The darks shapes chasing him. The bare oak tree by the chasm. The billowing fog. Most of his dreams are forgotten within minutes of waking up, but this one is easy to recall in all of its details.

After recording what he saw, Matt stores it on his personal datasite and sends a copy to Jessica. They can discuss it later. He looks forward to her reaction.

He comes back to his room from a lukewarm shower and dresses in the usual cargo pants and T-shirt. The Stone goes into his pocket, and he heads across campus to the University cafeteria for an early breakfast. A film of sweat instantly coats his back and sticks to his shirt.

At 6:00 in the morning, the cafeteria is empty except for a group of students gathered at a table on the other side and speaking Chinese. Thanks to jet lag, he’ll be getting up early for the next week whether he wants to or not.

The rice,
miso
soup and pickled radish are good, but nothing special. It all has the look and feel of hospital food, and it takes more than a little courage to try the fermented soy beans called
nato
. Mustard and soy sauce help get it down. A single whiff of the fecal smell turns most
gaijin
away, but his mother used to say that you could never truly understand Japanese culture until you acquired a taste for
nato
. He tries to enjoy it but finds the going difficult.

After breakfast, he goes back to the dorm and empties the backpack by pouring its remaining contents, mostly clothes, out onto his bed. Then he puts a few old history books, a slate and some random climbing gear back in, hangs it off one shoulder and starts out across campus. The enormous size of his backpack stands out as he walks, but he doesn’t care. There’s no telling what he might need on his first day as Professor Yamamoto’s research assistant.

Wandering past the library, he picks up a copy of the
Yomiuri Shinbun
, one of the last print newspapers left in the world. There’s a soft chair near the window, and he drops his backpack on the floor and sits down to read the front page. The main article reports that Japan has sided with China in a trade dispute over rights to manufacture jax antennas. Just below that, he reads about their joint declaration to stop selling natural gas to Europe from the North China Sea. Then there is an update on the naval base on the Senkaku Islands that they operate together. His eyes scan the daily anti-American editorial that has become a fixture in the newspaper, at least the version he reads on the Mesh. He’s suddenly grateful for his Japanese looks and hopes it will save him from unnecessary harassment on campus.

At 8:30 in the morning, a clock chimes, and he realizes that Professor Yamamoto’s lecture is about to start.

He doesn’t want to be late on the first day of class.

Jumping up, he grabs the backpack, descends two flights of stairs and sprints across the open courtyard into a building on the other side, the one he looked up on his jax before he left the dorm. He enters the back of a large auditorium and sits down, out of breath.

The lecture is already in progress.

Professor Yamamoto paces back and forth at the front on a raised platform. When he sees Matt, his face breaks into a grin, and he pauses to nod.

Matt bows his head in reply and tries to pick up where the lecture is going.

“
Amaterasu Omikami
, the sun goddess, is the daughter of
Izanagi no Mikoto
, the creator of the eight original Japanese islands.” Professor Yamamoto points his jax at the big bluescreen on the wall behind him. The lights dim and a colorful image of a woman with bright rays of light streaming from her face appears. “This woodcut of
Amaterasu
was made near the end of the
Edo
period by the Japanese artist Utagawa Kunisada, famous for his
ukiyoe
paintings.”

In the darkness of the room, Matt feels the pull of sleep. His eyelids start to slide down. Undergraduate lectures at any university are a test of patience, but this is doubly hard because it’s all in Japanese. He struggles to pay attention, knowing that it will be an irreversible breach of etiquette if he lets his head slip down.

“In the Shinto tradition,
Amaterasu
is thought to be the source of beauty and light, as well as the ancestor of the imperial household of Japan.” Professor Yamamoto drones on. “According to myth, she had a battle with her brother, and then hid herself in a dark cave when overcome with grief and anger. All light disappeared from the earth. Darkness reigned.”

Matt wishes he could hide in the dark and go to sleep. Jet lag is slowly exerting its control over him. He knows he is losing the battle.

“The other gods tried in vain to persuade her to come out of the cave so the world would have light again. Finally, in desperation, they lured her out by hanging the
Three Sacred Treasures
outside its entrance.” Professor Yamamoto pauses and scans the classroom.