Pennsylvania

(20 BREAKING GROUND

The plow dug into the soft loam, and the earth offered little resistance as the share turned the deep black soil up and out of the furrow. Jed clasped the reins in one hand, and used the other to pull off his hat and wipe his brow with his sleeve. This was going to be a new field for Matthias, beans for man and beast along with more nitrogen fixed in the soil. It was an important addition to Matthias’s farm, as it meant independence from the feed store, and more product to share and trade in the community. Over the past year, the horses had grazed here, fertilizing the soil for the crop to come; now they’d been moved to the north field so that this one could go into production. As for Jedediah, he was being cut in on half of the prospective profits, to be used to pay for his barn when it came time to build it. Work like today’s was money in the bank for a young Amishman.

The plow was fancy as far as Jedediah was concerned—far more than he would need to get started. It was a two-bottom with step pedals in the forecart, so the farmer could plow in either direction without circling around each time like he had to with a single-bottom plow. Matthias had said he’d bought this plow from a young blacksmith who was fabricating them based on plans someone found in an old catalog from the City. Of course, that was back when there was a City. Back before the explosion.

Meeting tonight, Jed thought as he looked back across the field. The elders had called a voluntary meeting so that the Amish could talk about the destruction of the City, and what that portended for the community.

Ten days had passed since the big bomb had ended the plain people’s love-hate relationship with the City. And with the closest urban center reduced to dust, ash, and soot, things had necessarily changed in the AZ. Things were tighter now. There was some trepidation and worry; some of the Amish had grown too dependent on city goods and services. Trade with the English had ground to a halt, traffic at the emigration point had virtually stopped, and memorial funerals for those Amish who’d been out of the AZ and doing business in or near the city were still taking place on Sundays. Ten at a time on most Sabbath days, and sometimes there was a single service for a whole family. The funerals would probably be going on for a month or more, Jed thought, as he pulled up at the end of the row. He tied the reins around the brake and stepped off the forecart to stretch his back and legs.

That’s when the lights went off in his mind again—the first time it had happened since the big bomb—and he found himself once again standing in the inky blackness, staring at the white screen. It always scared him when it happened, but somehow he knew, somewhere deep inside himself, that he wasn’t going to be harmed.

He expected her. The woman he thought would soon appear before him. The woman that he knew he loved. He didn’t know how he knew this, or who the woman might be, but still he knew that he loved her. Right now, standing in the darkness, he couldn’t even picture her, but with only the bright glow of the screen illuminating his form, he waited for her. And then she was there.

“Jed,” Dawn said.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember me?”

“No.”

“I’m Dawn, and I’m your friend.”

“I know.” Somehow he did. Now that she said it.

She took his hand, and when she did, a part of his mind engaged, and he remembered her more completely. The screen expanded and wrapped around them like he knew it would, and they were at his farm in Old Pennsylvania. It stopped being a screen, and it felt like they were really there. As they passed the barn, walking up to the old porch, he felt the pull, and he glanced up and saw that the window was still missing.

Dawn led him by the hand until they were seated on the porch. Jed felt the soft breeze and smelled foxglove and touch-me-nots in the air, and off in the distance he saw himself walking down the drive, away from his home, heading for the airbus stop up by the road. They were in his last day on Earth.

Just as Jed was becoming completely absorbed in the scene, Dawn threw up her hand, did a little tap with it, and everything around them froze. Then Dawn swiped her hand, and the scene shrank down to a tiny square that she moved to one side with her finger. As she did this, the word “minimized” appeared in Jed’s view. The word followed the small picture, and once he’d noticed and absorbed its meaning, it faded away.

That’s when Jed realized that some kind of program must be giving him the vocabulary for whatever was happening. It was a little alarming to him that he hadn’t really registered this before, and yet all of this knowledge overflowed him like he was being baptized in it. He’d always been too wrapped up in the strangeness of it all to recognize the background reality. But now he understood that his mind was being rapidly trained to function in this new world, and he realized that Dawn—or someone else—had probably done this for him.

Once again, the two of them were standing together in the dark room.

“Do you know what year it is, Jed?” Dawn asked.

“This… this vision—when I left home—was nine years ago. When I emigrated. That was the day I met you. I was eighteen, and the year was 2068.”

Dawn nodded again and smiled at him, “So what year is it now? Right now. While you’re plowing that field in New Pennsylvania?”

“Nine years of travel,” Jed said, “so it’s 2077, right?”

Dawn smiled, but it was a nervous smile, as if she wanted to soften a blow, but had something she really needed to say. “Wrong. It’s 2121, Jed. You arrived here in the year 2121.”

Jed’s eyebrows lowered and he narrowed his eyes. “How can it be 2121? I’d be… I’d be… somewhere around seventy years old!”

“You slept for a very long time.”

“I’m sleeping now,” Jed said. “This is a dream.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s real.” Dawn reached over and took his hand in hers. “You have a BICE unit in your head, and I’ve hacked into it. Transport hasn’t connected with you in a while. They’ve been busy ever since they destroyed their own city with an okcillium bomb.”

“If I’ve been asleep for that long,” Jed asked, “then why has the technology basically stayed the same?”

“Well, it’s not exactly the same. This is a pretty advanced implanted reality system right here. Better than anything from the old world, but you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“But there are airbuses, BICEs, Q, TRIDs. I just thought the future would be more… different.”

“There are reasons for that,” Dawn said. “Not the least of which is this war. But with access to okcillium now, TRACE is making advances greater than you can imagine.”

Jed shrugged. “Well, I’m probably not the best judge of any of that.” He looked at the minimized scene of his barn, and then he touched it and enlarged it just a bit. He flicked his finger, and the scene played forward. He watched himself boarding an airbus out on the lane, and then things started to occur to him. Forgotten memories began to surface, but they were random, and he wasn’t sure how he knew things. He just knew them.

“But I’m not on Q now. I haven’t smelled the orange zest smell,” he said. He minimized the scene again and looked at Dawn.

She closed her eyes for a second and then opened them again. “The Yoders have been bringing you your meals, haven’t they?”

“Yes, but—”

“Your food is laced with Q. You probably haven’t noticed it because they kept you on it during your entire sleep cycle.”

“The Yoders are working for Transport?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. And they aren’t the only government spies who’ve infiltrated the Amish community.”

Jed was silent a while. Once again he enlarged the image of the farm and activated it—and watched as the airbus lifted off and departed. Then he flicked his finger and the scene disappeared. Dawn was still in front of him, still in her Amish dress. He shook his head, then looked down at her. “Do you know who they all are? The spies?”

“No, not all of them.” Dawn said. “I’m doing the best I can with what I have to work with. Things are… tricky right now. With the bombing of the City, the war has moved into a new and more dangerous phase.”

“And you’re saying Transport bombed their own city? Why would they do that?” Jed asked.

Dawn responded with a question. “Who are the Amish saying did it?”

Jed took a deep breath. “According to Matthias, most of them think the rebels did it.”

“Exactly,” Dawn said. “And are the Amish still trading with the rebels?”

“I don’t know,” Jed said. “Probably not as much as they were.”

“Now you’re answering your own questions. That’s why Transport did it. They did it because they were going to lose the City anyway. The writing was on the wall. They didn’t want to turn it over to TRACE, so they blew it up and blamed it on their enemy. It’s called a ‘false flag’ attack. It’s as old as war itself.”

“So Transport just killed all those people? Even people that supported them? And all the Amish who were there?”

“They did.”

Jed walked past Dawn, and with his hand he enlarged the white screen. He played with its size and then, without knowing just how he did it, he brought up his BICE control console. His was preset and organized in the form of a huge wall of drawers, like a filing cabinet. With his mind he changed the format so that the information bits appeared as envelopes, and then as glowing red dots, and then milk cows in stalls. All the while, as he played with his BICE control setup, Dawn just looked on patiently and did not interrupt.

After a few minutes, Jed changed the control icons back to drawers and then turned to Dawn. “It’s a lot to take in,” he said finally.

“I know it is,” she said.

“The year 2121 you say?”

“Yes.”

Jed reached out and opened a drawer with BICE Control Programs written on it. “How does this work? This information system in my head?”

“It integrates into your brain functions. Every brain deals with the information differently—so the question is hard to answer. Sometimes the brain takes the new reality and input and creates its own system of dealing with it.”

Jed was nodding now. “Like when Carl Miller got kicked in the head by a horse?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Dawn said.

“Well, due to the pressure and damage in his brain, doctors had to remove almost a quarter of it. They said he’d never talk again, and that the part of his brain that controlled walking was located in the portion that was removed, so… you know… he had to live in a wheelchair. Then… it’s weird, but a few years later he started walking and talking again. The doctors said that his brain rewired itself. That it doesn’t always happen, but it happens often enough.”

“Yes,” Dawn said. “It’s like with Carl Miller, then. Every brain is different, and not every person processes information in the same way.”

“Why are you so good at it?” Jed asked.

“I don’t know,” Dawn said, and as she spoke she brought up an animated schematic, which looked to Jed like an aerial view of a big city at night from high in an airbus. The lights moved somewhat chaotically, but at the same time they all seemed to follow paths and get where they needed to go. “I just see the information flow, like maybe when you’re milking a cow or out plowing Matthias’s field—how you just see what you should do, and all of your senses work together to show you what’s happening and what you should do next.”

“Can you show me how to do that?” Jed asked.

“I’ve been showing you—mostly while you’ve been sleeping. You’ll recall more and more of what I’ve taught you when you need the information.”

“I just wish you could stay here and teach me,” Jed said.

Dawn was silent for a minute before she spoke again.

“Jed?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the stories your parents would teach you as a child about the early Anabaptists—the early Amish—and how they’d meet for worship out in the woods, or in a secluded barn?”

“Of course,” Jed said. “We’re all raised with stories of persecution. To remind us that it can come back at any time.”

Dawn nodded. “Right. And do you remember anything about those stories of secret, underground meetings that applies to what we’re learning now about your BICE?”

“I don’t know,” Jed said. “What… what do you want me to say?”

“Think about it.”

Jed tried to imagine those meetings, when the Amish were being pursued by the Catholics or the Protestants, and how they’d always try to find a place where they could flee quickly if need be. “There was always a way out. Always a place to run.”

Dawn smiled. “Exactly, Jed. In programming we call those routes a ‘back door.’ And a back door goes both ways. It can be a secret way back into a program, or a secret way to get out.”

Jed nodded, but he wasn’t yet sure what she was trying to tell him.

“Always remember that just about every system, every program, has a back door. Almost invariably. All of this technology was designed by people, and many of those people had the same fears, and the same spirit of independence and freedom, that our—that your—ancestors had.”

“But how does all this apply to what we’re facing today?” Jed asked. “Tell me something I can use right now, Dawn.”

“Well… how can I say it?”

“Just say it.”

“New Pennsylvania was always a back door. And sometimes even back doors have back doors.”

Dawn cleared the white screen and brought the farm back up, then maximized it until they were actually in the scene again, sitting on the Troyers’ front porch.

Jed stood up and walked to the porch railing, looking out over the green yard toward a walnut tree he knew by heart. “And why did they leave me asleep so long? If it only takes nine years to get here?”

