Pennsylvania

(8 MERRILL’S ANTIQUE SHOPPE

Lantern light flickered throughout Merrill’s Antique Shoppe. The yellow-gold radiance pierced the shadows and made them dance against the collections of old furniture, twisted wrought iron, tin signs, and mannequins posed like fashion models arrayed in ancient dresses. The waltz of light and darkness reminded Jedediah Troyer of dark winter nights sitting around the wood burner in the front room of the farmhouse, when the firelight would shine through the glass window of the stove and his father would tell the family stories of persecution, of Jakob Ammann, of the lives of the martyrs.

In this Pennsylvania, those stories were ancient history, mythology, anecdotes of another world altogether. In this Pennsylvania, a war raged just outside the front door of the Antique Shoppe—a war with lasers and flying ships and assassin drones floating in deathly silence, searching for rebels in the night.

Now and then frightening explosions sounded in the distance, and the buzzing zip of phosphorescent projectiles or the crackling beams of laser light would slice through the air over the antique shop, highlighting both the irony and the relentlessness of time as the group of rebels plotted amidst the relics of an era long past.

The City was under attack. Jed wasn’t even sure what that meant or who might be fighting whom, but the fact that he was trapped in some acrimonious struggle between alien factions was clear to him. Englischers—and most other humans—were already aliens to him, so he had no trouble seeing the conflict as a foreign engagement, a war in which he had no interest.

Pook Rayburn had just finished forging the last of the transport papers he hoped would get Jed, Dawn, and Jerry Rios into the Amish Zone when they heard something heavy crash against the front door of the shop.

Jed snapped back to the present as the frightening and desperate alert coming from the front of the shop pried his eyes and thoughts from the window with the coffee-can replacement pane—a relic from another time and place. His time and place.

What in the world?

Before anyone could even ask what caused the noise, Pook was up and running towards the door. He drew an antique twelve-gauge shotgun from an old umbrella stand as he passed it, and pumped a shell into the receiver before cautiously unlocking the door with his left hand and pulling it open.

Slumped against the doorframe was a man in a dark, military-style trench coat, and when the door opened the man fell into the entryway. His black features were barely licked by the light of the kerosene lamps, but even from Jed’s location fifteen feet away he could see that the man on the floor was Donavan, and that he was still alive.

Jerry Rios—a large man, but athletic and quick—was moving now, and so was Dawn. Together with Pook they dragged Donavan into the shop, Dawn unconsciously trying to avoid stepping in the blood that trailed onto the hardwood floor as they struggled to move the injured man. Once they’d cleared the doorway, Pook stuck his head outside and looked around, checking that Donavan had not been followed. Satisfied that there was no immediate threat, he closed the door.

Jed didn’t know how to react and, peering over Jerry’s shoulder, he could see that Donavan’s eyes were open and blood was seeping out of the corner of his mouth. When the wounded man saw Dawn and Jed, he smiled and shook his head, before coughing out some of the blood that was beginning to build up in his throat, blocking his airway.

Dawn was searching Donavan to try to ascertain his injuries, probing with her hands, and Jerry was propping up the injured man’s head when Pook returned from locking the door.

“What happened, Donavan?” Pook asked.

“They got me,” Donavan said, and laughed again. “Isn’t that what they say in the old movies?”

“This isn’t a movie, Donavan! Who got you? What happened?” Dawn asked.

“Transport.”

“But you work for Transport!”

“I think I’ve been fired,” Donavan replied wryly. “We mutually agreed that I had no future with the company.”

“Are you going to tell us what happened?” Pook asked.

Donavan’s head lolled to one side. “They showed up just as I was leaving the ship with the coin. They didn’t have to say anything.” He gasped and inhaled deeply before continuing. “I could tell by the way they were walking towards me with their hands reaching towards their guns that I was busted, so I ran.”

Another laugh brought on a fit of coughing and more blood came up before Donavan spoke again. This time no one peppered him with questions. Their silence implored him to continue.

“I got out of the building, and I was almost back to the van when one of them got me. It was a good shot, man, I’m telling you. I was almost behind the van and one of them hit me in the lower back. Kidney shot. Game over.”

Dawn gasped, and Jerry carefully rolled Donavan onto his side. Blackish blood was seeping from a hole in the trench coat and soaking into the ancient hardwood floor. Jerry gently eased Donavan onto his back again.

Donavan laughed again. “Sorry about your floor, Pook.”

“Shut up, man. This is a serious wound. We can’t get you to a doctor, and you know that.”

“I know. I know it. I’m done. I’m just glad I made it back here.” As he said this, his hand opened and in his bloody palm was Jed’s gold coin.

“We can give you the unis we owe you, Donavan,” Dawn said with obvious sadness in her voice, “but you’ll never spend them.”

“I know. You guys can keep them. They’re almost worthless anyway.” More coughing and wheezing as Donavan struggled to hang on to the thread of thought that was still pulling him onward. “I just waited too long to get out. I was planning to get my own BICE removed next week, but it’s too late now.”

“Ah, man,” Pook exhaled and then looked around, “I didn’t think about that.” He slapped his hand against the door in anger. “Your BICE. They can track you here.”

“No, they can’t,” Donavan said with a grunt. He brought his left hand up to the back of his head, and when he pulled his hand back it was covered in blood.

“I didn’t even look at his head after he said he was shot in the back,” Jerry said. He rolled Donavan’s head to the side, and they could all see that Donavan’s short, curly hair was matted with blackened blood.

“You cut it out yourself, you crazy fool?” Pook asked.

“Yeah. I ditched the van not far from the station and then I crawled down an alley. I cut the BICE out with a piece of sharp aluminum I found behind a recycling unit. You’d be surprised at what you’re capable of doing when you still think you might survive.” Donavan laughed again, which set him off on another coughing spell. He gagged a little on his own blood.

“Can’t they track his TRID?” Jed asked. He had only the faintest idea what ‘tracking’ really was or how anyone could do it, but it seemed to him that if they could track a BICE they could track a TRID.

“No,” Dawn said. “Most of the people, like me, who had the newest BICE units didn’t require a Transport ID chip. They’re all-in-one now. The Transport ID is in the BICE unit.” She showed Jed the back of her hand and he could see an old, healed scar, barely visible in the dancing light from the lanterns. “I had my TRID removed when I got the new BICE unit a couple of years ago.”

“Listen,” Donavan sputtered. He was fading fast, and Jed could see that the man’s life was coming to an end. “I don’t have much time, so listen up.” His voice was a low wheeze, and his eyes fluttered as he struggled to push out words. He coughed again, but this time it was weaker and he choked a little on the blood as he tried to raise his voice. “There are Transport units everywhere. They know there are TRACE resistance groups active in the City, so they’re looking. They’ll come here, and probably soon.”

“Did you see them?” Dawn asked.

“They are… they… are… everywhere.” Donavan breathed deeply, trying to access some last store of energy so that he could finish what he had to say. He blinked several times, and Jed could see the life draining from the man’s eyes.

“They have Transport drones… TRACERs out there too. Flying silent. Watch. Pook? Pook?”

“I’m right here, Donavan.”

“Pook, if you don’t have guns, you need to make some right now. I don’t think you’ll make it past the walls and to the AZ… Pook?”

“Here, Donavan.”

“You’ll have to fight your way out, most likely.”

“I’ll get us out, Donavan. Thanks to you. We’ll make it, man.”

“Make it,” Donavan sighed.

“We’ll make it!”

“Make… it.”

“Thank you, Donavan,” Dawn whispered. She was crying now, and Jed felt like he was going to cry too. He didn’t even know Donavan, but he was moved by the man’s sacrifice.

There was a final gasp, and then almost a “whoosh” sound as the last of the air escaped the dying man’s lungs. As he died, his hand opened, and the gold coin rolled onto the wood floor, circling in a lazy arc before bouncing off of Jed’s shoe and coming to a stop.

Pook looked down at the coin and said, “Heads,” in almost a whisper. He looked at Jed and nodded his head slowly. “Pick it up, man. He died to get it to you.”

Working together with Jerry and Dawn, Pook wrapped Donavan’s body in a tarp and secured it with several sections of hemp rope, tying it up tightly like a package.

Pook looked down on their work and shook his head. “We’ll have to stow him in the back for now. I’ll get some of my men to come and get the body and try to give him a proper burial.”

Jerry bent down and lifted Donavan’s body by the feet, and Pook grabbed the corpse by the shoulders. Together they shuffle-carried the dead man toward the rear of the store and into a darkened office near the back door.

As they hefted Donavan onto a dusty desk, a deep rumble shook the building, followed by a thunderous roar that caused Jed and Dawn to look at one another with unvoiced concern. A tear rolled unchecked down Dawn’s face.

The rumble gradually died away into the distance, and Dawn looked upward, blinking through the moisture in her eyes, as if to check to see if the roof was going to cave in on them. When it didn’t, she looked back at Jed.

Jed and Dawn stared deeply into one another’s eyes, and for the first time he saw that she was not entirely the cool and dispassionate professional that she’d appeared to have been the entire time he’d known her. She wiped away the wetness from her cheek as she studied Jed’s face for answers.

He had none.

Murder. Violence. War. These were things that were usually outside of his world, separate from his realm of experience. Death in the Amish world was structured, ordered, systematic. Even when an unexpected accident took the lives of the young—maybe a buggy overturned, or a boy fell under a plow—there was a system to things. Everyone was on the same side, and all played their parts. Death was considered a stage of life, and it was integrated into the system in a way that left no room for confusion or doubt.

But this—people being gunned down in the streets—was a foreign concept to Jed. Implements of war loosed in the streets of cities, mindless tools of despotic governments seeking flesh to destroy. And for what? How could a young man like Jed understand the devilish and covetous motivations that could bring about such a way of living?