Dawn stood and placed a hand on Jed’s back, and when he turned to her she looked up at him and smiled. “Jed. ‘Here’ is the issue. It’s the one question you haven’t known to ask, and it was the one we weren’t authorized to answer.”

“I’m still on Earth,” Jed said. He looked into her eyes. “You don’t want to tell me anything because I’m still on Earth, aren’t I?”

Dawn didn’t answer him. She didn’t say anything at all. And when the tension had risen to the point that Jed was going to speak, Dawn grabbed his face and kissed him, and this time he let her.

(21 TRACE AT THE BASE

Pook wrote down the numbers on the pad with the stub of a pencil he found lying on the old gray boards that Martinez was now calling his “desk.” His unit had been in camp now for over a week, but in the confusion and disruption following the detonation of the okcillium bomb that had leveled the City, command was just now catching up and organizing after-action reports.

Ten days after that shocking event, TRACE Intelligence was reporting that most, if not all, of Transport’s forces had abandoned the east and had retreated beyond the Great Shelf. Now, Pook was responsible for reporting on the state of his unit. With a pencil and a piece of paper. The numbers he’d written on the notepad were cold and sterile—digits without meaning, corpses without faces—but the figures stood in for the real men and women he’d lost in the failed operation to get the Amish boy to the AZ. Numbers rarely tell all of the truth, not even after an attack like the one on the City, with a body count that rose above the ability for humans to rightly comprehend it. But the TRACE fighters he’d lost were far more than numbers to Pook Rayburn. They were his friends. His comrades-in-arms. They were members of his family. And despite all the years he’d been a part of the resistance, he never got used to losing friends.

He told himself again that he was just a soldier, and that it wasn’t his job to question the reason for losses, for the risks taken. He reminded himself that his duty was to follow orders, and that he had no cause at all—after all these years—to question the SOMA and his decisions. The old man had selflessly served, and brilliantly too, since before Pook was born. Still, the numbers glared back at him from the page. Their accusations goaded him, and he had to cover his face with his hand to hide from the things they prodded him to say and think.

Pook slipped the paper to Martinez without a word and walked out of the barn that served as their temporary base camp. He walked to where his crew stood outside, waiting to find out what would happen next. When he got to the men, he slapped Jeff Wainwright on the back, gripped the man’s shoulder and turned to face him.

“You take Jerry Rios and see that he gets fully outfitted. Then walk him through all of our procedures and unit opsec, got it?”

Jeff nodded. “Yes, sir. What about weapons? He only has the pistol you printed back in the City.”

There. That was it. A millisecond of shared recognition. Any mention of the City was a vivid reminder that they’d each barely escaped the flash death inflicted on the multitudes who’d remained there. That realization, unspoken, with its associated feelings of gratitude, grief, and unworthiness, settled on the squad.

Pook exhaled deeply. “Get with Martinez. Make sure everyone is back up to par, and that we’re all ready to roll in five if we get the call.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jeff and Jerry headed for the barn, and Pook turned to the remainder of his unit. “We’re on hold. Waiting again.”

“Hurry up and wait, eh Pook?” Billy said.

“That’s it,” Pook said. “You all know the drill.”

“Any word on Dawn?”

Pook shook his head. “The kid made it to the AZ—apparently after they chipped him and tried to reprogram his brain. Dawn got in there too, although we don’t know where she is physically. She’s out there somewhere, and Transport is holding her, but she’s successfully hacked the system. So there’s that.” He pulled out a cigarette and put it between his lips. Then he smacked his pocket, looking for his okcillium lighter before realizing he didn’t have it anymore.

“Damn.”

Billy tossed him a book of matches—an old pack with the name and logo of a bar from the City on it. Pook looked at it and then back at Billy. He struck a match and lit the cigarette, then closed the matchbook and tossed it back. “That’s a collector’s item now.”

Billy stuck the matchbook back in his pocket, then rolled his finger at Pook—a sign to get his leader talking again.

“I wish I could tell you more, but that’s all there is to tell. No one on our side knows where she is,” Pook said.

Billy looked down and kicked the stones with his boot. “I promised Ben I’d keep an eye on her.”

Pook breathed deeply. “Your brother was a good man. He’d know you’ve done your best. We’ve all done our best. He’d also know that no one can really keep an eye on Dawn when she has her mind set on something. She’s pigheaded; always has been. But he and Dawn fought side by side. They were more than husband and wife. They were teammates. He knew what we were facing, and he’d understand that she’s working on a program totally outside of our area of operations. It’s above our pay grade, too.”

“It’s hard to know what Ben would think,” Billy said.

Ducky, the short, muscular man who was Pook’s second in command, had stood silent throughout this exchange, like a tempest in the distance, barely stirring over the horizon. But now, as the topic turned to what was going on in the resistance, the storm blew in. “I can tell you one thing,” Ducky said. He was visibly angry, and had to interrupt himself frequently to take a deep breath to calm himself. “Ben would probably have a lot to say about this crap going on with the Amish dude—Jed.” Pause. Deep breath. “Good men and women getting killed to save the SOMA’s kid brother!” Pause. Breath. “He’d definitely have something to say, I can tell ya that!”

“Careful, Duck,” was all that Pook said. The two friends stared at one another before Duck broke the silence.

“I’m not being insubordinate, Pook. I’m here and I’m following orders no matter what. I’m just telling it how it is. We’re out here dying, and for what?”

“We’ve always been out here dying, Duck,” Pook said. “And always for the same reason. What’s changed? We take orders, and we do what we’re told. That’s what we’ve always done. That’s what we did when Ben Beachy was here, and that’s what we’re doing now.”

“Except that then, we knew what we were doing was one-hundred-percent resistance business. We knew it, Pook. Not personal business.”

Pook took a step toward Ducky. It wasn’t in any way menacing, but the motion did carry with it the weight of authority. He spoke softly, evenly. “Every one of us would be dead, imprisoned, or worse if it weren’t for the SOMA. I’m not the kind of guy who starts second-guessing a leader who has never—not once, ever, in my whole life—failed me or the resistance. If he’d made a bunch of mistakes, or if he’d brought us to the brink of defeat… you know, I’d still follow orders, but I’d feel more comfortable questioning his leadership. But what has the SOMA done for us? Has he ever failed us? Are we not on the very doorstep of wiping out Transport and winning the war? Do we not have the upper hand?” Pook pointed toward the sky and then swung his hand around, indicating the surrounding area. “Look at us. Standing under this blue sky and not hiding out in buildings or underground. When have we ever been comfortable doing this in the past five years? And why do we feel pretty safe right now? Because Transport has fled beyond the Shelf, Duck!”

Pook reached out his hand and put it on Ducky’s shoulder. It was a sign of understanding, and of peace, but it also was a symbol of steadfast obedience and loyalty to a superior. “So here’s the deal, friend. All of you. I love you all. We’ve fought together and we’ve been through some tough things. We’ve bled, and some of our people have died for this…” Ducky nodded, as did everyone else in the unit.

After a short pause, Pook continued. “So for now… Ducky… all of you… just shut the hell up. Just—respectfully—shut up. If you have a problem, bottle it up and keep your mouth zipped about it. I don’t want to hear one more word of negativity unless you have some grounds for it that’ll stand up to scrutiny, and even then, it’d better be something that helps us all. Am I understood?”

Ducky looked up at Pook, who was a full six inches taller. “Yes, sir.” There was still anger in his voice, but it was subdued, and he’d regained his composure.

“Yes, sir,” everyone else said.

Goa Eagles—swarthy, unkempt, and now overloaded with partial bits of clothing and coats he’d somehow conned from the quartermaster—chose this moment to walk up to the group. As always, he was chewing vigorously on a greenish mass. He spat a huge globule and smiled.

“Good speeching, Pook.” Eagles arched his neck and thrust out his arms in a cartoonish impersonation of Pook. He raised his voice an octave higher and began to pace back and forth, glowering at everyone. He spit out another big, nasty load of green slime and then wiped his mouth with his arm.

“Being shut! Words, wording, words! Shutting up!” Eagles looked over at Pook, who was trying hard not to laugh. “Looking at Eeguls! Eeguls being the Pook! Everyone shutting! Got it?” By this point, everyone in the unit was laughing, and Eagles took their laughter as further encouragement. He turned to Ducky. “You… you being shut!” He winked at Ducky, then looked the shorter fighter up and down. “Also being un-tall.” With that, Eagles threw out his chest and walked away, to the raucous laughter of everyone who had heard him.

(22 LIVING ON TULSA TIME

The Great Shelf was, for now, the new front in the war. This latest government attack—an air assault on TRACE reconnaissance forces patrolling on this side of the cliffs—was half-hearted, a token gesture. TRACE forces hadn’t yet attempted to penetrate past the Great Shelf to pursue the Transport-controlled assets that had retreated from the City. When the resistance launched their offensive, that’s when the real battle would begin.

The SOMA watched as two of his fighters took out a Transport attack craft, the defeated aircraft disintegrating and plummeting in parts and fire and smoke toward the earth. Thus far, it seemed like Transport was just doing their best to regroup and lick their wounds. For the most part they’d pulled in their horns. With the exception of the perfunctory action the SOMA was now observing, intelligence reported no evidence of a pending counterattack.

The view that the SOMA had on the big screens in his office constantly changed perspectives. Looking at the scenes on display, you’d think that dozens of camera ships or drones must be zipping around out there providing the coverage, but there were no actual cameras involved. Instead, the graphics were constructed very accurately based on data gathered by sensors on all of his ships—and by every other sensor within range of the battlefield. The new TRACE Optimal Battle System (TOBS) relied not only on TRACE-specific encrypted data, which provided real-time location and identification information, but also on other airborne information, including data that was never specifically intended for TRACE or battlefield use. In short, TOBS utilized all available wireless broadband data, because even if the data was from an email between two BICEs, or was part of a computer game, or the sharing of a salsa recipe, that bit of data still had to travel through the air from somewhere to somewhere else. And TOBS was able to use this data to more perfectly render the battlefield in real time, like an early twenty-first century Doppler radar could model a tornado based on wind direction, air pressure, the reflections from bits of sand and debris carried by the storm, temperature variations, and a variety of other sources.

Using TOBS in combination with the implanted TRACE Corinth chips, TRACE and enemy ships could be nearly perfectly rendered in 3-D space. As could lasers and other ordnance. Data was cross-referenced and processed, in real time, using information stored in multiple remote systems. This aggregated information then became the foundation of the rendering program.

And the beauty of TOBS was that the individual ships didn’t need to carry and support the computing power required to produce the finished visual product, although a rough version of the information was available on each ship captain’s BICE and support screens. The ships needed only to transmit the data for rendering off-vessel, and to have enough computing power to receive and display the final visual. And this off-vessel rendering wasn’t dependent on the functioning of any one part. Flexibility and redundancy were the hallmarks of TOBS. In fact, the system was intentionally fluid, utilizing an AI management system that altered the system’s architecture on the fly.

On each ship, one—or in some cases more than one—intelligence officer had been implanted with the Corinth chip. The Corinth was the heart and soul of the TOBS and was effectively the fourth-generation BICE chip, something beyond even what Transport could imagine in its utility and complexity. The Corinth was able to take the raw data stream and compress it, encrypt it, and hide it in regular or worthless bits of data always zipping around the planet in the air. The system had become so efficient and effective that it was now fully possible for battle commanders to do what gamers had been doing for a very long time: zoom around the battlefield and virtually see things that their forebears had only dreamed of seeing.

The TRACE rebel ships weren’t entirely dependent on this advanced TOBS technology, though. The ships could just as easily fly and fight without the lightning-fast rendering or the off-vessel intelligence support. If they had to. And they could fly and fight old-school if need be: dog-fighting, just as air forces had been doing for over two hundred years. But experience showed that when TRACE ships had access to TOBS, their forces were nearly impossible to defeat.

TRACE’s technological advantage—itself a fairly recent reality—was a product of the fact that tech-loving geeks and programmers almost invariably end up siding against any system that is anti-freedom. A fact that governments throughout time have had a tendency to forget… to their own detriment. And the slow brain drain of programmers and technicians from Transport to TRACE had turned into a tidal wave once it began to look very much like TRACE could actually win the war. Geniuses who’d been raised on Q had held off on giving the government their newest and best ideas and improvements, because foundationally they’d never really supported Transport’s imperial aims. Most of these technical personnel had applied for, or been recruited into, Transport jobs only because they were the only game in town, if you wanted to work with the best resources on the most advanced projects.

And now that TRACE had not only the brain power, but ready access to okcillium—enough that they could use it for something other than “clean” bombs, a few neat gadgets, and impressive parlor tricks—the technological leap forward in the last few years had been remarkable.

Amos Troyer leaned back in his chair. For an instant his mind flashed back to the Battle of Lawton, when Transport had surrounded the entire Southern Oklahoma Militia and defeat had been nigh; and he—just a young Amish teenager holding a World-War-II-era rifle with no ammunition left in it—had taken a battle knife from a dead Transport soldier, thinking it would be the last tool he’d ever use before dying. Terrified and clutching that knife, he’d closed his eyes and imagined his older brother Jed, sleeping peacefully in a spaceship bound for a virginal planet lush with verdant life. That thought had given him comfort when he thought his own days were numbered.

Amos felt like closing his eyes now. Here on this ship, an old man, and a tired one at that, he could imagine the end of the war, and his own inevitable exodus from power. Whoever and whatever government formed in the vacuum left by the destruction of Transport—whenever that occurred—would have access to technology the likes of which no people anywhere had ever mastered. That fact meant that when this war was over, freedom would face an even greater peril than it had ever faced before. Irony, like sin, never rests. The technology to control and destroy people always has in it the seeds of tyranny, and is forever subject to the lowest angels of human nature. And now he, Amos Troyer, controlled that power; and it frightened him more than he’d ever admit to his subordinates.

The SOMA opened his desk to grab a Q tablet, and as he reached for the pill, he saw the old battle knife—the same blade he’d relied on those many years ago outside Lawton, Oklahoma, when he knew for sure that he was going to die. The knife he’d used to kill countless men in his determination to set other people free.

Thou Shalt Not Kill.

The phrase rang in his mind again whenever he looked at the weapon. He unsheathed the blade, held it up before his face, and studied it. Though he knew every ding and every scratch on its surface, it always caused his heart to skip whenever he held it. Slowly, he slid the knife back into the sheath and then exhaled. He threw the pill into his mouth and chewed it up quickly, then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Almost immediately his young avatar appeared in his BICE control room. Through the fog, he heard someone enter his office and say, “Sir, your report—”, but he held up his hand to silence and dismiss the ensign, and his surroundings became quiet again. The almond bitterness on his tongue always accompanied the peace that flooded him when he was on Q.

For a moment, he felt his consciousness existing in three places. The feeling of being in his office, reclining in his chair, faded first. He was also in his BICE room, watching as his filing cube floated in the center of the space. His third self was, for a moment, back in Old Pennsylvania, with the young boys playing corner ball after a wedding, but that memory faded quickly too. In short order his consciousness was one again, and he was fully present in the darkness of his BICE control room.

He reached out and turned the floating cube with his hand, and when the far face of the cube came to the front, he saw that one of the drawers glowed, indicating he had an important message.

DB

Amos looked down at himself—at his avatar—and saw that he was his youthful, muscular, and vibrant self, so he immediately changed his avatar to match his sixty-seven-year-old reality. Then he flicked open the file, and when that cube instantly appeared and enlarged, he flicked his wrist to open the Direct Message square. In a flash, Dawn was standing in front of him. For the first time, he saw her in the new form and dress she’d adopted for her avatar. She was translucent, but appeared clad in Amish garb: a dark blue dress with white cape and apron. Her avatar appeared to sleep, but her right hand glowed, indicating that there was no stored message. Dawn, wherever she was, was waiting for him to appear so that she could talk to the SOMA directly.

Dawn’s avatar awoke and became solid. She nodded her head at her commanding officer and said, “Sir.” The resistance had long given up formal ranks, addresses, and salutes—other than the simple terms of address “sir” and “ma’am,” which were usually reserved for officers.

Dawn and Amos had once been very close friends, especially after the commander of the Southern Oklahoma Militia had presided over her wedding to Ben Beachy. Ben, another young former Amishman, had been exiled to Oklahoma after being arrested for bartering with individuals wanted by the government for aiding the resistance—and he had lived a life that, until its violent end, had closely modeled Amos’s own. Since those early days, Amos’s and Dawn’s fates had taken them down very different paths, but the SOMA still had a fondness and a paternal affection for Dawn—even if the nature of their working relationship added a certain stress and awkwardness to their friendship.

“You have a report for me?” Amos said.

Dawn nodded and assumed an “at ease” stance that looked strange and ironic in the dress she’d chosen for her avatar. “As you know, sir, civilian Internet communications have been spotty since the bomb went off. It’s fortunate that we were able to mirror so many of Transport’s data hubs before it happened. And thanks to our recent technological advances, we’ve been able to re-route our own data quicker than we’d originally thought. Between TOBS and the Corinth, we’re now nearly one hundred percent independent of terrestrial systems and hubs.”

“Good.” Amos waved for Dawn to continue.

“I’m in contact with Jedediah. We’re making progress through his BICE, but I still don’t know what he remembers when he’s awake in the real world. Transport is trying hard to reconnect with him, but thus far I’ve been able to block and confuse their attempts, and I’ve given them clues to suggest that the fault lies with the bomb’s substantial damage to the Internet infrastructure. But that little trick won’t work much longer. Their data flow looks like they’ve called out all the dogs, and their spiders are searching hard for whatever’s causing the disruption. If they have one programmer who’s half as good as I am, they’ll have it figured out soon enough.”

Dawn called up an image that expanded until it took up half of the control room and the screen filled with lighted lines, glowing cables, through which data bits were flowing. The flow didn’t look like water in a pipeline, but like little glowing bullets, all of different colors—some larger and some smaller—streaming down each of the cables. Data trackers, taking the form of small mechanized spiders with glowing eyes, were scouring each line. Each spider would skitter a few steps, then stop and analyze the information bullets as they passed. The animation was a real-time representation of Transport’s search for the interruption in their communications with Jedediah Troyer. “This is only one hub. Imagine this on a global scale,” Dawn said.

Amos nodded. “Have you left any clues that will lead them to you?”

“I hope not, sir.” She shifted her weight, a sign of nervousness. “I can’t know how good their techs are. If they suck, like they usually do, we have a little time, but not much.”

“Here’s hoping they suck,” Amos said with a smile.

“I’ve told Jed what I think I’m allowed to tell him. But now…”

“But now… what?” Amos asked.

“But now I’m asking your permission to tell him everything. Where we are. What’s happening.”

“No.” Amos shook his head. “Not yet.”

“But, sir—”

“No.” Now Amos paced back and forth, his hands behind his back. “Let’s not forget that capturing Jed is intended to be a public relations coup for Transport. They’re back on their heels now. Reeling. They foolishly think they still have an opportunity to win the hearts and minds of the people; and perhaps they believe they’ll convince the elders of the Amish to stop their people from feeding us or providing material aid to the resistance. The retreat to the Shelf has them on life support. Their goal has been to embed Jed with the Amish, and then use him to get to me. We can’t risk them finding out that we’re using Jed too.”

“They’ve blamed the bombing of the City on you, sir,” Dawn said.

“I know, but that lie will never stand for long. And when people find out that they destroyed their own city and killed thousands of people, the whole move will backfire.”

Dawn looked the SOMA in the eye. “He’s hanging by a thread, sir. He needs to know.”

Amos paused, and met Dawn’s stare. “Give him what you have to, but remember, if they crack him, they’ll turn anything you’ve said to him around. They’ll twist it, and it will all be worse for him in the long run.”

Dawn shrugged. “I understand.”

Amos exhaled, an indication that he intended to change the subject. “I’m putting Pook and his unit on standby. In case they need to go in and get you.”

“They should be focused on Jedediah, sir. If anyone is going to need exfil when the time comes, it’ll be Jed.”

“You let me handle giving orders, Dawn,” Amos said. His tone was stern, but not too harsh. “That’s my job.” He glanced back up at the screen, where the spiders were still scanning the data streams looking for clues. “You’ve done well, Dawn. And you have your hands full. Get Jed fully ready, because they’ll have him back soon enough.”

Dawn looked at Amos. “All of this for a PR victory.”

Amos put his hands behind his back and fixed the stare of his avatar on Dawn. “A PR victory? That’s what Transport wants out of him. But Jed means so much more than that to me. He’s not only my brother, whom I love dearly. He’s a Trojan horse.”

Dawn nodded, and for a moment she had a faraway look on her face. “Is that why you’ve had me implant so many rapid learning programs into his BICE?”

Amos’s nod was almost imperceptible. “I remember when I was him… a young Amish man with a pure heart. Mostly uncorrupted except for what I did in the war.” He winced and bit his lip when he thought about it. His eyes closed for a moment before he continued. “And I hacked into the TRIDs on just my second time in the system! Nobody could believe it. But I did it because I didn’t know I couldn’t.”

“I’ve read about that,” Dawn said.

“People don’t realize that the Amish think differently than everyone else,” Amos touched his avatar face, which was smooth and shaved, and inhaled deeply. “It’s not just that we—they—don’t use a lot of the technology the world uses. It’s that their brains are actually wired differently. All of this wiring starts for all of us when we’re just babies, you know?”

Dawn nodded, but she didn’t want to interrupt, so she remained silent.

“And Jed was always so clever,” Amos said. “Smarter than even the elders. It’s like that piece of coffee can he formed to take the place of the windowpane in our barn. His mind worked like that. He was a puzzle solver. He already thought differently than everyone else.”

Just then, Dawn’s avatar pitched forward. She was still standing, but something had happened. Her head twitched and then her eyes closed and she went translucent. Transport had figured out what she was up to, and they’d finally gotten to her.

To Amos, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. He’d known they’d sniff her out eventually. It was all part of his larger plan. Still, it was startling to see her shut down right in front of his eyes.

Almost at the same moment—just a few beats after the data stream with Dawn had been compromised—the Tulsa lurched under Amos’s feet, and his own stream blanked out. Sitting at his desk, he was thrown violently out of his chair and he sprawled across the floor. A sharp pain stabbed through his chest and immediately registered, even through the Q—

A broken rib.