It didn’t seem to Jed that Donavan had been a bad man. Donavan was just a Transport official who wanted out. Jed had to wonder… isn’t out a primal desire? Isn’t out a destination found in the heart of every man and woman?

When Pook and Jerry returned from stowing the body, the four of them stood wordlessly for a while, as if the moment transcended words and demanded silent recognition of the Transport man’s sacrifice. As they stood in gauzy silence, Jed could hear a breeze bend its way around the building, on its journey from somewhere to eternity. The building creaked and whispered its age, and Jed identified the very faint pop, pop, pop of the lanterns sucking oxygen through their flames.

After an appropriately solemn period of respectful silence, Jerry turned to Pook and tapped him lightly on the arm.

“So what’s this about making guns?” he asked.

“We’ll have to go down to the basement.”

“Lead the way.”

Dawn and Jed stayed behind for a moment longer, and when the others were gone, Dawn’s hand came up to her mouth.

Jed noticed a slight tremor in the hand, and that small involuntary expression communicated to him her fear and sorrow. He didn’t know what to do, but he felt that he should do something, anything—so he did what he would have done for Amos, or even for his mother if they were upset. He put his arms around Dawn and drew her close to him in an embrace. He didn’t second-guess his reasons for reaching out to Dawn, and she seemed to immediately submit to what the moment required.

As if the act of Jed embracing her gave her permission to release a pent-up torrent of emotion, Dawn collapsed into him, squeezing him tightly, and a loud sob escaped from her as the tears flowed freely.

“Thank you, Jed.”

“No. Thank you for getting me out of that place, Dawn, and for watching over me on this trip.”

“It was…” She paused a few beats. “It is my job.”

Jed moved to pull away from her, his mind reeling at everything that had transpired since he’d left Old Pennsylvania on this journey.

“Your job?” he asked.

Dawn grabbed him as he pulled away, and pulled him back into her arms.

“Yes,” she said. “Your safety is my job.”

Jed continued to embrace her, and as his gaze drifted across the antiques, the light flickering among them, he saw them for what they were: moments that marked real lives that were lived.

“I have so many questions,” Jed said as he pulled away from Dawn’s embrace again.

“I know, Jed. I know you do. You have been very patient. But we don’t have time to go through everything right now. Lives are at stake, and you know that. It would all blow your mind out of your ears… seriously.”

“I know.” Jed took a step backwards, then began to move towards the door that led down to the basement. When he did, Dawn’s hand darted out and grabbed his hand.

“Jed, everything is not as it seems. I know you probably know that by now, but no matter what happens, you need to believe that you can trust me. I’m here to help you, and to keep you alive. I can’t answer all of your questions, and I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t believe me if I could. But I’ll tell you whatever I can when the time is right. For right now, my job—our job—is to get you to the Amish Zone. That is my one and only mission in life.”

Jed looked down at his boots, and then back up at Dawn. He was still holding her hand, so when he turned again he pulled her gently behind him.

“Let me show you something,” Jed said softly over his shoulder.

“What? Here? In the shop?”

“Yes, it’s back here where Pook kept his forgery papers.”

“Okay” was all that Dawn could manage to say as she let herself be pulled down a dark aisle and then back up another row that was dimly lit by lantern light.

When they were back in the little nook where Pook had removed the old relic from the wall, Jed pointed to the antique window that now rested against an old, dusty couch. Jed went down to a knee and reached out to touch the flattened coffee can that served as a replacement to a long-ago broken pane.

“This window frame came from the old barn on my farm. Back in Old Pennsylvania.”

Dawn stood quietly a while, and when Jed finally looked up at her, she was staring at him, as if she wasn’t sure what she should say.

“I broke this window pane with my slingshot when I was fourteen years old. I replaced the pane myself with this coffee can. I looked up at this window in the gabled end of our barn only days ago, when I was leaving to board the airbus to start this trip.”

“That wasn’t days ago, Jed.”

“I know. I know that. But at the most it was nine years ago, and that’s if the window frame made the trip with us on the ship, and I don’t believe that it did. It was here when we got here, and it was covered in a lot of dust. Something is wrong.”

“Maybe it’s another window and it just really looks like yours. Maybe you’re homesick, and you remember a window a lot like this one?” Dawn didn’t say these things as though she believed them. She said them as if she were offering them up as excuses… reasons to suspend disbelief for just a little while longer.

“No, Dawn.” He touched the metal replacement pane again. “This is what I know. This is the only thing I know in the whole universe right now. This is my work. It was a point of humor between my dad and me. I looked at it all the time. I put this can here.” His fingers traced the raised lettering on the flattened, ancient coffee can.

“There are a lot of things that I just can’t tell you yet, Jedediah.”

“Just tell me where I am, and what happened to my home.”

“Where… well, where is an interesting question. And I don’t mean to sound mysterious, or to put you off when you’re obviously concerned and maybe worried too, but the real question—and it’s another one that I can’t yet answer for you—isn’t where are you, but when.”

Jed looked up at Dawn, but his hand didn’t leave the metal can in the window frame.

“So answer it, then. When am I, Dawn?”

Dawn shook her head and tried to smile, though the smile came off more like a grimace than anything else.

“I can’t tell you that, Jed. I just can’t. Not yet. I would if I could, and you have to believe that. When you’re safe, and when I have leave to tell you, I’ll tell you everything I can. For now, we have to go join the others. We have work to do.”

With that, Dawn turned and walked back through the piles of ancient goods toward the basement of Merrill’s Antique Shoppe.

(9 OKCILLIUM

The basement beneath the shop was lit by a dozen lanterns scattered around the place, and the flickering, golden light revealed a cavernous room that looked as old as anything Jed had ever seen in the Amish Zone back on Earth. Older even. The dark red bricks that made up the walls appeared to be of the handmade variety, imperfect and inconsistent, adhered together with ancient, sandy gray mortar that here and there had dripped down over the brick faces in haphazard fashion. The construction looked to Jed to be from the turn of the twentieth century, and widely scattered mold and mildew stains marked the faces of the walls. Bags and boxes of old clothing and antique bits and pieces of the flotsam of time were scattered in dusty piles around the basement and stacked high against the brick walls—all except for the north wall, which had been cleared of the residue of these once-loved, but now forgotten, material possessions. The detritus of former lives.

Along that north wall, standing like a line of mechanical soldiers—or the shiny, stainless steel milking machines that Jed had seen once in a more liberal Amish neighbor’s barn—were ten complicated-looking machines. The cords from the machines ran along the base of the wall and were taped together where they terminated in an enormous plug the likes of which Jed had never seen.

Pook followed Jed’s gaze. “We can’t use grid power, even if the power were up right now. They track any anomalies in power usage very closely.”

“Anomalies,” Jed repeated, absentmindedly, as he stared at the machines.

“Freakin’ anomalies,” Jerry repeated with a smile on his face. He seemed to be enjoying the entire adventure immensely.

“We had a friend who was running a single one of these machines using grid power out in one of the suburbs of the City,” Pook said as he worked. “This was years ago. Anyway, they toasted the whole subdivision with a micro-nuke just to make sure they got him. Killed hundreds of people.”

“Who did that?” Jed asked. “Who would kill hundreds of people to get one person for using a machine?”

“Transport, that’s who,” Pook said through a barely disguised sneer.

“I don’t understand what using a machine has to do with Transport,” Jed said.

“Everything has to do with Transport,” Pook said, holding his right hand out in a clenched fist. He squeezed the fist as if he were crushing anything that could have fit into it. “For all intents and purposes, Transport is the government here, just like where you’re from. It all goes back to the founding of the United States and the misinterpretation and misuse of the Interstate Commerce Clause found in the Constitution of America. Through time, governments used that clause to rationalize that everything—especially in a global world with instantaneous communication and the blurring of state, national, and international lines, laws, and responsibilities—fell under Transport law. After the wars of the early twenty-first century and the globalization of the ‘war on terror,’ micromanaging Transport became the easiest way to control populations and govern human behavior.”

“That’s when private transport was outlawed,” Jerry said, nodding his head toward Jed.

“That’s right,” Pook said. He was preaching now. It was a sermon he’d given before, and Jed got the feeling that Pook was very much a preacher at heart.

“They had to do it, considering their goals. The purpose of government had morphed from its original goal into the solitary objective of maintaining an environment in which business could take place without fear and panic. Government became nothing more than a mechanism of control, because the free flow of dollars and the success of markets were the only things keeping the whole thing afloat. If mitigating panic is the national goal and purpose, then you have to control the where, when, what, and how of transportation. It’s a maxim. You have to take away the risk of someone attacking transportation and crippling the country. To make that process easier and less irritating for the public, you make public transport the only way to travel, and you streamline everything with implanted chips so everyone can flow through transport smoothly. You sell it as ‘homeland security,’ as an economic necessity, as ‘greening’ the planet. It’s a cure-all for a broken and desperately sad world.

“After the wars, everyone went along with whatever Transport proposed. Everyone, that is, but the refuseniks: mainly the miners and the people who lived out in the countryside. Just like when everyone but the Amish went along with the implanted chips and the Transport IDs, the refuseniks refused to accept the outlawing of private transportation.”

“We don’t have time for a political discussion,” Dawn cut in. “We’re being hunted down, we have a dead friend lying on the back table in that office up there, and I doubt Jed cares about our problems. I suspect he just wants to get away from all of this craziness and into the safety of the Amish Zone.”

“Yeah. Safety,” Pook said drily.

“How are you going to run the printers?” Dawn asked. The last thing she needed was her cousin trying to radicalize an Amish dissenter. She was calmer now, and a few faint tracks on her face were the only reminder that she’d had an emotional episode over the death of Donavan.