The Tulsa was shaking and groaning, something he’d never before experienced with the ultra-silent ship. He grimaced and tried to pull himself to his feet.

The door slid open and an ensign ran in with two officers, McKay and Warren.

“Sir!” McKay shouted.

They helped him to his feet and then sat his chair upright so that he could sit in it.

“Are you all right, sir?” McKay asked.

“Don’t worry about me,” Amos barked. “What’s happening?”

McKay straightened up and reactivated the screens in Amos’s office; they’d gone into hibernation mode while he was on his BICE.

“We’re under attack, sir,” McKay said matter-of-factly. “Three warships, Berlin class. Apparently they’ve located the Tulsa and they’ve engaged.”

“We didn’t see them coming?”

“No, sir.”

“How did they breach our defenses?”

Warren winced noticeably. “Somehow they hacked us, sir.”

The ensign was trying to unbutton the SOMA’s shirt to inspect the injury, but Amos was ignoring him and pushed the young man away. “Someone… somewhere… has tracked and penetrated our data stream?” Amos said, pointing to McKay. “An impossibility! Shut down Corinth communications… NOW!”

(23 HACKER

Jed floated in the inky blackness, wondering how long he’d been in that state. Ages? Lifetimes? Then slowly, his consciousness returned to him, and he was in his black room with the glowing screen. He remembered now: he’d been talking to the woman named Dawn, and he’d asked her if he was on Earth. He remembered kissing her. He could recall it now that the darkness was rolled back a bit, with the white screen shining garishly in the darkness and illuminating his body.

And then he remembered something else. Matthias shaking him; he’d opened his eyes and found himself standing next to the horses and the plow, and Dawn had disappeared, never able to answer the question about where he was. That was all a memory, too.

Matthias had been worried, and despite Jed’s insistence, had made Jed go lie down for a nap. Jed remembered that now, Matthias pushing him toward the little house. And he remembered that he didn’t argue too much, because he wanted to be with Dawn. Was that her name? Yes. Dawn. He’d thought then that if he could go to sleep, Dawn would come back for him. So he’d gone to his room and climbed on the fleeces he used for a mattress, and before long he was in a deep sleep.

Sometime during his slumber he’d entered this present blackness. And now the screen was here, and he could remember Dawn, and was hoping that she’d be back to get him. To take him somewhere to talk. But she didn’t appear this time; another woman did.

It was his mother. Only it wasn’t his mother. He knew that. The word “avatar” floated over her head and then disappeared. It wasn’t her, but it looked like her. And she was talking to him, and pulling up data as she talked. Reorganizing files. Telling him that someone evil—someone named Dawn—had hacked into his mind, but that now he was safe again.

Jed watched as files opened, and the thing that looked like his mother was erasing and changing the information in them. And then he had other memories—memories that didn’t seem right. He remembered watching battles with Dawn, but this time the Transport forces were performing heroically, and as the battles progressed, martial music played. He saw an image of a city being destroyed, and there was death, destruction, and horror, and words appeared in the smoke and clouds…

TRACE DID THIS.

While the woman worked in front of a long wall of file drawers, Jed searched in his memory for Dawn. He found her, and he remembered that she had once taught him how to hide data. She’d taught him so many things that he was only now recalling. So he gathered all of the information and conversations he’d had with her. He did it in his mind so that his avatar didn’t move, and he tagged all the data just like Dawn had told him to. The woman worked away in the drawers and mostly ignored him.

Jed found that his ability to manipulate the data happened faster and cleaner the more he worked with it. He was even able to retrieve files directly from the woman without her knowing he’d done it. Once he stole a file right out of her hand, and the avatar of his mother kept moving as if she still had it. She continued to file a piece of information that she could see, but which was no longer really there. She began humming as she worked, in the same way Jed’s mother used to hum, and he knew then that they were mining his memories in order to trick him.

While the woman hummed and worked, Jed worked too. He flicked his wrist, and a keypad appeared before him, and it had the letters of the alphabet on it, and numbers, and symbols too. The words for everything he needed appeared before him and were logged into his memory. Jed typed in the words COFFEE CAN out of pure instinct, and a drawer slid open next to him. He quickly dropped all the tagged files into the drawer and pushed it closed, just as the woman who looked like his mother turned to face him. She saw nothing.

“There,” she said, and smiled at him. “Everything back as it should be.” Then she reached up to him and waved her hand in front of his face, and the darkness swallowed him again.

Only, this time he controlled the switch. She thought she’d powered him down, but he willed himself to stand—and then he brought the screen back up.

And he worked.

He didn’t know for how long, but it seemed like he explored the BICE system for hours. For him, it all was just beginning to make sense, like when he’d first learned to work the horses. And just like Dawn had said, he could now see how the BICE interacted with his brain and his nervous system. He practiced controlling the electrical flow of impulses, changing the way that synapses fired.

Often he ran into roadblocks. The words Access Denied would appear whenever he tried something his BICE wasn’t cleared for. So he’d experiment around the edges of the information, looking for things he could see and know.

Then he began manipulating the screen in his room. He brought up a scene from his childhood—a Thanksgiving with his family—and he zoomed his consciousness around the room while his family ate their meal. He could smell the turkey, and his mouth watered at the wonderful aroma.

Then he zoomed out through the front door like a bird, and his mind took flight. He shot straight upward and hovered over the farm; then traveled like a rocket or an airbus until he was floating over the City. The City, long before it had been destroyed by a bomb. He tried to zoom in on the Transport station, but when he did, the image froze and Access Denied flashed before his eyes.

He blinked his eyes, and the City was gone, but he was still hovering over the planet, so he began to look for other things. For storms and squalls and flocks of birds moving en masse. When he saw these things, he looked deeper, and found that he could see the very pixels that made up the wind, and the invisible streams of data that flowed constantly around the planet, wirelessly, through the air.

And he understood it all. It made sense to him.

He blinked again and he called up Dawn.

Her avatar appeared before him in her beautiful navy dress and her white cape and apron. Her likeness seemed to be asleep, and her whole appearance was not quite solid. He stood in front of her and touched her face, but she didn’t stir.

“Dawn,” he said.

He flicked his hand, trying to activate her avatar, but nothing happened. He tried a dozen other tricks and motions to wake her up, but none of them worked.

Jed paced the room, rubbing his head with his hands to try to stimulate thoughts and answers. His frustration grew, and when he knew that he had no solution to the problem he screamed at the top of his lungs: “DAWN!”

Dawn’s avatar flickered. Her head raised and she sucked in air. As the flickering stopped and her form became solid, she opened her eyes. And then it was as if a bolt of electricity hit her, and Jed reached for her hand, and when he touched her the two of them rocketed up and through the ceiling, and wordlessly they soared over the Amish Zone, and Dawn took him until they were hovering over a farmhouse at the end of a lane. Then she blinked out and disappeared, and Jed awoke in his bed.

“There’s a farmhouse not two miles from here,” Jed told Matthias as they ate. He knew the food was laced with Q but for now he didn’t mind. He wanted to be sure he had access to the full capabilities of his BICE, in case he needed it. “There are three lightning rods on the roof of a banked barn that has green trim, and there’s a young orchard to the east of the barn with a white picket fence around the orchard.”

Matthias laughed as he took a bite of home-baked bread. “You just described most of the farms in the Amish Zone.”

“This one was different,” Jed said. He took a drink of lemonade. “It’s at the end of a lane, and there’s a creek that runs right through the property.”

“That sounds familiar,” Matthias said. “Marcus Yoder’s place, I think. He’s cousin to the man whose family is bringing us the meals.” Matthias ripped off another chunk of fresh bread and then used his pocketknife to spread a chunk of homemade butter on it. “Speaking of which, the Yoders’ food… it’s the best I’ve ever had. I feel so peaceful after I eat it. Maybe it has something to do with this alien planet, but I don’t look forward to the day when the Yoders stop delivering my meals.”

Jed just nodded and kept eating. He knew that Matthias was reacting to the Q in the food, but he didn’t say anything about it. All of this would have to be part of a long conversation he’d have with Matthias once he knew more about what was going on.

“Why are you asking about the Marcus Yoder farm?” Matthias asked.

And that was one more thing he couldn’t tell Matthias about. As if Jed could even explain how he suspected that a woman named Dawn was being held on Marcus Yoder’s farm somewhere.

And what did Jed plan to do about it, anyway? He was Amish. He couldn’t just take a gun and run over there to try to rescue her. She obviously wanted him to know where she was being held, but he felt like if she was in some kind of imminent danger she would have said something to him. Still, he wanted to find a reason to go search for her.

Jed shrugged. “I’m just thinking about going to look at some of the unique farms in the zone, to get ideas for my own place when I get my allotment.”

“How do you know about that place?” Matthias asked. He motioned for Jed to pass the peach preserves.

“Oh, I think Mr. Zook at the immigration center might have mentioned it. I’d just like to go take a look at it.”

Mathias laughed. “You sound like the English, or some young Amish girl wanting to get married.”

Jed smiled, “I like to get ideas.”

“An Amish farm is an Amish farm.” Matthias stuck his knife into the jar of preserves and pulled out a dollop of jam, then winked at Jed as he stuck the sugary mass in his mouth. He sat the knife down and twisted the lid back on the jar. “Well, this Sabbath is Visitation Sabbath. We could always go over there and ask to look around.”

“That’s two days from now,” Jed said. “Any way we could do it sooner?”

Matthias wiped his knife on his broadfall pants, then closed the blade and tucked it back into his pants’ inner pocket. “I suppose we could go tomorrow, but it’ll look odd. Nobody visits on Saturday.”

“Who cares if it looks odd?” Jed said. “Let’s do it.”

Matthias stood up and pushed in his chair. “All right, I’ll talk to Marcus at the meeting tonight. But for now… you’ve been napping while I finished the plowing. So you get dishes duty while I go do the evening milking. If we can get all of our chores done before the meeting, maybe we can make a few more fat lamps after we get home so we can get more light in this dreary place.”

“Now who sounds like a woman?” Jed said as he slapped Matthias on the shoulder. “No, I’m thinking of turning in early.”

“After the meeting?”

“After the meeting.”

“And after you napped the day away?” Matthias laughed.

“I’m starting to appreciate the value of a lot of rest,” Jed said as he began to clear away the dishes.

When the chores were finished and Matthias had filtered the milk, Jed helped his friend pour the finished product into sterilized five-gallon canisters. The canisters were then loaded into the buckboard wagon, and the two young men harnessed the horses and drove the milk over to the neighbor’s farm. The clip-clop of the horses’ hooves on the road was soothing, and Jed remembered riding in the buggy with his parents as a little boy, how he’d sing or make up rhymes that went with the beat of horse travel. He recalled traveling in the winter as a child—burrowing into the lap blanket and wishing that nothing would ever change in his perfect life, that his parents would always be there with him. These thoughts brought on a feeling of nostalgia and melancholy like a fog, which only lifted when they’d pulled the wagon up to the neighbor’s barn.