Jerry Rios stood silently now, watching Pook with a curious look on his face. Jed could tell that Jerry couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen next.

“I have an okcillium power generator,” Pook said. “That’s how I can run ten of these machines at once without Transport detecting anything. “It’ll run for a couple hundred hours on just a few grams of okcillium.”

“Ok—freakin’—cillium!” Jerry said with a grin. “I knew it!”

“You did, did you?” Pook said.

“What is okcillium?” Jed asked before he could think better of it. His curiosity was piqued by the strangeness of the machines and what Pook might do with them.

“Okcillium?” Pook said. “Okcillium is the future, and it’s the past. Okcillium is power and freedom, and it can also be control and tyranny. Okcillium is why there’s a war going on out there, and I reckon it’s why you’re here too Jed, but we don’t have time for that right now. Dawn is anxious and she wants us to get to work.”

As if to emphasize the point, another explosion shook the building above their heads, and dust and dirt shook free from the rafters of the basement as the building creaked and moaned in protest.

Seemingly unconcerned, Pook went to work. He plugged the male end of the cord assembly into a female receptacle, and then walked over and pulled a bunch of flimsy cardboard boxes full of clothing from a pile. The cartons had lost most of their structural integrity and as he moved them they spilled some of their contents on the ground. After Pook had moved a few of the cartons, Jed could see a small machine that had been hidden among the antique treasures.

Pook cleared the area around the machine, and then pushed two buttons simultaneously on the face of the stainless metal cage that housed the okcillium generator. A slight hum and an almost imperceptible vibration indicated to Pook that the machine was running, and Jed noticed that the ten gray machines over near the north wall all came to life, beeping and humming in coordinated response.

“It runs almost totally silently and doesn’t emit any fumes or off-gases,” Pook said of the generator. “It doesn’t produce a tremendous amount of heat either. That’s one of the reasons okcillium is so valuable… and so illegal. It is quite nearly undetectable.”

Jerry Rios pointed at the generator and winked at Jed. “Private power generation is like private transport, Jed. Forbidden.”

Jed nodded his head. He wasn’t sure what to think about that information, but it was scary—and, if he had to admit it, somewhat thrilling—to be standing there while Pook defiantly broke the law.

“Once upon a time,” Pook said, “the powers that be just kept a lid on new inventions. They killed or financially ruined inventors, bought up patents, and spun conspiracy theories that kept people wondering whether cheap and clean home power was even possible. Mainstream electricity and grid power were kept so artificially inexpensive that most people didn’t even really care if home power generation was a possibility. Thomas Edison once said something along the lines of, ‘We intend to make electricity so inexpensive that only the rich will be able to afford candles.’ And they did it, too. The problem with that is that it made everyone addicted to, and dependent upon, cheaply provided and ubiquitous grid power. Sure, the government didn’t much care if you went solar, bought fossil-fuel generators, or put up wind generators, because those off-grid resources were finite, unsustainable, and would always require more input from the outside world. But when okcillium was discovered, all bets were off. It was outlawed pretty soon after it was discovered.”

“What reason was given for outlawing it?” Jed asked.

“They just categorized it with other fissionable materials, even though okcillium is nothing like radioactive, nuclear substances.”

“Okay,” Dawn said firmly, making it obvious that she was exasperated with all of the talk. “It’s not necessary that Jed get a complete briefing about all of the problems in this world. He isn’t a part of this world. We need to get a move on, like immediately.”

“Gotcha, cousin,” Pook said with a smile.

Jerry, Dawn, and Jed could only watch as Pook went to work. The first thing he did was produce a black pistol from a drawer. He showed the pistol to everyone before placing it flat on a metal rolling cart that had a bright white tabletop. Jed had never seen a real gun, and had only heard of them through gossip and maybe in a few sermons back at home. Pook removed some sort of cartridge from the grip of the pistol and placed the cartridge on the table as well.

While Pook went and grabbed a few other boxes, Jerry picked up the weapon and examined it.

“Glock 21,” he said. “Fires .45 ACP ammunition and is very deadly, especially at close range. This one is highly illegal. No tracking chip. No location-based disarming module. No serial numbers. No ID activation or remote jamming.”

“You know your weapons,” Pook said as he placed the boxes he’d retrieved near the machines. He walked back over to the gun and took it from Jerry’s hand. “That’s not very common back where you come from.”

“Yeah,” Jerry said, putting his hands into his pockets. “My dad was an enthusiast.”

“You have some kind of military background?” Pook asked.

“Nah. I was way too young for the wars. I’m only twenty, but my father fought. He was in Kansas City before it was destroyed, and he was there when New Orleans fell. He used to take me out to the country to an old cabin where he’d hidden some weapons from the time before the banks collapsed and the wars broke out. I learned a lot about guns from my father.”

“Interesting,” Pook replied.

Pook placed the gun back down on the table, disassembled it into its several parts, and then propped up the pieces on tiny, clear blocks that elevated the gun from the table. He did the same with the black cartridge. “This will allow us to get a full 3D image of the items,” he said as he worked.

“The units we’re going to make will be one hundred percent polymer resin and ceramic, even the striker pin and spring, and they’ll be undetectable by metal detector—even though almost no one really uses metal detectors anymore.”

Pook opened up a cabinet and pulled out a large handheld device that, when plugged in, emitted a glowing red light. The luminous wand was connected to another device that Jed rightly identified as some kind of computer. He knew about computers from the studies he’d done to prepare himself for his trip, and he’d seen Dawn operate one back at check-in when he’d first arrived at Columbia.

“Back where you’re from, guns were not only illegal, but they were manufactured so that they wouldn’t fire unless they were in the hand of a certified Transport Officer. They were also disabled electronically whenever they were in or near any government facility.” Pook began slowly moving the handheld device over and around the gun parts and the disassembled cartridge, and an image of the items began to appear on the computer screen.

“Guns are illegal here too, but the resistance has ways of arming themselves. Of course, that’s always been true. The only people who are disarmed in this world are the Amish,” he jerked his head toward Jed, “and all the other ignorant, urban civilians. We usually call them ‘victims.’” Pook looked over to Jed and smiled. “Pardon my terminology, Jed. I’m sure you don’t philosophically agree with the use of weapons.”

Jed just shrugged and stared back at the pistol as its representation began to materialize on the computer screen. He certainly didn’t intend to get into any religious or philosophical discussions while running for his life out among the English. He knew that back in his old life he’d be asleep in bed. In only a few hours, he’d be waking up to milk Zoe. None of this—this running around, hiding, fighting, making guns—none of it made food for people to eat or put clothing on their backs. He understood that perhaps these people felt like they needed to fight and struggle to be free, but the struggle was birthed from their departure from a simple worldview. The English had long since abandoned the idea that man needed only food, raiment, and perhaps shelter. Once man leaves the farm, he needs more… always more. The hunger for more inevitably leads to conflict, wars, tyranny, oppression. And always, always, always this more that man actually gets… comes in the form of more government.

Pook touched the screen a few times, moving the image about and checking it for any noticeable errors, and as he did this, he continued talking.

“This is all really old technology. This pistol and these printers and computers are all relics from the second decade of the twenty-first century. Being in the antique business has its benefits.” Pook opened his hand as he touched the screen and the image grew larger. Jed could now see more detail in the animation.

“Once I get a complete scan of the gun, the clip, and all the parts,” Pook said, “the computer will render a perfectly identical model—accurate within forty microns, or about half the breadth of a human hair. The printers will reproduce the item precisely, even down to the internal moving parts.”

Pook then walked over and filled each of the machines in measured doses with resin powders from the different boxes he’d stacked in front of them. When he was ready and had double-checked all of the settings, he pressed some buttons on the computer, and the 3D printers jumped to life.

A gray arm on each of the machines began traveling back and forth within its case, laying down each micro-layer of polymer from the bottom up. After each pass, the panel that was holding these slowly forming weapons dropped down an almost infinitesimal distance, ready for the gray arm to make another pass. A white, drying powder also filled the case as the printing progressed, suspending the newly printed parts in three dimensions.

Pook turned and looked at Jed, who was staring, mouth agape, at the process, and smiled with amusement.

“Have you ever fired a gun, Jed?”

“No, sir. We don’t hunt. Some of our people have small rifles for killing pigs or cattle, but we’re all pacifists.”

“Yes,” Pook replied, smiling, “I suppose you are. It must be nice, having other people fight your battles for you.”

Jerry seemed to bristle at this, and answered before Jed could think of what to say.

“He never asked anyone to fight for him, Pook,” Jerry said. “I mean his people didn’t. Jed doesn’t owe you or me or anyone else anything at all. You can’t force people to be thankful just because in your mind they seem to benefit from what you’re doing… especially when what you’re doing is something you would do anyway, even without them as an excuse.”

“Well now!” Pook said, laughing all the while. “Irony always amuses me. It looks like now you’re the one who’s come to Jed’s defense, but I don’t suppose he owes you any thanks for that.”

“No,” Jerry replied, staring at Pook. “No, he doesn’t.”

“Well then,” Pook smiled. “It looks like no one owes anyone anything!”

(10 REPLICATIONS

Less than an hour later, there were ten finished polymer replicas of the Glock 21 sitting on the rolling table. Pook assembled the pistols, examining each one intently before handing it to Jerry, who inserted the clip and pulled back the slide, checking to see that the gun functioned properly.

“The ceramic and polymer resin produces a fine and lightweight weapon,” Pook said. “Once you’re used to it, you may like it even more than traditional, predominantly metal guns. I guess we won’t know for sure that these are perfect until we’re forced to fire one, but we’ve done this before and I’ve never had a problem.”

“I’m anxious to try one out,” Jerry said.

“I’m sure you’ll be put to the test soon enough, Jerry,” Pook said.