Tom Hochstetler helped the two carry the canisters into his stone springhouse, and the milk containers were lowered into the icy water that flowed around the stone trough built into the wall of the springhouse. The pure, cool water came from a spring, flowed through the troughs, then down into a large cistern that served for the Hochstetlers’ animal-watering needs. An overflow in the cistern routed the water back into a small creek that flowed down to a stock pond.

The milk would be bartered for lumber and supplies, to be stored up for Matthias’ barn-raising, which was coming up soon. Altogether, Matthias was hopeful that when the time came for the barn-raising, he’d already be free of any debt related to the construction. Jedediah was hopeful too. He was looking forward to the fellowship time, because barn-raisings provided some of the fondest memories from his childhood.

Later that evening, Matthias sat by lantern light at the oaken kitchen table in his tiny house, and Jedediah excused himself for the evening. He was anxious to go to bed, not because he was sleepy—he wasn’t tired at all—but because there were things he needed to know, and the only place he felt comfortable accessing his BICE was in his own room, lying on the fleeces.

The meeting earlier that evening had taken place at the house of Arthur Lapp. Standing outside with the other Amish men beforehand, Jed had felt the intense stares coming at him; Matthias had warned him that people were suspicious because Jed’s brother was head of the resistance. No one was openly rude, although speakers did tend to point in his direction whenever they spoke about TRACE and whether or not the rebels had set off the bomb that destroyed the City.

Jed had been surprised to see so many young faces there, even though he’d been told by Mr. Zook at the immigration center to expect it. The average age of the men who attended the meeting was probably around twenty-five. And when the meeting was brought to order, Jed noticed that the elders, all seated along one wall, were perhaps only a year or two older than the rest of the group, on average.

The meeting was conducted in English, and since most everyone was young, the English that was used was fairly modern and would have been considered “worldly” back in his home district. It made it easier for Jed to follow along; he didn’t like it when meetings were held in either Pennsylvania Dutch or the weird hybridized slang that was often used by his elders in the AZ back home.

Ultimately, nothing concrete was decided. The meeting served more as a forum for airing out pent-up stress and pressure than it did as a call to action. There was a lot of complaining and accusing going on, but the group, and even the elders, were evenly split in their opinions about who was to blame for the bombing, and whether or not the community should continue to trade with the rebels. Tensions eased once the topic changed to giving aid and comfort to those who’d lost loved ones in the bombing, and the meeting took on a more temperate feel.

The last major topic for discussion was Matthias’s barn-raising. It was a bittersweet thing for Matthias to learn that, since another family who’d planned a barn-raising for the next week had been killed in the destruction of the City, Matthias’s barn-raising was now moved up. It would be held in eight days, the following Saturday. Moving the barn-raising up a month would create some tactical difficulties, but Matthias was excited about the prospect just the same.

Jed noticed that the Yoders were not present or represented at the meeting by anyone else from their family. He found that curious, especially if they were truly working for Transport, but he still didn’t know what to do with that piece of information. He hoped to learn more on his next excursion into the cyber-world.

Toward the end of the evening, the floor was opened up to anyone who had anything to say, so Jed decided that it would be as good a time as any to introduce himself, and to perhaps assuage some fears and concerns about his presence among the people in the community.

“I haven’t been here long,” he said. “And I’m still trying to learn everything that’s happened here in New Pennsylvania, and even about my brother’s role in it. As you can imagine, I’m very lost right now, and I don’t really know what to think. Still, I am Amish. I was born Amish, and I intend to die that way. Understanding all of this is something I struggle with, and I know that peace and comfort may be long in coming. I do appreciate all the love and care I’ve received since I first arrived, and I hope to be a productive member of the community here. I thank you all for your patience and kindness.”

When he finished, one of the elders rose to speak. “You do know that your brother has violated both our ordnung, and every other rule we have as a people, by choosing to fight and to make war against the government?”

“I know that,” Jed responded.

“And you know that we have chosen to remove him from our number, as we must do, and that he has been shunned from the fellowship of the beloved?”

“I do.”

“All right, then. This meeting is adjourned. May God’s grace be upon all of us.”

(24 AT10S

Lying on his bunk among the fleeces, Jed prayed to God to watch over him before focusing his thoughts in order to enter his BICE control room. Before retiring to his bed, he’d downed a full glass of lemonade brought over by the Yoders, knowing that the drink would likely be laced with more Q. It was.

Almost immediately, instead of playing with the capabilities of the system like he’d done before, he dove into the Internet’s data on the history of New Pennsylvania and the old world. According to the official government version, the first rebel wars had begun in the year 2018 and ended in the year 2040 with an overwhelming victory by “the forces of the people.” The twenty-two years of almost constant battles—warfare that had eventually spread around the globe—resulted in the loss of almost fifty percent of the world’s population. Transport, whose power and authority had grown throughout the period of this first global rebellion, became the sole governing body after the wars.

The Amish had been encouraged to spread out and to farm more land, and by 2042 the first officially protected Amish Zone—the first of the five that would eventually be developed—was established. During this time, in contrast to what was going on in the rest of the world, the Amish experienced unparalleled freedom and autonomy. As had been the pattern in old Europe, wars and starvation had a tendency, if only a temporary one, to convince nations that agrarianism was a good philosophy.

In the years during and just after the wars, technological advances had almost stopped, and worldwide economies either slowed or completely collapsed. This was often called “The Dying Time.” Starvation was rampant, and disorder and violence plagued much of the world. Due to ongoing terrorist attacks by groups allied with the rebels, private transport was outlawed. Roads, some of them over a hundred years old, were ripped up in order to “disincentivize ground travel” and to hinder terrorist activities. The Transport authority implemented the first TRID system, using Unis as the form of currency, in 2050.

According to official government sites (or sites using government information), colonization of New Pennsylvania began just as the TRID system was being implemented—first with the establishment of the City, and almost immediately after that with the transplanting of a new colony of Amish into the Amish Zone far to the west of the urban area.

What the sites did not explain—at least, not to Jed’s satisfaction—is why the buildings he’d seen and entered in New Pennsylvania had looked so old. If, as the government was saying, he’d arrived on the planet in 2077, then the oldest buildings in the City should have been no older than twenty-seven years old. Yet he’d been in the basement of Pook’s antique shop, and the cellar had looked as if it could be a hundred years old. And where did the salvagers like Eagles come from? And what were they salvaging? Where did Eagles get his Go Eagles towel?

And then there was the matter of the wall. Other than explaining that the massive wall around the AZ in New Pennsylvania was originally built to keep wild animals and other creatures out of the Amish Zone, the information sites that Jed visited did not explain its incredible scale—it was higher, wider, and longer than any wall he’d ever heard of before. From Jed’s understanding, walls such as this were built by primitive peoples to keep out invaders and marauders, not by modern folk to hinder foxes and wildcats.

Information about the new planet was even more scant. According to the historical documents, scientists had identified New Pennsylvania as one of millions of Earth-like planets in Earth-like orbital distance from suns the same size as the one that heated the Earth. Probes from the early twenty-first century had then determined that the planet supported life, but had no intelligent alien species at all. This was the story painted by official government data sites. After traveling light years in suspended animation, the first human astronauts to land on New Pennsylvania found it to be a planet much like the Earth in every respect, except without intelligent life. If there ever had been intelligent life on the planet, it had either died away or departed the place long ago: no archeological anomalies or structures had been located on New Pennsylvania.

Jed shook his head as he studied all of the information. The most remarkable thing about it all was that people seemed to believe it, both here and back on Earth. That is, if indeed this place and Earth were two different planets, something about which he was no longer certain.

Tired of reading propaganda, he decided to try to contact Dawn again. Despite numerous attempts, he found that he was unable to locate her, or even to call up her avatar at all. Not knowing what else to do, he went back into the master file that he’d hidden from the avatar that had looked so much like his own mother.

He studied everything he could find in the files. Most of the information consisted of video files of Dawn’s first training sessions with him—when he’d still been unconscious and not aware what was happening to him. He pulled up a file that was labeled “The Shelf,” and this one he could almost—barely—remember. He played the video and watched as Dawn flew him in the direction of the west, and they ended up looking out from a great height over the cities on the plain beyond the Great Shelf. He watched and listened as Dawn taught him about the cities, and how the government had hoped to relocate millions of Earth residents into these large urban centers, and she explained how the whole plan had been a failure. This time, though, Jed noticed something that he hadn’t seen the first time he’d experienced this vision. As he watched it now in “third person,” separated from his other avatar self and floating in the distance, he noticed that up in the sky some letters and numbers would occasionally appear very faintly throughout the lesson. Then after several minutes, they’d disappear, only to reappear some time later.

He pulled up other training sessions, and when he searched through the videos, he noticed again that the same set of letters and numbers would often appear for a few minutes, barely visible, and then disappear. This time when it happened, he raised his hand, tapped, and froze the scene. He enlarged the area near the figures until he could read them…

AT10S

…the letters AT, then the number 10, and then the letter S.

What can that be? A training file code? Advanced Training? No. He shook his head. If it was a training code, he thought, then it should change with every lesson. He racked his brain, but he couldn’t figure it out. He watched a few other videos, but he found himself growing very sleepy, so eventually he had to shut down the system and actually go to sleep.

He awoke with the first light of a beautiful Saturday morning, but he didn’t feel rested. Out of instinct, or fear, or some other impulse he couldn’t define, he looked around himself quickly, up into every corner of the room. Perhaps he expected to see the AT10S floating up there somewhere, indicating that he was still in some kind of training mode. But the code wasn’t there. He was actually in a tiny bedroom in a tiny Amish house in New Pennsylvania, and no matter what he thought about that, some very real cows waited to be milked.

(25 THE END OF THE ROAD

The assault on the Tulsa didn’t last long. Once the SOMA was aware that his Corinth system had been breached, he was able to secure the ship and harden it before launching a full counterattack that scattered the enemy warships, which then retreated under the withering fire of the Tulsa’s support craft.

It was just a probing action, Amos thought, but now they know we’re here.

And now my people have another reason to doubt me.

“We were caught with our pants down,” he told his officers. “We got arrogant. Relied on our technological superiority. Underestimated our enemy. Basically, we did what Transport has done for the last twenty years. But it won’t happen again. From now on this ship is on full battle footing at all times.”

His next step was to get his systems officers actively looking for the data breach. Just as Transport had been scouring the digital world looking for Dawn, TRACE’s spiders now went on the hunt for the leak in their own system. Amos knew all about back doors and the damage they could cause. In fact, he’d been the first one to find the back door in the original TRID system. Since that time, he and his programmers—including Dawn Beachy—had regularly infiltrated Transport’s system and used it to gain tactical superiority (or at least parity) in their fight with the government. Then when the BICE system was first introduced, it was intended to be a completely sterile environment—free from any flaws or bugs that could be exploited by the resistance. But that, like every such plan, was a fantasy. Amos, Dawn, and other techs sympathetic to the resistance had riddled the system with back doors and hacks—so much so that, in most cases, Transport didn’t even know that a good portion of the data sent through the BICE system at any one time flowed directly through portals and hubs run by TRACE.