“I can’t wait!”

“Good, then this one here is yours.” Pook handed the last pistol to Jerry as if he were presenting a ceremonial sword to a newly christened knight.

“Really?” Jerry said, his face beaming.

“Really.”

“What about ammo?” Jerry asked as he snapped one of the clips into place.

“We have our own underground version of that, too. The ammo we’ll use is constructed of a synthesized material made up of polymer resin, ceramic, and okcillium. All of those materials—except the okcillium, of course—are easy to get on the black market and, luckily for us, here in the City I am the black market. Believe me, they didn’t have anything like these where you came from.”

“I’m sure they didn’t,” Jerry said.

“The good thing is that these guns and ammo are also undetectable by TRACER drones, which means we can go armed and shouldn’t trigger any aerial attack.”

“That is a good thing,” Jerry said.

Pook opened an antique trunk, pulling out some old blankets and sheets and tossing them to the side before removing a false wooden bottom. He extracted six or seven small white boxes and then replaced the false bottom before closing the trunk. He tossed two of the boxes to Jerry, who began loading clips with the special ammunition from the boxes. The rest of the boxes Pook stuffed into a backpack.

“Load these in the same way as you’re used to, Jerry. Thirteen per clip.”

“You said something like that earlier,” Jed interrupted. “You said ‘TRACE resistance groups,’ or something like that. Are TRACER drones in any way related to these groups?”

Pook laughed. “Yeah. Like a bird dog is related to a bird!”

“I don’t get it,” Jed said.

“Well, Jed, there’s probably a ton of stuff you need to know, but we’re on a short schedule here and we’re going to have to get moving, so I’ll need you to keep your questions to a minimum—but, since you asked… TRACE, well, that’s us. There are a few hundred of us in the City. TRACE is the resistance. So when I say ‘us,’ I mean Dawn and me, the refuseniks, and the people like us who fight in an organized way against Transport and their schemes. TRACER drones, those are the aerial drones operated by Transport that hover in and around the city in order to find and kill people like us. That’s why they call them TRACERs. TRACERs are designed to kill TRACE operatives. They track us. Most of the drones are probably grounded right now with this offensive going on. At least I hope like hell they are.”

“You say they track and kill people like you? People in the resistance?”

“That’s right.”

“Are they ever successful?”

Pook shrugged and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, sometimes they are.”

As Pook and Jerry were stowing the guns and ammunition in a large black canvas bag, Jed looked up and saw a face staring at him from the dark shadows of the stairs that led up into the antique store. Jed was startled at first, and his heart jumped in his chest. He was just about to shout when Pook, who must have noticed the face too, yelled “Billy!” in a good-natured way. The face smiled back and the man named Billy came down the stairs into the basement.

“Hey everyone, this is Billy, one of my minions.” Pook smiled when he said this, and punched Billy playfully in the arm. “Not really. Actually, Billy is my best friend.”

“Hey everyone,” Billy said. He didn’t look anyone directly in the eye except for Dawn, and Jed noticed that Billy seemed to be shy and unsure of himself compared to the confident and aggressive manner of both Pook and Jerry.

“Hey Billy,” Jerry and Jed said in unison.

Dawn walked over and gave Billy a hug. “Hey Bill,” she said, looking up into his face.

“Hey girl,” Billy replied, smiling.

Jed noticed that Billy’s hand hesitated for just a moment on Dawn’s neck as the two separated. Billy nodded his head weakly at Jed, and then stepped over near Pook and began to brief his friend.

“The other guys are coming, but they were delayed. I left Will upstairs to wait for them and fill them in on what’s happening.”

Billy ran his hand through his hair and shook his head. No one said anything for a full minute, and Pook just stared at Billy, waiting to hear what his friend had to say.

“It’s madness out there right now, Pook. Resistance lasers and ordnance were hitting dangerously close to the safe house, and we were scared we’d be killed by friendly fire. So we got out of there and headed over here. Then a TRACER showed up out of nowhere and almost got us all. We were huddled in close together behind an apartment building when the TRACER found us, and if we hadn’t seen it and reacted quickly it would have ended us all. After that we got separated, but I know the rest of them are heading this way.”

“A TRACER? Damn. I thought they’d all be down,” Pook said.

“I thought that too,” Billy said. “The good news is that the TRACER that almost nailed us got hit not long after that. I saw it tumble and go down over by Locust and South 2^nd. Took out a house over there, not far from the river.”

“Hopefully Transport gets the message and keeps the rest of ’em grounded until this offensive winds down.”

“You don’t think the resistance will break into the City?”

“Nah. They never intended to. This offensive isn’t the real thing, although I have to admit it’s been impressive. TRACE couldn’t get near this place with an army sizeable enough to take the City. At least not yet. Based on the mayhem that’s being caused out there, this has to be Rover’s unit, and the SOMA has to be hands on, calling the shots. But on the ground? Ten, maybe fifteen guys tops, causing this entire ruckus.”

“You’re kidding me,” Jerry said, rolling his eyes in disbelief. And who’s Rover? And who is the SOMA?”

Pook looked at Jerry and just shook his head slightly, indicating that he had no intention of answering those questions. In reply, Jerry nodded his head to indicate that he understood.

“Wow. I’d have thought the whole resistance was bearing down on the City,” Billy said.

“That’s what we wanted it to seem like,” Pook said with a smile. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a cigar, loosed it from its cellophane wrapper, and bit off the tip before putting it into his mouth. “But even I didn’t know it would be this devastating. Transport has to be in an uproar, messing their diapers over all this.”

“Why the fuss, Pook?” Billy asked. “And why now?”

Pook produced a lighter from his pants pocket and held it up for everyone to admire. “Okcillium lighter. One of a kind,” he said, grinning and speaking with the cigar between his teeth. He thumbed a button and a strange blue flame shot up an inch high and burned brightly. He placed the end of the cigar into the flame and rotated the stogie slowly between his thumb and forefinger, puffing large clouds of smoke into the air as he did. He held up the lighter again and smiled.

“There is enough okcillium in this lighter to blow up a city.”

“That’s reassuring,” Jerry said, with a sideways glance at Jed.

“The fuss?” Pook took a long draw from the cigar and blew the smoke straight up into the air. He gestured at Jed with the thumb of the hand that clutched the cigar. “The fuss… apparently… is all about him.”

Dawn shook her head and waved at the smoke in the air, trying to disperse it from in front of her face.

“Smoking is illegal. You know that, don’t you cousin?”

“Everything is illegal, Dawn. Besides, what’re they going to do, kill me with a TRACER for smoking?”

“That and a million other things.”

“Then I guess the smoking doesn’t matter much, does it?”

Pook then added, “I’ll be surprised if any of us makes it through this day anyway.” Only this time he said it so that everyone could hear him but Dawn.

Jed stared through the smoke at Pook. A hundred questions crossed his mind, but none of them seemed to want to form on his tongue, or break forth from his mouth. He was a long way from his home in the Amish Zone back on Earth.

Jerry, Billy, and Pook stood talking in hushed tones, mostly about insurgency tactics and weapons. Dawn noticed that Jed seemed out of place and uncomfortable in the conversation, so she walked over to him and pulled him to the side.

“Thanks again for—well, you know… when I broke down a little up there,” she said with a smile. “I really appreciate it, even if I know it made you uncomfortable.”

“That’s okay,” Jed said.

“All of this is really overwhelming.”

“Yeah.”

“Probably more so for you.”

“Probably,” Jed said with a smile.

“Tell me about your farm back in Old PA, Jed. What was it like?”

Jed dipped his head and shuffled his feet, nervous to be talking to a girl face to face, despite everything that had already passed between them in such a short time.

“I don’t know. What do you want to know?”

“Just tell me about your life there. You know, what it was like.”

Jed narrowed his eyes a little and looked up at Dawn. He wasn’t sure why she felt it was necessary to talk about his life. He understood that she was naturally curious, but his people were pretty private when it came right down to it. He was still suspicious of Englischers, and although he had nothing but good thoughts about Dawn personally, she was still an Englischer, and he still felt like he was reluctantly trapped in this uncontrollable chain of events.

Jerry was right, Jed thought. He’d not asked any of these people to help him or fight for him. Still, despite his discomfort, he couldn’t help but feel glad that these strangers were willing to try to get him out of the City and to his people. It all mixed and mashed up together inside him into a confusing puzzle.

“Well, ours was an old-fashioned farm, even for the Amish,” he finally said. “We didn’t have milking machines or any of the other modern amenities that many of our wealthier, and maybe more worldly, neighbors had. My dad was… is… was a traditionalist. Real conservative. We had one milk cow and we milked her by hand. Her name was Zoe. Once I turned eighteen and I was approved by the elders to emigrate here, I started training my younger brother so he could take over the farm chores. We were a really small family compared to most of the Amish, and there were a lot of chores to do. But we were a subsistence farm and not a business. We produced what we consumed and not a whole lot more. For extra cash, my mother made baskets, and on sunny days we’d sell them on the side of the road, and during the growing season we had a little market garden.”

“That sounds nice,” Dawn said, smiling and nodding her head.

“It was nice. If there wasn’t such a land crush, I mean, if there had been more land available, I would have gladly stayed. My father was a carpenter and made handmade furniture that we sold from the front lawn to the tourists for exorbitant prices. Englischers were glad to pay those prices, and who were we to argue if God wanted to reward us for living a simple life by having the English flock to buy our products? Still, we were an old-fashioned family. We didn’t have a generator or even a propane stove or refrigerator. That’s simple and plain, even for the Amish.”

“That sounds so interesting, Jed.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. It was just the way we lived. I liked it. I still do. I can’t wait to get back to it. After experiencing this world over the past… however long it’s been… I think I’ll be glad to be farming again.”