The whole thing reminded Amos of a story he’d read about as a young man. An actual event that had really happened in the history of espionage. In 1969, the United States government rather unwisely entered a contract with their Cold War enemy, the Soviets, to build a new American embassy in Moscow. In order to speed the job along, and in the spirit of détente that existed at the time, in 1972 the Americans agreed to allow the Russians to build the embassy. The result was not just the most sophisticated bugging of a building in all of history (before the BICE enterprise, anyway). It wasn’t just that there were listening and recording devices throughout the building; that might have even been expected. And it wasn’t just that there were other, more difficult-to-discover bugs actually built into the building. The result was that, taken altogether, the entire structure became a huge radio device that could broadcast every single spoken and written communication taking place in the building to Soviet intelligence. The building itself could not be salvaged or fixed. Sophisticated new spying technologies, some that had never been known to exist before, were actually built into concrete structures, in supporting walls, and through the concrete floors. The new U.S. embassy did not have bugs. The embassy itself was a bug.

American intelligence knew that a bugging operation was going on, but their arrogance convinced them that once they had full access to the building, they’d be able to find and remove or neutralize all of the devices. As is often the case when institutional hubris is involved, they completely misjudged the enormity of their problem.

This situation roughly equated with what TRACE had been able to do with the TRID and BICE systems. But now it seemed the tables might be turned. TRACE had always used technology as an ancillary or support element in their war against Transport. Advanced technology was just another tool. Sometimes it even became a second front. But things were different now. With TRACE producing their own ships and increasingly relying on cyberwar as an element of their war plans, the SOMA had to be worried about his own systems being hacked and used against him. Maybe, like when the Americans had eventually learned about their embassy, it was already too late.

Well, he thought to himself, the geeks should be on our side, so at least we can rely on them—

As soon as he thought it, he knew it was wrong. When we’re on top, some of them will defect back to Transport. If they haven’t done so already. Among programmers and geeks there are always rebels—even rebels that rebel against the rebellion. Counter-revolution is revolution’s fickle twin. His shadow. Instability is the geek’s favorite environment, and anarchy is their oxygen. Now Amos made a mental note of what he’d learned. For decades his mantra had been that within every technological advancement lie the seeds of tyranny and slavery. Now, in his heart, he codified its natural consequent: any society or government that relies too heavily on technology will find itself perched perilously on a crumbling precipice over the valley of death and destruction. In the new world, the geeks had become gods—or devils, depending on how you looked at it. Perspective is everything after all.

The bombing of the City, the weak and transparent probing action near the shelf, and the half-hearted attack on the Tulsa… all of these things were pointing to the fact that somehow, he was missing something. Something rather large. All of this added to the pressure of trying to win the war while still maintaining his identity and humanity.

Sometimes he felt like he’d give anything to go back and just be Amish. If only there were a button he could push that would erase all of the technology and put everyone back on the farm for a few thousand years. Make them fight with rocks and sticks again, if they must fight.

I have such a button, he thought, and then shook his head. Okcillium gave him this power. He inhaled deeply and then exhaled.

Despotism and genocide are born in moments like this.

Amos examined the thin sheet of plastic handed to him by an ensign. The latest field reports. Most of the units engaging in surface operations did not have implanted BICE chips, and had to communicate through officers staged in base camps. He dropped the plastic sheet in a trash receptacle. The sheet display wouldn’t work for anyone but him, because it was EYES ONLY and was activated by his own BICE.

Most of the ground units east of the Shelf—between there and the AZ—were now functionally out of the fight. Transport wasn’t operating in the east anymore. Of course, that didn’t mean that their field agents and insurgency units weren’t still operating. Just as TRACE had once had resistance fighters and spies in place throughout the City, they also now had agents embedded in all the cities on the Shelf. East of the shelf though, everyone was just waiting. And there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Transport was now the insurgency in the east.

Amos looked at the ensign and nodded. “Activate Rayburn’s people and get him to a communication deck. I want to talk to him myself.”

The ensign nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“That’ll be all.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the ensign was gone, Amos popped another Q tablet and sat back in his chair. He didn’t really want to do any BICE work, and Dawn Beachy was offline for the time being, so he didn’t have anyone to talk to. But he took the pill because he liked the feeling, and it tended to smooth the edges. Made him feel calmer and more confident. Somehow, on the first wave of a hit of Q, his doubts and insecurities paled and faded. Not completely. They didn’t disappear altogether—that would be too much to ask of a drug that didn’t kill you in just a few years from insanity and addiction. For Amos, taking Q was like drinking a beer was to some other people. It leveled him out, helped him find some satisfaction in his otherwise stressful existence.

Just in case Dawn had reconnected and was trying to reach him, he pulled up and entered his control room, and when the floating cube materialized, he spun it slowly with his hand. He didn’t expect Dawn to be there. In fact, he’d arranged for her not to be available. All part of his plot to get his brother to dig deeper into the operation of his BICE. A pure Amish mind, flexible and resilient, systemically agnostic, and clear of technological biases… that was just what was needed at this moment. It was exactly what his own mind had been like when he’d first cracked the TRIDs and the early BICE units in 2075. Jed was now a tabula rasa, a clean slate—and also a very clever young man who wanted only the truth. Like I was once, Amos thought. For now, Jed was the perfect weapon. Transport wanted Jed because the government needed an unwitting spy and a propaganda victory. Amos wanted Jed because he needed victory.

Amos knew that Dawn wouldn’t be able to retrieve any DM until the Yoders had fulfilled their purpose, but he wanted to drop her a message anyway. He was just about to send her a DM when he remembered again to change his avatar so that he would appear as his real self. An old man. And that’s when he decided to get rid of his youthful avatar altogether. It was a vanity, a joke he was playing only on himself. He accepted fully, maybe for the first time, that he was past middle age, and to the rest of this young world he was just plain old. He flicked his wrist and brought up the box that asked him if he wanted to make his old man avatar his permanent one. He ticked “Yes” and then closed the profile cube.

He’d just reached out to touch his master cube, when the last person he would ever have expected to see at that moment appeared before him. His brother, Jed. With the exception of a new and scrawny beard, the boy looked exactly as Amos remembered him—the last time he’d seen him in the flesh.

The two brothers looked at one another, and did not speak for a moment as they each caught their breath.

It was Jed who spoke first.

“Amos,” he said with a nod.

Amos put his hands behind his back, then nodded in return. “Jedediah.” Then, “You got here faster than I’d expected.”

There was another extended period of silence before Jed spoke again. “Listen… Amos… I don’t know much about what’s going on, but I’m learning. I learned how to get here to talk to you. And I’ve also learned something else.”

“What have you learned, big brother?” Amos asked.

Jed scowled when he heard the emphasis Amos placed on the phrase big brother, but he shook off the urge to launch into a scathing attack on Amos.

“I figured out how they’re doing it,” he said.

Amos flinched. He wasn’t sure what Jed was talking about, and for a split second he had a flash of doubt. Perhaps this person standing before him wasn’t Jedediah at all? After all, his system had just recently been hacked. But then the doubt passed, at least for a moment. He’d expected Jed to get into the system and start figuring things out. In fact, he’d counted on it. Just not this soon. Maybe Jed was even more clever than his younger brother gave him credit for.

“Let’s not drag this out, Jed. What is it that you’ve discovered?”

Jed took a deep breath. He knew that he was out of his depth, but what he’d seen needed to be known. “First, I figured out that Transport is gathering tons of okcillium, and then I figured out how they’re doing it.”

Amos blinked. “What?”

“They’re ripping up the roads. Starting back in 2050 on Earth. That’s the real reason behind the laws to ban private transport. The okcillium is in the road base. It always has been.”

(26 THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY

The avatar that represented his younger brother disconcerted Jed. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but here before him was Amos as an old man, gray-headed and marked by years and the pressures of governing. It was tough to accept. But he knew it was Amos, or at least an accurate computer rendering of what his brother must surely look like.

“How did you work it out?” his brother asked. The old man looked at his wrist where a watch would be, even though he didn’t wear one. “It’s late Saturday morning, and you haven’t had much time. We’ll get to the okcillium and the roads in a minute. But I’m curious how you found me so fast. Here. In the system.”

Jed shrugged. “It started with the code AT10S. It showed up whenever you were looking over Dawn’s shoulder while she was training me. It was something in the picture that shouldn’t have been there. I didn’t see it when I was experiencing the training in real time, but later, when I went in as an observer using the COFFEE CAN password… I saw your code in the rendering.”

“I was watching and keeping tabs to make sure that Dawn didn’t disclose anything too soon,” Amos said, nodding. “But that code shouldn’t have been visible in the rendering. I know the code. You saw it because of who you are.”

“Too soon—” Jed said. He was about to pounce on this, but Amos continued.

“You’ve picked up the terminology and the engineering lingo pretty fast, brother,” Amos said. “Let me ask you a question: when you were milking Zoe, which one of her teats often had a mastitis problem?”

Jed stared at his brother for a long while. Then he realized that Amos still wasn’t sure about him. There was fear there. Almost latent and mostly hidden, but it was still there. The head of the resistance didn’t know if this avatar of his brother standing before him was perhaps being operated by some Transport hacker.

“That’s not a good question, Amos. After all, I could guess. I’d have a one in four possibility of getting it right.”

“Well, at least you know a cow has four quarters to her udder and four teats,” Amos said. “Not many Transport hackers would know that.”

“The answer is none of them, Amos. Zoe never had mastitis that I ever knew about. We only kept one milk cow and we cleaned her teats thoroughly every time we milked her. We never had the problems so many other farmers faced.”

“Okay then,” Amos said, “so tell me about this expansive technology vocabulary you have all of a sudden. How’d you come upon it?”

Jed nodded. “Dawn helped with that. She programmed a computing lexicon into my BICE. Every time I’m looking for a word or experiencing anything new when I’m in the system, the word appears almost before I realize I need it.” He fixed his brother with an accusatory glare. “And I suppose if she did that, it was because you told her to do it. She anticipated that I’d be mucking around in the system.”

“And from that you conclude… what?”

“That you knew I’d be doing this. That you planned it.” He pointed his finger at his younger brother. “This whole thing… all along. Your plan, ever since I first came here, wherever here is, was to get me into the system to help you. And you knew I’d never do it unless I decided to do so on my own. Everyone kept telling me, ‘We can’t tell you anything’ and ‘Your brother wants you to see it for yourself.’ And Dawn would say, ‘If you get sterile information without the context you’ll make wrong decisions.’ What that really meant was that you wanted me to be your puppet. You wanted me to hack into Transport’s system, for some reason I don’t know yet. And I did exactly as you planned.”

Amos waved his hand dismissively, as if to say none of that matters now. “So you saw the code. How did you figure out that it was me?”

Jed let out a derisive chuckle. “Changing the subject, huh? Your code was AT10S? Amos Troyer, tenth seat. You don’t think I remember school, Amos? It wasn’t that long ago for me. We Amish may only go through the eighth grade, but I was only eighteen when I left home. In fact, as crazy as it sounds to me now, I’m still only eighteen.”

Amos smiled, but there was pain in that smile. “And I’m sixty-seven, brother. Sixty-seven real years old.”