“You haven’t seen us at our best,” Dawn said.

“Haven’t I?”

Dawn blinked, but she didn’t answer. They stood quietly for a few beats, neither one of them knowing exactly what to say. Dawn was the one who finally broke the silence.

“So you’re eighteen? I would have thought you were younger if I didn’t know better. You have a baby face.”

Jed scowled. Not at all what he wanted to hear from a pretty girl.

“I’m sorry, Jed!” Dawn said, laughing. “I just mean that you have a youngish look about you. I’m not much older than you. I’m just barely twenty!”

“Oh” was all that Jed could think to say.

“Do you have a girlfriend back in Old Pennsylvania?” Dawn asked, smiling and giving Jed a teasing wink.

“No. That’s not really allowed. At some point—if I’d stayed—I probably would have picked one out that I and my parents agreed would make a good wife, and if she picked me too, we’d have gotten married. But I wasn’t really pursuing that kind of relationship back there. I knew I was coming here and I didn’t need anything holding me back or tying me down. I want to build a good, productive farm here. If I meet someone down the road, later on, then I suppose all of that will take care of itself in time.”

“Well now, aren’t you a free spirit, then?” Dawn said, laughing.

“You tease me a lot, Dawn.”

“I’m just making conversation, Mr. Serious.”

“What about you?” Jed asked.

“What about me?”

“Do you have a… a… boyfriend?”

“Me? No. No. I mean, I’ve had a boyfriend before, but nothing now. I’m like you—too wrapped up in this colonization business and being part of the underground. Haven’t had much time for love.”

“So, not Billy then?” Jed said, nodding his head toward where the three militants were chatting about guns and insurrection.

“Billy?”

“Billy.”

“No!” Dawn looked over at Billy and then back at Jed. “No.”

Jed tilted his head and raised his right eyebrow.

“No. Not Billy. No.”

“Wow.” That was all that Jed could say.

“No, listen. It’s complicated,” Dawn said, and unconsciously touched his arm to emphasize that he must be completely misunderstanding her.

“Take it easy. It was just a friendly question.” Now Jed was teasing her.

“You take it easy!” Dawn said, pushing him back a step. She was smiling but not quite laughing, as if she didn’t know if Jed really thought she was with Billy. “I said no, and if you think differently, then you’re wrong.”

“Just take it easy!” Jed said, eyes wide in mock outrage.

“You take it easy, Mister!” Dawn said, and smiled.

“Tell me about your brother,” Dawn said. “Were you two close?”

“Were?” Jed shook his head, still trying to get his mind around the ramifications of time and the confusions of interstellar travel. He’d left home nine years ago, and if all had gone according to plan, his brother should already be on his way to New Pennsylvania.

“I think almost all Amish families are close. We are close though.” He smiled as he thought about his little brother. “Amos is the best. He’s smart, wise, funny, and he is as earnest about our culture and lifestyle as any Amish man I ever met.”

Dawn just nodded her head without saying anything.

“Amos didn’t like the idea of me coming here. He was only fourteen then, but he always seemed to be older than his age to me. He thought it was a mistake, emigrating, but he decided that if I was going to come, then he was going to follow. I haven’t had time to think about it yet, but I hope he was able to make it. I had so much trouble getting here that I hope he got through it all and is on his way.”

Again, Dawn didn’t say anything. Instead she stared deeply into his eyes with that faraway gaze—like she’d done when he’d first met her at the Columbia checkpoint. Only this time, he knew she wasn’t on the Internet in her head. She’d had her BICE removed. And she wasn’t on Quadrille either. In fact, he hadn’t yet seen anyone that he thought was on Q, so Dawn’s faraway look must have been rooted in something real, something deeper than drugs or the Internet. Perhaps she’s missing someone too, Jed thought.

“How is your wound doing?” he asked.

“My wound?”

“Yeah,” Jed said. “Where you had your BICE taken out.”

Her hand went up to the bandage on the back of her head. “Oh, it’s fine.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Maybe. A little. Maybe? I don’t know. Having constant and seamless Internet access was like having a super-brain. It was distracting and sometimes frustrating, but it was still kind of handy. I feel a little dumber now, I guess.”

Pook heard some activity upstairs and signaled to Dawn that they needed to be leaving. As the whole group filed up the dark stairs back into the Antique Shoppe, Jed noticed that Dawn left her hand very lightly on his elbow—almost, but not quite, taking his arm like his mother did his father’s when they would walk toward the garden in the cool of the morning like lovers and friends.

(11 WHO’S WHO?

More of Pook’s team had arrived at Merrill’s Antique Shoppe, and they were milling around upstairs, drinking coffee and chatting quietly when Pook, Jed, Jerry, Billy, and Dawn came back upstairs with the guns and ammunition. Pook handed out some of the pistols from his black bag, while one of his men—a short, powerful-looking man that Pook called “Ducky”—briefed him on the operation.

“We’ll need to move quickly, boss,” Ducky said in his gruff voice. “Transport is out in force, and there was at least one TRACER came down on us. Nasty bugger. Stumbled on us by accident I reckon, but with five of us bunched together and none of us emittin’ a Transport ID signal, it didn’t take them long to make us as TRACE. Clyde and Will took care of the TRACER, but there may be more of ’em out there. If you plan on takin’ the package over the bridge, we can’t all go in a large group like this—we’d be sittin’ ducks. The rest of us—we’ll just have to make our own way.

“Right,” Pook said.

“And we cleaned up the door and the entryway here, and halfway up the block on the sidewalk and street out there. There was blood everywhere, man. You need to be more careful about cleanup, Pook. Someone might’ve called Transport if they’d seen it.”

“That was my fault,” Pook said. “We had a situation and we needed to move fast on getting these guns made.”

“Do I even want to ask?” Ducky said.

“It was Donavan, one of our inside men in Transport. They got onto him and shot him. He made his way here to report before he died. Guy was a champion. We’ll need to put up a statue for that man when we win this war.”

“He marked?”

“He cut it out himself before he came here.”

“Seriously?” Ducky said, screwing up his face.

“Seriously. I have it in my pack.”

“Wouldn’t that emit a signal that could be tracked here?” Jed asked.

“Nope. BICE units run on the electricity produced in the human brain,” Pook pointed to his head and winked at Jed, “and the human brain produces a shocking amount of electricity!” He laughed at his own play on words, but Jed didn’t really get it, so Pook continued. “Outside the brain, the BICE doesn’t have a power source so it doesn’t transmit. When they first came out with these, they installed them with built-in backup power supplies like in a LoJack or the older implanted ID chips that went in your hand or arm, but over time those things tended to leak—causing brain damage or worse—and when they failed that meant further surgeries. Before the BICE was rolled out for widespread use, Transport found a way to run them off of the electrical current that the brain naturally produces, so if you cut one out, it’s a dead unit, unless you hook it up to an outside power source.”

“Well, props to that dude, for sure—cutting out his own BICE! Where is he now?” Ducky asked. Jed noticed that the short soldier was all business.

“Back in the back room, wrapped in a tarp.”

Ducky turned to a couple of his men and pointed with his thumb back towards the rear of the shop. “You two get rid of that body back there. Do it respectfully and properly because he was one of us. Don’t leave any evidence. If we’re gone when you get back, meet us on the other side of the river. Camp Echo. Now git!”

The two men nodded and walked toward the back of the building.

“What do we have outside?” Pook asked.

Ducky jerked his head toward the door while simultaneously indicating to Pook that he wanted a cigarette. “I’ve got two men watchin’ this place, lookin’ for eyes and tails, anyone gettin’ too curious, you know? No one will ever see them. Invisible, they are. Like the wind.”

Pook pulled out a pack, popped out a cigarette, and offered it to Ducky, who took it and nodded his thanks.

“I’ve got two more soldiers watchin’ the bridge, makin’ sure everstuff is copacetic, you know?” Ducky puffed on the cigarette and blew the smoke straight up into the air.

“What else?”

“It’s a mess out there, Pook. Our own ordnance nearly took out a few of our safe houses. Whoever is callin’ the shots on this offensive is makin’ it look all too real, know what I’m sayin’?”

“That’s what Billy said, and that was the plan,” Pook said, “and the closer our offensive fire gets to our own safe houses, the less suspicious are those houses, right? I mean, who would fire on their own hideouts?”

“Only crazy people, I ’spect. Well, I hope we don’t have any friendly-fire deaths before this thing is over.”

“Everything that can be done to minimize our losses is being done, Ducky.”

“You sound like one of them.”

“The curse of management,” Pook said and punched Ducky hard in the arm.

As the two men continued their conversation, Jed noticed the knob on the front door twist and the door crack open slowly. What happened next occurred very quickly. Like a cool, rainy evening interrupted by a sudden strike of lightning, the familial atmosphere changed in an instant. Jed was one of the last to react. Everyone else had been intensively trained on how to deal with threats.

The door swung open and Jed instantly recognized the two men who pushed their way into the room. It was the two policemen who had arrested him during his trip: Hugh Conrad of the Transport Authority and Officer Rheems of the Transport Police. The two men strained their eyes to see through the relative darkness and smiled when they saw Jed’s face among those of the other rebels in the room.

Before the two men had even stepped fully inside, guns were snap-drawn throughout the shop, including the one wielded by Jerry Rios, who also recognized the two cops—who were now smiling at him too. Everyone moved into position wordlessly—even Dawn—as if they were practiced at dealing with just such an eventuality, and the tension in the room reached a new high as eyes peered down gun barrels and fingers tensed on triggers.

“Look, Rheems, it’s Jerry Rios!” Hugh Conrad said with a laugh. Rheems nodded and smiled. There was a twinkle in his eye. “And there’s the Amish kid!”

Most of the guns—the ones held by Pook’s men—came down, but Jerry didn’t lower his gun at all. He kept it pointed at Conrad’s face.

“Drop the gun, Jerry,” Pook said. “They’re with us.”

“They’re with you?” Jerry said. There was incredulity in his voice. “How can they be with you? They arrested Jed and me during transport and almost kept us from making the trip! They wanted to send me to Oklahoma.”

Ducky raised his pistol silently, but this time it was pointed at Jerry Rios.

“I told you, they’re with us, Jerry,” Pook said calmly. “So lower your weapon.”

“Yeah,” Conrad said. “We’re with him.”

Jerry moved the gun so that it was pointing at Rheems. He wasn’t talking now. The wheels were turning in his mind, but he didn’t have an answer. He moved the gun back toward Conrad.

“Easy, tiger…” Pook said with a smile on his face.

“I don’t understand,” Jerry said. The tension in his voice was mirrored by a very slight tremor in his pistol hand. “If they’re double agents working inside Transport, then why did they arrest us in West Texas? Why the charade? And why are they exposing themselves now?”

“You’re new here, Jerry,” Pook said calmly, “and I really don’t have to answer your questions.” Pook exhaled deeply, and Jed could see that the rebel leader was considering his options. “I’ll tell you what I can. But in the future, if I—or any one of my men—tells you to drop your weapon, you will drop your weapon. There won’t be a second request.”

Everyone remained frozen as Jerry considered what Pook had said.

“So this is it, Jerry. Drop the weapon and I’ll tell you what I can. Or don’t drop it and we’re going to smoke you and get on with our day.”

Jerry slowly lowered the pistol and pointed it toward the floor.

“Good thinking,” Pook said.

“So what’s this all about?” Jerry said tersely.

“This is all about him,” Pook said, pointing toward Jed. “We’re doing whatever we have to do—putting everything and everyone at risk—to get him where he needs to be. Rheems and Conrad are here because we need their help if we’re to get Jed out of the City and into the Amish Zone. That’s our only mission right now.”

“Got it,” Jerry said.

“And going forward, I don’t have time to brief every newbie and wannabe that hitches on to my mission, you understand?” Pook said.

“I said I got it,” Jerry snapped.

Just then, one of Ducky’s men burst through the door with a shout. “TRACER incoming!”

“MOVE!” Pook shouted, and just as he did, a thundering explosion rocked the front of the shop, blowing away the door and a portion of the building with it. The sentry who’d just warned everyone was killed instantly.

“Out the back!” Ducky yelled as smoke and dust and flying debris filled the air around the team.

Two more of the men on Ducky’s squad were cut down immediately. Dawn grabbed Jed by the hand, and before he could really register everything that was happening she’d pulled him down so that they were low-crawling toward the rear of the building. Jerry was pushing Jed forward as they crawled, and seemed to be protecting him from fire from the rear. Phosphorescent projectiles sailed overhead and exploded when they came into contact with the structure, sending glowing plasma raining down like magma. Jed looked back over his shoulder, and over Jerry’s head he could see a floating TRACER drone hovering just outside the massive new hole in the structure and firing rounds into the building. Red and green laser beams emitted by the drone crisscrossed through the smoke and dust, searching for targets to destroy.

Looking back where they were crawling, Jed saw the rear door open, and he, Dawn, and Jerry bolted for it, falling in line with the rest of the team as they flowed out of the building like water escaping a crumbling dam.

(12 IN THE STREETS OF THE CITY

Jed and Dawn ran along an alleyway with Ducky’s team, and gradually a protective formation of TRACE fighters took shape around Jed. The troops began barking to one another in staccato bursts of commands, signals, and responses that everyone else in the group understood, even if Jed found it hard to make heads or tails of any of it. Out in the open, TRACE worked like a well-oiled machine as they fled the scene of the destroyed antique shop.

Jed was impressed at the discipline displayed by the team as they moved deliberately and as clandestinely as possible through town. When the whole group reached a good chokepoint in a darkened alleyway, the unit that was surrounding Jed and Dawn pushed forward and took cover behind a series of large dumpsters while the rest of the squad scattered and took positions on both sides of the alley.

Two of the men scaled an ancient fire escape and Jed watched as Pook walked out into the middle of the alley. Pook pulled something out of his pocket, fiddled with it a moment, then dropped it on the ground and ran for cover.

From his position behind the dumpster, Jed finally made out what it was that Pook had dropped on the ground. It was the bloody BICE unit that Donavan had cut from his own head before he died. Pook must have attached some sort of battery to the device, which would have reactivated the signal. Dawn pushed Jed further in behind the dumpster and everyone went silent as they waited. Jerry, Dawn, and Billy had formed what seemed to Jed like a protective wall in front of him, and he could barely see what was happening over the backs and heads of his defenders. He also noticed that Billy took Dawn’s hand for a second, but she turned her hand loose and thrust it into her pocket.

It seemed as though minutes passed, but it was probably only seconds before the TRACER unit that had attacked the antique shop came hovering around the corner from an adjacent street. A glowing missile fired from the drone destroyed the BICE unit as it lay on the ground, and tracking lasers began scanning the alley for signals or targets.

The men on the fire escape and those hidden in place in the alley opened fire on the TRACER unit before it could lock on to any other target, and a well-placed shot coming from one of the elevated positions struck the drone right above its laser-sighting lens. The machine hummed for a moment and shook with violence, spinning drunkenly as it attempted to maintain level flight, before it exploded and a thousand pieces of high-tech shrapnel scattered around the alley. The largest portion of the TRACER drone caromed down the alley like a beach ball until it bounced off of the dumpster that shielded Jed and his defenders from the battle.

Once again, the team wordlessly snapped into motion and Dawn was pushing Jed from behind out into the alley. Pook pulled on a heavy glove and he and Ducky began to remove smoking parts from the damaged portion of the drone, stuffing the parts into a backpack.

When Pook and Ducky were done stripping the drone, the team formed back up, and in moments they were all moving eastward again, leapfrogging forward in groups of two or three as they crossed the open and seemingly abandoned streets of the City on their way toward the river.

Ten minutes later, the squad gathered together outside a darkened tavern. The faintest hint of the coming morning was only then touching the eastern sky—or at least the bit of it that could be seen between city buildings. The tavern was still shrouded in darkness, and since most of the streetlights had been extinguished due to the rebel offensive, the squad was able to gather near the door of the tavern without worrying about alerting anyone who might be in the area, or peeping out the windows of nearby buildings.

Above the door where the team was gathered, the name of the tavern was written in Old English script, and Jed studied it with interest. If it weren’t for the things he’d been through in the last few days, he might have laughed…

Ye Olde World English Tavern. Didn’t that name just say it all?

Pook knocked on the door while sentries moved into position on both ends of the block. One of Ducky’s men, with a long rifle slung over his shoulder, scaled the building across the street from the tavern with the skill and agility of a trained mountain climber, and in under a minute he was peering down at the rest of his team from the roof of the opposite building.

A dark figure came to the door, and after pleasantries were exchanged, Pook, Dawn, Ducky, Jed, and the remaining soldiers from Ducky’s unit all filed into the tavern.

Two of Ducky’s men helped a few of the bar employees as they darkened all the windows before lanterns were lit throughout the tavern. The man who’d opened the door to let them in stepped behind the bar for a moment and returned with a handheld electronic device that he held up in front of Pook.

“Sweep ’em all,” Pook said.

As the man activated the device, Pook noticed that Jed and Jerry were looking at it curiously.

“BICE scanner,” Pook explained. “Detects TRIDs, too. It’s crazy expensive and highly illegal. We keep one here because most of our operational planning takes place here. There are only two other functional scanners in the whole resistance, as far as I know. We couldn’t afford to lose one of these like we just lost my antique shop.”

Wordlessly the man began to scan everyone in Pook’s party with the device. He gestured to the two Transport officers, Conrad and Rheems. “What about those two?”

“They’ve turned their units off,” Pook replied. “It’s a workaround we came up with a few months ago. Sweep ’em anyway, though. Make sure they aren’t broadcasting.”

The man scanned Conrad and Rheems with the machine, and nodded affirmatively to indicate that they were clear.

Jed would later learn that the tavern owner—the man with the scanning machine—was a respected veteran resistance officer named Jeff Wainwright. Jeff and his people never asked any questions, and the bar was virtually silent as Jeff went from person to person, scanning them from head to toe.

The silence gave Jed his first chance to think, really think, since this whole thing began. Since arriving in the City, he’d witnessed three men murdered right in front of him. Because of him. Was it only three men? Maybe it was four. Or had there been more? Jed didn’t even know. That realization filled him with shame. Was he losing his identity? His humanity? How can human life, he thought, become so cheap? The questions piled up like the firewood he would stack just outside the back door back home. Why were these people helping him? Why were they concerned at all about a young Amish immigrant? Strangers—the English—putting their lives and futures at risk so that a farmer could make it to the Amish Zone? None of these questions had answers, or at least none of them had any answers that he could fathom. No one had asked him what he thought. No one had asked him his opinion or permission for anything at all. It was disconcerting to be swept along by events like a leaf floating down a stream. And were these deaths somehow being registered to his account? Perhaps that was the biggest question of them all.

“I should just go turn myself in,” he said quietly.

Pook spun to face him. “Excuse me?”

“Too many people have died to protect me,” Jed said. “This has to stop.”

“This has to stop, does it?” Pook said. “What are you thinking? Do you think you’re on a buggy ride in beautiful Amish Country, Jed?”

Jed stood silently, his eyes downcast.