Now it was Jed’s turn to wave off Amos. He wasn’t in the mood to either embrace or sorrow over his brother’s troubles just yet. He put up his hand and continued his explanation. “Mrs. Holtzclaw numbered the desks in that one-room schoolhouse, and we had to file in and out of class by number. Our personal number—in your case 10S—was on anything and everything that had to do with school. Mine was 15S. That little bit of information came in handy just a short while ago when I needed to get into your files about me.”

“You’ve read your files, then?” Amos asked. His face was a mask. Jed couldn’t really read what was going on in his brother’s mind, except that none of this seemed to surprise him. It was almost as if Jed had completed some farming task, and now his brother was just pressing him to find out everything he’d done and in what order.

“None of this is that difficult, Amos,” Jed said. “You planted the code so I could see it. The rest of it follows easily.”

Amos shook his head. “Easily for you, Jed. Because of who you are and what you are. It’s like when we used to line up dominoes in patterns and we’d have so much fun watching them fall. The first one has to go, brother. If the first one doesn’t go, the rest don’t fall. You found and knocked over the first domino. It only seemed easy to you, well… because you’re you.”

Jed crossed his arms and just stared at his brother. There were so many things he wanted to say, but he didn’t want his emotions to take over.

“Sorry to interrupt you,” Amos said. “You were saying about the files?”

Jed uncrossed his arms and began to pace back and forth. “Yes. First I had to hack into your files,” Jed said.

“I see.” Amos had the air of a teacher interrogating a student. “And how did you manage that?”

“I used what I knew of you. I tried AT10S for your password, but that didn’t work. So I tried ‘Zoe’ and that didn’t work either. Then I tried ZOE10S. Still no luck. So then I took a wild shot at it. When you were twelve father bought you a cat. You called him Mr. Claws. So I typed in MRCLAWS and I was in.”

“Not very clever of me,” Amos said. “I should have set a better password.”

“Unless you wanted me following this trail,” Jed said. “Unless you wanted me rummaging around in your files. Many of the things I find seem to be placed there purposely for me. Like maybe the window from our barn I found in Pook’s antique store. Maybe that was the first domino.”

Just the hint of a smile touched Amos’s lips. “So what happened next?”

“I was in the door, but I couldn’t get anything to work. Your password had to be matched with data from your BICE, so next I had to look for a back door.”

“And how did you locate it?”

“From your interface, and using your AT10S code, I went to our old farm.” Jed noticed the smile start to spread across his brother’s face. “And then I went to our bedroom. You kept a coffee can—identical to the one I’d smashed flat to make the windowpane. You always stashed it under the bed, as if you didn’t think anyone would ever think to look there. And you kept all your secrets in it.”

“I was a simpler person back then,” Amos said, looking down. “And what did you find there, brother?”

“When I opened the coffee can, your whole system just opened up to me. I had free access.”

Amos was still smiling, and it irritated Jed to watch his brother gloat. It was as if he was proud of Jed or something.

“You’re still my little brother, Amos,” Jed said. “Don’t gloat.”

“I’m just very pleased with you,” Amos said. “You’re every bit as smart as I remember. It’s like I’m back in our room, listening to you explain how you solved a particularly perplexing puzzle.” Amos reached up and dried a tear that had slipped from his eye. “You were my hero, Jed. You still are.”

Jed didn’t reply. He just studied his brother. He still wasn’t sure what to think about everything that was happening, so for a minute he just stared… until his brother broke the silence.

“So then, you read my files?”

“Not a lot of them. I perused them. That was when I had the idea that Transport might have someone looking for Dawn. I went back to your files and started with every document that began with a ‘D’, and went through until I found your personal file on her. Her last name is Beachy. She was married. You presided at her wedding.”

Amos was silent now. His eyes scanned his older brother’s face. Jed wondered if the system was properly rendering his own real reactions—showing his brother something of what he was feeling.

Jed removed his hat and rubbed his head. “Once I found Dawn’s personal code, I changed it just a bit to make it look suspicious—though I’d stripped it of any real data—and then I took it back out of your BICE and I planted it in some innocuous history files I’d found on Transport’s open servers. Then I sat back and waited to see who would show up. When their spiders appeared and gathered the new data, I followed them back to their source. Something Dawn told me struck me then. She said, ‘Every system or program has a back door.’ I’d found one into your BICE, and I figured that if there was a back door into the TRACE Commander’s head, then there must be back doors everywhere.”

“So you went searching for a way into their system?”

“Yes. It actually wasn’t that hard to figure out,” Jed said.

Amos began to pace back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back. Jed noticed that the old man’s jaw worked as he thought, something he remembered young Amos doing when they were boys back on the farm. “We’ve obviously been in and out of their system for decades,” Amos said, “but I’m a little surprised to see you got in so easily. But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at all. How did you do it?”

“First, I stripped myself of all identifying information. Then I started by going to TRACE’s hubs and looking at what information they were getting when they interrogated their own spiders. I rightly guessed that Transport’s spiders were probably programmed by the same people, so I knew what type of information the portal would be looking for. Then I disguised myself as one of their spiders and I walked right in.”

“The back door was the front door,” Amos said.

“Yes, but I found out later that Dawn had done some hacking work on their system. She’s fundamentally rewired their security infrastructure so that if her own scanners detect a break-in, the standard data circles back around and obscures the breach. Basically she created a cloaking device for anyone at all who wants to hack into Transport’s system.”

Amos shrugged. “Who else would want to do such a thing? I mean… other than us?”

Jed put his hat back on and stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his broadfall pants. “I don’t know. I’m not an expert on any of this. I’m just pointing out that if I could get in there, then just about anyone else could too.”

“Are you suggesting that there could be a third party involved in our little war?” Amos asked.

Jed cocked his head to one side and then nodded. “I’d be surprised if there wasn’t.”

Amos pulled up a white screen and then turned to face Jed. “Tell me about the okcillium in the roads.”

Jed pulled up a document, and an embedded video began to play. It showed Transport machines ripping up the highways after the law was passed outlawing private transport. He muted the audio and spoke over the video as it played.

“Okcillium—the very existence of it—had always been a very closely held secret,” Jed said. “How you and your people in TRACE are getting your okcillium, I haven’t discovered yet. But when I started really digging into Transport’s real files—not just the ones they’ve sanitized and altered for public consumption, but their internal files—I saw some things that made me believe that recently—very recently—they’ve come upon a new source of okcillium.”

“A new source?” Amos asked.

“Actually, a very old one. It turns out that America’s earliest highways, including the interstate highway system, used a very specific mineral aggregate in their road base. A substantial portion of that mineral aggregate was mined in Oklahoma.”

“The only place in the old world where okcillium has been found,” Amos added.

“Right,” Jed said. “Okcillium was first identified in 2005, but it was in such trace amounts that it was almost disregarded, except as a scientific oddity. The U.S. government classified as Top Secret everything to do with okcillium, and since there were no large deposits discovered, very few people even cared about the discovery. Non-governmental scientists weren’t even let in on the find.”

Amos rolled his hand to indicate that he knew all of this. “Get to the part about the roads.”

“There isn’t much to figure out. Most of the okcillium in Oklahoma was dug out prior to anyone knowing what it was or that it even existed. It was in the mineral aggregate that went into the interstate highways. And now Transport knows about it, and they’ve gone back to rip up the roads and dig it out,” Jed said.

Amos nodded, but he didn’t speak.

“I guess I don’t see the point in sucking me into all of this, Amos,” Jed said. “Dawn could have done everything I’ve done, and probably faster.”

Amos smiled. “That’s where you’re wrong, brother. Dawn would never have found out about the roads.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because she would never have thought to look back in 2050,” Amos said.

There was silence again for the space of a few minutes, and during that time a very rudimentary avatar appeared in the room. Amos turned to the avatar and greeted it. The avatar had no identifying characteristics—just a plain face and no expression.

“Ah… Mr. Rayburn,” Amos said.

“It’s Pook,” the avatar said, “or just Rayburn. I’m not an officer, sir.”

Amos put his hands behind his back and approached Pook. “Well, that is an oversight I intend to remedy, Mr. Rayburn.”

“Why does his avatar look that crude?” Jed asked.

“Mr. Rayburn?” Amos said. “I take it that you’ve met my brother, Jed?”

“We’ve met,” Pook said without any emotion. Pook was all business.

Amos turned back to Jed and explained. “Mr. Rayburn does not have a BICE implant. The rendering you see here is done by a special helmet. He is also wearing—temporarily, of course—an electronic bracelet I invented that reads the movements of the ligaments in his hand. He can use his hand to interact with the system.”

“Interesting,” Jed said. He nodded at Pook. “Well… Mr. Rayburn…”

“Pook.”

“Okay, then. Pook. If you’ll just give me a moment with my brother, I want to finish up and then I have to get back.”

“Yes,” Amos said. “Jed here has farming to do.”

It was a jab, but Jed ignored it. He actually wanted to hurry and go look for Dawn, but he wasn’t going to let anyone know that. Pook’s avatar nodded, and then went dormant. Once it was clear that Pook was no longer there, Jed turned to his brother.

“TRACE,” Jed said.

Amos looked at Jed, but didn’t speak.

“The name of the resistance is ‘TRACE,’” Jed said. “I find that fascinating. All the documents I read said that only trace amounts of okcillium were found in 2005.”

“A coincidence.”

“Or maybe not. Maybe it’s like that window in the basement of Pook’s shop.”

Amos shrugged. “And what else, brother?”

Jed fixed his gaze on his brother once again. “I also find it interesting that Transport has suddenly come upon a source of okcillium, at the same time that you seem to be flush with it.”

“The coincidences are unrelated,” Amos said. “Correlation does not necessarily imply causation, and all that.”

“I have to go harrow Matthias’s new field,” Jed said.

“Send him my best.”

(27 LOST AND FOUND

Matthias rubbed his head and sat back in his chair. “This is a pretty fantastic story, Jed.”

“I know it is,” Jed said.

“And by ‘fantastic,’ I mean unbelievable.”

“I know.”

Matthias stood up and went to one of his kitchen cabinets. He pulled out a bottle of some clear liquid and a glass, then sat back down at the table.

“What’s that?” Jed asked.

“Rheumatism medicine,” Matthias said. “Gerald Miller makes it.”

“It’s booze?”

“Well, that is kind of a crude and English way to put it, but yes. I need something right now after hearing that story.” Matthias poured a small amount into the glass, then hesitated before taking a long pull directly from the bottle instead. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Do you want some?”

Jed shook his head. “No. I want to go find Dawn.”

“Right,” Matthias said, then he downed the liquor that was in the glass.

“So you say it’s unbelievable, Matthias. Does that mean you don’t believe me?”

Matthias laughed. “No. It doesn’t mean that. That’s why I needed the drink. I do believe you, and that is now my problem.”

Jed had told his friend the whole story. From the beginning all the way through to his conversation with his sixty-seven-year-old brother. Throughout the telling of it, his friend hadn’t said much at all. He’d asked a few questions now and then, especially when it came to the parts about the window with the coffee can pane, and the wild savage named Eagles with the green towel.

“So what are you going to do?” Jed asked.

Matthias pushed the cork into the bottle, walked to the cabinet, and put the bottle away. “I suppose I’m going to help you find your girlfriend.”

“She’s not my… well… she’s…”

“She’s your girlfriend and you love her, so we need to go find her,” Matthias said.

“Okay.”