Agitated now, Pook squared up with Jed and then poked him in the chest with his finger. “Listen, pal. You’re right. We’ve already lost some good men and my whole antique shop for you. I’m outed, because they now know that I owned that shop. We’re all fully invested in getting you out of town, so you can stop with all that crybaby nonsense right now. Don’t you even think about surrendering yourself. You do what I say, when I say it. I’m not sure I understand all the ramifications of what just went down, but the whole resistance is at risk until we get you into the AZ, do you understand me?”

Jed nodded. “Yes, I understand. And I’ll do what you say. But I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t even know what’s happening, or why all of this is going down. No one has told me anything.” He looked Pook in the eye. “Just don’t pretend you’re doing this for me. You’re not. You don’t even know me. You’re doing it for reasons of your own, and I can appreciate that, even if I don’t agree with what you do. Once and for all though, I’d like you to get it through your head that I haven’t asked for you to do anything for me. Our people believe that God is sovereign over everything that happens, and if He raises up a deliverer to help us, then that is His business. If you kill someone, or if someone working with you dies, it didn’t happen because of me. Everyone makes their own choices and decisions and has their own motivations, and I haven’t asked anyone to sacrifice themselves for me. I just want to get home, and I would rather not be the cause of anyone else getting killed.”

“God, huh?” Pook said as he took a long draw from the cigarette. “Well, I’m not doing this for him, either.”

“Your call.” That was all Jed could say to that.

Pook shook his head, and spoke again with a softer tone. “We’re going to get you home, Jed. I just pray that all of this is worth what it costs. I’m just a soldier. I take orders like everyone else here. So let’s just all do what we have to do and get this mission finished.”

Half an hour later, the team had pulled several of the tables together to form one long conference table and Pook was addressing the assembled mass of rebels, briefing them all on the plan that was about to unfold.

“I can’t tell you how difficult the next few hours are going to be. Our plan is workable, but flawed. It relies on precision timing, and to be frank with you, there are a whole lot of unknowns and things that can go wrong. I’m going to need you all to listen closely, and to know with certainty what you’re expected to do and when.

“The first thing you need to know is that Hugh Conrad is going to put Jed on a secure airbus, alone. The airbus will exit the city over the river via the bridge air gate.”

Ducky’s hand went up almost immediately.

“They’ve already got an APB out on the kid, Pook.”

“We know,” Pook said. “That means that we need a window of time when the computer doesn’t know that it’s supposed to be searching for him. And if there’s one thing we know about Transport, it’s that Transport officials don’t know anything the computer doesn’t know.”

“Will the bridge even be open, you know, with the offensive going on and all?” Dawn asked.

“The offensive is basically over. It was planned to culminate at first light, and first light is right about now. Still, the bridge will be open to Transport officials only. That’s what we’re expecting.”

“How’re you going to arrange for this blind window?” Ducky asked.

“We’re going to hack Transport. Rheems is going to stay here and use Jeff’s equipment. We know how to do it, and we know it’ll be successful. We just don’t know for how long.”

“What’s the probability that they don’t make it over the bridge before Transport figures out they’ve been hacked?” Dawn said.

“Fifty-fifty,” Pook said.

“That’s encouraging,” Conrad said with a nervous laugh.

“Listen,” Pook said with his hands up in the air. “I’m going to need you all to pipe down for just a minute while I brief you. There’ll be time for questions afterwards, okay?” Pook began walking now, circling the table, looking each man or woman in the eye as he walked. Heads nodded, so Pook continued.

“This thing is going to have to be timed perfectly. Rheems will hack in and try to blind the system for long enough to get Jed on an airbus headed for the AZ. Hugh, once you get him on the bus, you’ll need to make your own way over the river. You’re busted once they figure out that you put Jed on the bus. Don’t get caught on this side of the river after you get the kid on the bus, got it?”

Hugh Conrad nodded his head, accepting the responsibility and the implied danger that came along with his mission.

“We don’t figure he’ll get many miles into the rural zone before Transport figures out what happened. They’ll bring the bus down immediately,” Pook said, “and lock it tight until a Transport team can go extricate Jed from the bus. We’ll have maybe ten minutes to get there first.”

“But—” Ducky started, before Pook’s upraised hand silenced him.

“As you all know,” Pook continued, “the rural zone between the river and the AZ is peopled mostly by gangs and independent salvagers. There’s a strong possibility that they’ll have that bus cracked open in less than two minutes.”

Ducky was nodding his head vigorously. This was the reason he’d tried to interrupt.

“That’s where the gold coin comes in,” Pook said, looking at Jed now. “You all know that private ownership of gold is forbidden. That fact is precisely why gold is the preferred method of payment in the ungovernable rural zones. One gold coin should buy Jed here his safety—and if not safety, then at least some time. You still have the gold, Jed?”

Jed held up the gold coin, but didn’t say a word. He felt like Donavan’s blood was on the face of the precious metal, accusing him.

“Good deal. So Jed will have to do some acting. He should be the only person on the bus, and if he is, then that fact alone will indicate to the gangs that he’s valuable. Nothing else has been moving during the offensive. If the gangs get to him first—and that’s our preferred outcome—he’s in good shape. They’ll be glad to get the gold, and they’ll probably protect and hide Jed until we can form up and get to him. If it’s the salvagers that get to him—”

“—they’ll want to sell him to the highest bidder,” Ducky said.

“Yes. But they won’t know we’re on the way, or that he’s with us. Salvagers are unpredictable and mercenary, but we’re hoping that they think that Transport is their only problem, so maybe won’t be in quite as much of a rush. If Jed can get them talking and delay them, maybe we can get to him before they’re all through the hills and gone.”

“But what if Transport gets to him first?” Jeff Wainwright asked. “This is a three-way race, after all.”

“Then we’ll have a fight on our hands,” Pook answered soberly. “Jed, you’ll have to really sell this thing,” he added.

“What does that mean?” Jed said, as he pushed the coin deep into the pocket of his broadfall pants.

“That means you’ll have to do a little bit of acting. You’ll have to be confident and assertive, and the longer you can stall and delay whoever it is that’s gotten to you first—especially if it’s the salvagers—the better the chances are that we’ll be able to get to you and secure your freedom.”

Jed nodded his head. He still wasn’t sure exactly what was expected from him, but he felt like he didn’t have any other options other than to play it the way Pook had designed it.

“There’ll be a race to get to you, Jed, once the airbus is electronically forced down in the rural zone. Worst case scenario, salvagers get you. If that happens, delay, delay, delay. Got it?”

“I think so. Why won’t Transport just recall the airbus and fly it back over the bridge?” Jed asked. “Why force it down in what you call ‘ungovernable’ territory?”

“They used to do that,” Pook said, but years ago the unaffiliated gangs and salvagers found ways to launch homemade sticky bombs that would adhere to the exterior of the buses. They’d rig the bombs with timing devices, and Transport would fly the buses right into the Transport station and then the bombs would go off. So they don’t do that anymore. Now, if they know they have a high-value target on an airbus, they just bring the bus down and send a team to go and search the bus while it’s still outside the City. It minimizes the terrorists’ ability to attack Transport facilities.

“The problem now is that the salvagers and the gangs are so highly organized, they can often get to the buses and extract whatever’s valuable before Transport can get to them. Transport hasn’t come up with another protocol yet, so for now it’s really just a race to any bus that’s forced down.

“So you’ll need to sell what it is you’re doing, Jed. By that I mean that you need to be who you really are—a harmless young Amish boy trying to get home.”

“Amish man,” Dawn said. “He’s not a boy, Pook, or a kid. Why don’t we start treating him with the respect he deserves?”

Jerry nodded his head at Dawn approvingly.

“Whatever you say, cousin,” Pook said dismissively. “Jed, you’ll need to tell whoever gets to you first that you need them to take you to the Amish Zone, and take your time telling them about the gold coin. Depending on who captures you, you might find them to be tremendously helpful—”

“—or tremendously unhelpful,” Dawn interjected.

“Yeah,” Ducky said, “they might cut you up and cook you in their stew.”

This made the rest of the team laugh, but Pook cut the joking short with a wave of his hand.

“We’re all going to have to improvise and adapt. The rest of us are going to be crossing the river the old-fashioned way.” Pook saw Jed’s confused look and explained. “That means we’ll be swimming over, Jed. That’s the easiest way for anyone who is un-chipped to get into or out of the City on the western side. Transport believes they have the river sealed, but that has never been true. Now, just because I say it’s the easiest way, don’t take that to mean that it’s easy. It isn’t. We’ve got our points of ingress and egress, but we’ve got to be careful.”

Pook turned to face Jerry. “Jerry, you’ve never done this river crossing before. Don’t go improvising. You need to listen closely and do exactly what we tell you to do, or you’ll mess this up for all of us.”

Jerry narrowed his eyes coldly at Pook, but he nodded.

Pook went on. “We’ll all form up once we’re in the rural zone and try to locate the airbus before Transport can get there.”

“How’re we going to locate the bus?” Dawn asked.

“The same way that Transport will find it: by tracking the locating beacon on the bus. We’re always stealing their technology, and we’ve developed a pretty good system of tracking Transport… almost as good as their system of tracking us.”

“But he could be ten miles past the bridge when Transport brings him down.”

“Right. We’ll have to hustle.”

The conversation went on like this for several more minutes, but Jed noticed that Dawn was growing increasingly agitated. He wasn’t surprised, then, when she pushed out her chair and, interrupting the briefing, stood up and addressed Pook directly.

“I am not comfortable with this plan. I was given strict instructions from the SOMA that I was never to lose operational control of the subject. This plan requires me to relinquish control of Jed to Hugh Conrad. No offense, Hugh, but that isn’t in my brief.”

Hugh shrugged as if no offense was taken.

“I understand your concerns, Dawn, and they are duly noted, but there is no way we can get you on that bus,” Pook replied. “You have no tracking chip, and we don’t have time or, really, the ability to achieve that kind of hack in the time that we have. The forged transport papers may get you into the AZ once you arrive there, but we both know they’re worthless as far as getting you on that airbus.”

“I’m not saying we get me on the airbus. I’m saying that we get Jed into the rural zone the same way I’m getting into the rural zone… via the river.”

“No way, Dawn,” Ducky said. He slapped his hand down on the table, as if this was where he would definitely take a stand. “It’s hard enough getting trained soldiers across that river safely, much less a farmer boy—er, farmer man. The current is so strong, and there are all kinds of sensors, even under the water. Getting Jerry across is going to be tough enough, and he seems to have had a little training. There is virtually a zero percent probability of Jed making it across that river without bringing all of Transport down on our heads.”

“I’ll take full responsibility for him,” Dawn said.

“No you won’t, Dawn,” Pook said. “I understand that you have your orders, but your orders—even if they come from SOMA—are based on the overriding principle of operational security. If your orders guarantee failure, then they must be altered to allow for success.”

“I formally protest this decision, Pook.”

As Dawn sat down, her hand found Jed’s under the table and she clasped it tightly and held on to it. Jed felt his face flush, and for some reason he looked over at Billy, but Billy couldn’t see that Dawn was holding his hand. Jed felt Dawn exhale deeply, and he gave her hand a slight squeeze. Dawn squeezed back, and Jed saw her force a smile, as if she’d accepted the fact that her petition had failed. Jed didn’t know how he felt about Dawn holding his hand, but he was convinced that she did have his best interests in mind.

“Protest noted,” Pook said, “but overruled. Now, let’s get to work.”

(13 CROSSING

The airbus lifted silently from the Transport bay until it reached twenty feet of altitude, and it was at this height that it crossed over the bridge that spanned the rushing green-blue waters of the river. The bridge itself was an ancient relic of a bygone time, and strictly speaking it hadn’t been necessary ever since private transport had been abolished, but the stone and steel span marked the “safe portal” or air gate, by which the airbuses could officially enter or exit the city. If the Transport vehicle was too high, or if it tried to cross the river anywhere other than at the bridge, the City’s air defenses would be engaged to bring down the wayward aircraft.

After crossing the bridge, the airbus climbed smoothly to one hundred feet of altitude as it automatically directed itself in its pre-programmed route toward the Amish Zone. The buses could fly lower when leaving the City than they could when approaching it. No one had ever bombed or rigged an airbus to blow as it was leaving the City.

Hugh Conrad, in his official position as a Transport Agent, had seen Jed onto the bus, and then had ordered his underlings in the terminal to see that Jed’s airbus left promptly and without hindrance on its journey. Thankfully for Jed, and thanks to Officer Rheems and Jeff Wainwright, the computers just happened to be temporarily blinded to the fact that a wanted fugitive would be using Transport property to escape the City.

Looking out the rear window, Jed saw the bridge grow smaller behind him, and watched the ground slip farther away as the craft made its way into the fifty miles of rural zone that separated the Amish Zone from the City. All the while, the rest of the team, including Conrad and Rheems, had separated into units and were attempting to make their way out of the city using more traditional means of escape.

Jed didn’t know with any certainty when, or if, Transport would learn of the security breach and bring the airbus to a halt on the ground, but he’d been assured by Pook that this was almost certain to happen at some point during the trip. He was nervous and a little frightened, just as he’d been when he’d first left Columbia in Old Pennsylvania back on Earth and headed to the Transport spaceport out in the desert of West Texas. That is, if he’d ever been to Texas at all…

“You guys were never in West Texas.”

That’s what Dawn had said to him and Jerry as the three of them were fleeing the Transport station.

Jed now felt like he needed to question every experience he’d had since his journey first began. None of it made sense.

And then there was the coffee-can window—and that was the kicker of it all. That was the one piece of evidence that inexorably brought home the idea that he could not trust his senses, and that nothing was at all as it appeared. That window was the only thing real that Jed could identify. Everything else could be a trick.

Jed looked out the windows of the airbus, and watched as the early morning light illuminated the deep green of the countryside. Despite all of the weirdness he’d been through, these undulating hills and abundantly verdant swells of earth made him feel that he could easily be back in Pennsylvania—the old Pennsylvania, back on Earth. This place was different in many ways—it was wilder, and the old farms here were grown over with weeds, and trees, and brush—but the geography looked a lot like home.

The bus passed over a small town—or what used to be a small town, but now was just a bombed-out remnant of a town. Jed saw the piles of brick, and the burned-out businesses and homes, and he had to shake his head. Wherever this was, whether this was New Pennsylvania, or Mars, or the far side of the moon, it was clear that the wars the English insisted on fighting had followed them here from Earth.

“You guys were never in West Texas.”

She might as well have said, “You can’t trust anything.”

For the first time in his journey, Jed was alone with his thoughts. All of the scenes from his long trek were now flashing before his eyes. He saw Conrad and Rheems arresting him, and the fear returned and he felt his heart race. He saw himself hiding the gold coin in his pod, and he saw himself waking up and racing with Dawn toward…

What?

Now, in his mind, he was back at the chop shop. Dawn and Jerry were going under the knife, and Donavan—smiling Donavan—was offering to run back to the Transport station to get the coin; to risk his own life for the lives of strangers. Or did he just do it for money? Then there was the ride to the grocery, to the antique shop. And then there was death. Omnipresent death. Surreal and immediate.

What should a man believe?

If West Texas wasn’t real, was any of it real?

The window frame back in the antique store. That was real. Jed had no doubt at all in his mind that the window frame was reality. He could close his eyes right now and he was back on the farm, and he was fourteen again, and he was stomping and pounding that coffee can flat with his worn-out Amish boots and then cutting and shaping it so that it would fit perfectly in the space where the old broken pane had been carefully removed.

Yes. The window frame was real. That, at least, was something on which Jed could anchor his thoughts. Somewhere out there… or back there… somewhere in the universe, he still had family.

And that led him to think about Amos. Jed had told Dawn that Amos was wiser than his years. That was true. If Amos were here, Jed thought, I think the two of us could sort this out. He loved his younger brother so much, and he hoped with all of the hope that was within him that Amos was still on his way here. Wherever—or whenever—this here was. Amos was that window on the couch in the shop. He was real, and he was out there too. Maybe somewhere between here and Earth.

Jed opened his eyes as he felt the airbus slow to a stop. The bus hovered in place for a full minute, and Jed felt his heart race again. Adrenaline flushed through his body, and he felt his stomach give way within him as if his heart had plunged into his gut. The silence was deafening.

Jed moved around the bus, looking toward the ground in every direction, and then his gaze darted along the horizon, trying to gauge where he might be so that he’d know once the bus was commanded to land. He couldn’t see any groups—gangs or salvagers—out there. The bus hovered, shrouded in the miserable silence which permeated everything like a dense, malevolent fog.

Just as Jed moved back toward the rear of the bus in order to try to look eastward towards the City, a loud klaxon sounded, and the bus swerved and dropped radically, as if it was taking evasive maneuvers. For a fraction of a second, Jed saw a floating TRACER drone, but then it was gone.

A terrifying, deafening explosion rocked the airbus, and Jed felt his stomach rise again as the bus plummeted toward the ground.

A second explosion blew the windows out of the bus, and Jed was propelled backward, and only saved himself from falling out of the broken windows by catching a handrail with his flailing hand.

The bus hyper-rotated, as if to try anything to regain control and level flight, and for a moment the vehicle was able to arrest its own fall only ten feet or so from smashing into the earth. The airbus even managed to gain altitude briefly before another explosion violently pummeled the vehicle. This time, Jed saw what was happening. The drone that he’d seen was firing phosphorescent projectiles at the bus, and this last shot had found its mark. The bus cratered near the midsection, and fell the last twenty feet to the earth in a smoking, fiery heap.

Jed blinked his eyes, trying to clear his vision. He’d been unconscious, but only for a few seconds. The impact of the crash had thrown him to the very back of the airbus. Fire was now racing through the crumpled seating area, and there was a solid wall of flames that blocked any attempt at exit through the front.

The smoke was beginning to choke him as he struggled to pull himself upright, and just as he felt as if he might be blacking out, a strong hand jerked him through the place where the windows had once been.

Jed found himself being dragged backward through heavy and unkempt underbrush, while struggling unsuccessfully to regain his feet.

“Wait… wait… wait…” he said.

“Not waiting for anything,” the man who was dragging Jed replied.

Jed was finally able to turn his head, and he saw a brutish man with a heavy beard and a scowl on his face, dressed in animal skins and carrying an ancient-looking long rifle.

“Drone,” Jed said. His voice sounded like the bark of a small dog.

“Drone being dead,” the voice said.

“Who are you?” Jed asked.

The rugged man didn’t reply. He just grunted and kept dragging Jed further into the overgrown thicket. Thorns and branches tore at Jed’s clothes and scraped the bare skin on his arms and hands.

“Just… just… take me to the Amish Zone. I have money,” Jed said.

“Ha!” the man said. “You having money! Right!”

The man spoke a very difficult-to-understand and guttural dialect of broken English. He’d obviously lived a long time separated from the comforts of city life and the society of men. He grunted again and pushed Jed to the ground. Jed jumped to his feet and tried to run, but the rough man was faster, and snagged Jed by the arm and tossed him back to the ground.

“I do have money. I have gold. I’ll pay you to take me to the Amish Zone,” Jed said.

“Don’t wanting your gold, Amish boy. Gonna be paid many more much moneys than you ever paying me.”

“Who?” Jed asked. “Who will pay you money for me?”

“Ha!” the man laughed again. “I will being a rich one, because knowing that your brother will paying all the gold of Oklahoma getting you back from me!”

“My… brother?” Jed said.

“Yeah. Being your brother. Amos.”