Their conversation during the buggy ride was a little more animated than Jed had expected. Matthias was full of questions, particularly about the animated BICE visions and how Jed had hacked into his brother’s head. The questions didn’t stop until the two young men were standing on the Yoders’ porch and knocking on the door.

Marcus Yoder answered the knock, and when he opened it Jed could see that two of Marcus’s cousins—a husband and wife from the family that had been bringing food to Jed and Matthias—were seated in the great room. Matthias had arranged with Marcus to give Jed a tour of the farm, so Jed was a little curious as to why the other Yoders would be there.

Introductions were made, and Jed and Matthias were invited to sit.

“It is a strange thing, Jedediah Troyer,” Marcus said, “for visitation to be taking place on a Saturday. As you know—and I suppose it is still the way things are done back in the old world—every other Sabbath day is set aside for such things.”

“I understand,” Jed said, “and I’m very thankful that you were willing to receive us today.” He didn’t offer an explanation, though it was obvious Marcus and the rest of the Yoders were expecting one.

“Well, then,” Marcus said. “Shall we take a look around?”

Marcus Yoder gave them a fairly comprehensive tour. He started by showing the two friends his house, which was an unremarkable and very typical Amish dwelling. The cooking and lighting in the house was provided by either propane or natural gas, but Jed didn’t bother to ask which it was. There was a large area rug in the great room—something that was definitely not typical for an Amish house. Jed wondered to himself if the ordnung allowed for the rug, and he made a mental note to ask Matthias about it later.

There were five bedrooms in the large home, and the windows had green shades on them as the ordnung required. There were no closets—clothes were hung on pegs—so Jed didn’t have to go around peering behind closed doors looking to see where Dawn might be hidden.

After the tour of the dwelling, Marcus took them on a walk around the property. Jed was curious why Marcus didn’t take them directly to the large banked barn, and he wondered if maybe Dawn might be in there.

Yoder spent a long time showing his guests his plowing and farming implements, particularly (and maybe a little too pridefully) his new threshing machine—one that was operated using a large belt that, when it was in use, stretched to the barn where Jed assumed there would be either a tractor or a large generator.

“May we look in the barn?” Jed asked. He was getting anxious and a little impatient with the length and detail of the tour.

Yoder hesitated, but only for a moment. “Yes. Jedediah Troyer, if you’d like to see the barn, we can go take a look at it.”

Matthias looked at Jed and showed by the slightest furrowing of his brow that he wasn’t too pleased with Jed rushing the search.

“I have always loved barns,” Jed said, smiling, “and with Matthias having his barn-raising in a week, I’d really just like to take a look at yours, Marcus.”

The men walked to the barn in silence and the tension between the three was palpable. The things that were unsaid seemed to multiply as they walked, and Jed began to wonder what he would do even if he were to find Dawn in the barn.

When Marcus slid open the huge door, the darkness inside was a little disappointing to Jed. Part of him wished that the light would flood in and he’d see Dawn there, waiting for him to save her. Another part of him hoped that he’d been mistaken all along, and that Dawn wouldn’t be there at all. He did wonder why, if Dawn was being held in the barn, Marcus Yoder would freely allow Jed and Matthias to look there. Maybe he plans to capture us, too? Jed thought.

The three men walked tentatively into the barn because of the darkness.

“Let me go slide open the far door,” Marcus said. “Then we’ll have more light.”

When he walked away, Matthias leaned in and spoke into Jed’s ear. “What will you do if you find her here?”

Jed shrugged. “I don’t know.”

As the far door slid open and the light began to flood the large structure, Jed and Matthias held their breath. But Dawn was nowhere in sight. From all appearances, it was just an Amish barn.

“Do you mind if I look around?” Jed asked.

Marcus just nodded his head. While Jed poked around, Marcus and Matthias chatted. From what Jed could hear of their conversation, Marcus was asking Matthias about the details of his new barn that was scheduled to be built in just a week.

After a full inspection of the place, even the upper portions that included the hayloft and the cubbies for tack storage, Jed was unable to locate Dawn… or any place where she might be hidden.

“Satisfied?” Marcus asked.

It seemed to Jed that there was more to the question than an inquiry about a barn tour.

“I suppose I’ve seen everything I came to see,” Jed replied, and smiled.

They were back in the Yoders’ great room, which included the kitchen, and as Elizabeth Yoder was pouring lemonade for the four men Jed noticed the area rug again. It was out of place. It didn’t fit. It was like the AT10S floating in the sky in its incongruity. He spoke before he really had time to think about it, or gauge how his words might be received.

“I’d like to look under that rug,” Jed said, pointing at the floor

Yoder actually flinched. Jed saw it on his face and in his manner as the question rang through the silence in the kitchen. “Excuse me?”

“I’d like to look at the flooring under that rug,” Jed repeated. “Our district ordnung in the old world didn’t allow for such things, so I am interested in why it’s there.”

Yoder stared at Jed for a moment with a look that bordered on hostility. “The floor is damaged. That’s why the rug is there.”

“I’d like to look at it,” Jed insisted.

“This is not possible,” Elizabeth Yoder interrupted. She was tense, and somewhere in her look Jed could see that she was afraid, too. That’s when he became certain that Dawn was down there—somewhere.

He moved without premeditation. His body took over even while his mind was reeling. He was all emotion and intensity. He leapt forward and reached for the rug. Marcus Yoder moved forward too, as if to stop him, but Jed pointed a finger directly at Yoder’s face, stopping the man in his tracks. “Stand back,” Jed said firmly.

He pulled the rug and then flipped it back on itself, exposing the cellar door that was built into the floor.

“Stop!” Elizabeth yelled. “It’s not what you are thinking!”

Jed reached for the cellar door and pulled it open. “What am I thinking?” Jed said. There was fire in his eyes.

“I see that you are violent, like your brother,” Marcus said, but he didn’t move to stop Jed from going down the steps.

“I’m nothing like my brother,” Jed snapped.

The space under the kitchen was dark, and when Jed reached the bottom of the stairs he could only see faintly into the room. What he could see, however, made him catch his breath.

His heart pounded in his chest. Dawn was there. Tied to a chair. Her eyes met his and he could see by the expressive movement around the eyes that she was excited to see him. He pulled out his knife, and in seconds he had the ropes cut. Dawn fell into his arms, and he pulled the gag off. She spit out another rag that had been stuffed into her mouth, and her hand came up to massage her jaw.

“Jed!” she said, as soon as she could speak.

Jed steadied her and lifted her to her feet. “I have you.”

“I knew you’d come.”

“Let’s get you out of here.” He looked up, and Yoder was standing at the top of the steps.

“Jedediah,” Yoder said. “Don’t jump to conclusions. We work for the SOMA. For your brother.”

“That’s impossible,” Jed said.

Yoder leaned into the darkness, and only then could Jed see the Amish man’s face. “It’s true,” Yoder said.

Just then, Jed heard a commotion above him. Shots rang out, and he heard loud thumps, as if bodies were landing hard on the floor over his head.

“What—” he started, but Dawn grabbed him and pulled him away from the stairs and into the shadows just as something struck Yoder from behind and he tumbled down the stairs. Blood poured from wounds to his neck and the back of his head.

The figure of a man appeared where Marcus had stood, the light from behind him causing him to appear as just a menacing silhouette. Dawn and Jed tried to push themselves farther back into the shadows.

“Just come on up here, Jed Troyer and Dawn Beachy,” the man said. “Let’s get this over with.”

Jed knew the voice, but he couldn’t quite place it. Who could it be?

“Get up here,” the voice said, “now!”

Dawn leaned forward even though Jed tried to pull her back. “I know that voice,” she said.

“Then get moving,” the voice said.

Dawn stepped out and, avoiding the body of Marcus Yoder, held tightly to Jed’s hand and pulled him forward too. “Teddy Clarion,” she said.

“Only my mother calls me Teddy,” the man said. And that’s when Jed knew. It was the Transport official who’d captured them in the No Man’s Land west of the City. The man who had killed Conrad and Rheems.

“I’ll give you five more seconds, and if you aren’t up here, I’ll come down and kill you there,” Clarion said.

When Jed emerged from the cellar, he felt as though he were entering some kind of nightmarish alternate universe. The same serene Amish great room in which he’d sat politely just moments earlier had now been stained by violence and death. The bodies of Elizabeth Yoder, her husband, and Matthias lay lifelessly on the floor, blood pooling around them. Jed could only stare in shock at his friend Matthias, a good and peaceful man who now lay facedown in his own blood. Four Transport officers in full battle gear stood around the room, eyeing Jed and Dawn warily.

“Your time is up,” Clarion said. “We’d hoped to use you two for… morale purposes… among the plain people here, but you just couldn’t leave things alone, could you, Mrs. Beachy?”

Dawn didn’t reply.

“You should have known we’d find out you were trying to help the boy.”

Dawn sneered. “You brought me here. What did you think I’d do?”

“We hoped that we could just hold you and produce you if ever Jed here needed convincing,” Clarion said. “Of course, we didn’t know at the time that our insiders here, the Yoders, were working with the rebels too.”

“There seems to be a lot you didn’t know,” Dawn said.

“I know what happens next,” Clarion said, smiling.

“I’m a soldier,” Dawn said.

“Soldiers die.”

“Then we all know where we stand,” Dawn replied.

Clarion didn’t speak again. He turned and gave some orders to his men, and as he did, Jed noticed a slight motion on the floor. He glanced down at Matthias and saw his friend’s hand move. Matthias was still alive!

“Hold it!” Jed shouted, and when Clarion looked at him, Jed acted like he’d been speaking to the Transport men, rather than to his friend.

“We’ll hold nothing,” Clarion replied with a smirk and raised his weapon. “Like I said. Time’s up.”

The noise was deafening as the windows of the Yoder house exploded inward and the green blinds were ripped from their moorings. Jed sensed the impact coming before it came, or perhaps he’d seen a shadow move through the blinds, but in any event he grabbed Dawn firmly by the arm and, as the impact happened, pulled her to the ground.

Clarion and his men reacted slowly. Too slowly. And most of them were dead before they’d even realized what happened. The windows of the Yoder house imploded as men smashed through them simultaneously. Jed recognized Pook Rayburn as he pulled the trigger on his pistol and fired the shot that hit Teddy Clarion in the head, killing him. The wild man named Eagles appeared like a specter behind one of the Transport soldiers and, lightning-fast, produced a knife from somewhere in his mass of odd and mismatched clothing and cut the soldier’s throat, throwing him to the ground.

Flying head first through the far window, Jerry Rios hit the floor and rolled, and came up shooting, taking down the last two soldiers. In the blink of an eye all of the Transport fighters were dead or dying.

Eagles, the unkempt savage, was standing in front of Dawn and Jed with a bloody knife clutched in his mammoth hand, and when the two looked up at him he smiled. There was a huge wad of tobac in his mouth, and saliva—mixed liberally with greenish particles and pieces of glass—was in his beard. He was the most beautiful thing that Jed had ever seen, other than Dawn.

Spittle flew from Eagles’s mouth as he shouted triumphantly. “Goa Eeguls saving the Amish boy and girl!” He lifted his hands into the air dramatically. “Ta-daa!”