Chapter 15: Explanation
When I looked up at Austin, I was conflicted.
Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to see him. I had figured that he had just saved my life. I was naïve to think I could escape on my own. But I was also devastated. I had let myself believe that I would finally get out of the city. See the world, get away from this place. Now, instead of escaping the city, I was in some weird warehouse with a boy who I seemed to know more than anybody else.
“How did you find me?” I asked. He smiled and beckoned me towards a couple of chairs around a table.
“No need to thank me for saving your life,” he laughed.
“Assuming you’re telling me the truth.”
“I am. They scan every box that crosses the border. A mouse doesn’t cross without them knowing about it. Surprised your dad didn’t tell you about that.”
“He doesn’t talk to me much these days. How did you find me?” Austin tapped his computer tablet and a map of the city flashed onto the screen. On it glowed dozens of moving green lights.
“The police know the whereabouts of everyone in the city. Drones record the time and direction of every resident. If they want to scrub through time, they can track your movements to days, weeks or months ago. Their only limitation is storage.” His statement seemed farfetched, even for the security conscious justice department.
“And how does a teenage boy come across this information?” I raised my eyebrow as if to question his facts. He shook his head as if to say it was none of business. I shook a finger back at him. “Come on, if you want me to believe you, you have to give me something.”
“Fine.” He tossed a picture at me. I looked at older man, the same age as my dad, in a police uniform. He had Austin’s eyes and nose.
“Your dad? Does he know what you’re doing?”
“No.” Austin averted his eyes downward. “He died three years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” I already regretted my question. “It’s none of my business.”
“It’s okay, it’s just the accident was so … stupid. He was chasing a criminal who resisted arrest. Both he and a drone tried to restrain the criminal but the drone was too intense. It missed the criminal and hit Dad the side of his head with its metal arm. Dad hit a metal rail and suffered a concussion. He died in his sleep the next night. There was a big inquiry and they were supposed to change the safety protocols of the drones as result.”
“Did they?”
“I don’t think so. Dad was an IT expert and had a lot of police equipment at home for testing. I was so angry that I was going to demolish all of his equipment. Funny thing was that for such a computer whiz, he had very poor password protection. I was able to hack in, and the city, in its typical inefficiency, never cut his access off after his death. I’ve been able to view a lot of things that no one else outside the justice department would ever see. Believe me now?” He pointed at the table.
I looked at the screen and noticed two green lights in close proximity. I touched the screen and it magnified the area. My name (last name first) appeared above one of green lights. I double-tapped and a word balloon with my age, height and other stats appeared.
“What? They catalogue how I look? They know my weight!” Lacey would dispute any number they posted on her. His access made sense but it made me mad. I felt naked. Not only did the machines know where I was every moment of the day, they kept statistics on me. I felt like an athlete with his own collectible card. Except everyone had one. I noticed a light had faded from view.
“What’s happening here?” I pointed. Austin leaned in closer to me.
“Our movements are tracked, but not 100% of the time. For instance, if you walk into a building where there are gaps in positioned cameras, your light becomes transparent.”
“So you can become untraceable.”
“Not quite. Your location is estimated based on your speed and footsteps. However, if you walk into a basement or tunnel where you can’t be seen, you could stop and the map would think you were here,” he pointed to the end of a building “when you actually remained still. And there are other ways to evade the drones.”
“How?” I move closer.
“Become someone else.” Okay, now he had my attention.
“You make it sound so easy.”
“It actually is.” He took a picture of me with his tablet and saved the image to his desktop. I made a face.
“I look horrible. It must be the light in here,” I said as Austin smiled back at me.
“The human eye can only detect a fraction of the information that a drone can. The drone even has your specs on file. When it scans you, it identifies several of your features, like the color of your eyes, shape of your nose, fullness of your lips.” Is he coming on to me? “It also measures your height, notes the color of your clothes…”
“Get to the part where I become someone else.” Rather than tell me, he showed me. In my digital image he changed the color of my shirt, made me look heavier and lengthened my nose. “If you are trying to make me look better, this is a major fail,” I added.
“Not trying to make you better, just different. See, the drones still have you in their system under specific measurements, if you add some platform shoes, change your clothes, stretched your face with some facial prosthetics — you could walk right by under the right circumstances.”
“Which are?”
“You need to be in a busy place. You need distractions, and sometimes you may want to carry multiple disguises.”
I sat down in my chair and tried to process the information.
“You’re the same age as me, yet you know more about this city than anyone. Does your mother know what you are doing?” He shook his head, and judging from his face, it wasn’t a topic he wanted to discuss. He was silent for a while, and just when I was going to have to ask him another question, he answered.
“We don’t have time to talk about my life. Just be grateful that I saved yours.” I could hear frustration in his voice. His dad’s death had obviously hurt him. Thinking about my mom filled me with a similar loss. I decided to take another approach.
“Okay. Thank you. I was stupid. If you hadn’t redirected that container — however you did that — I would be in a lot of trouble.” I turned my attention back to his tablet. “Who are all the lights on the screen?” I pointed.
“Friends, family, persons of interest.” The way he said the last phrase, I knew ‘persons of interest’ weren’t the people he liked.
“Won’t you get into trouble if you get caught? Never had a stalker before.” I tried to make a joke.
“You’ve always had a stalker, Pene. You just never knew. We all do. I’m just breaking into a feed that the police already use to follow interesting people. To prevent crime. You can imagine what would happen if the public found out about this.” He sounded so serious.
“Half the people wouldn’t care and would buy the city’s propaganda that it was only being done to keep us safe.”
“Exactly. But with this knowledge, we can change things. We can make sure we can watch the watchers. And if we get really lucky, change the way the law controls our lives.”
I considered Austin’s words carefully. He meant well, and he certainly had more going on in his head than most teenage boys my age. I could see the appeal of what he was pursuing. An overbearing police force that was constantly watching over our shoulder. I had to give him credit for what he had accomplished.
“You’re dedicated. You know more about how our city works than most adults. I wish you luck in changing things. But I just want to out of here, away from my teachers, away from my dad, away from this city. Do you know of a way I can escape?” As I looked at Austin, I could see the disappointment in his eyes.
“Do you understand, Pene? I’ve just showed you how this city works. How people’s every move is controlled and observed. We have a chance to change this. To set people free. And your first thought is to run away?”
“Who is this ‘we’? Are there more people out there besides you who know what’s going on?”
“Yes and no.” He sat down and slumped in his chair. “Yes, there are others. But no, I don’t know who they are.”
“What?” I threw up my hands. “Do they read your mind?”
“I wish,” Austin replied, not realizing I was mocking him. “We have to communicate old school. No technology. There is no electronic communication that the police can’t listen in on. So we have to send messages to each other, often in code and never with our real name. That way if the message is intercepted, it won’t lead them back to me.”
“Lola!” She appeared next to me just as my brain kicked in. “You were trying to send a message to the runner?”
“Exactly. Her programming does not connect itself to the network, so she can’t be controlled.” He pulled a piece of paper from under her collar. “Read this.” I grabbed the piece of paper.”
‘evlf tusffu tjy bn’. It didn’t make sense. I stared at it, but it was gibberish. I’m terrible with puzzles — whatever the code, my brain couldn’t solve it.
“Is it English?” I asked.
“Typical teenager, no patience,” he added.
“Last time I looked you were a teenager too.”
“Relax.” He held up his hands in mock outrage. “Maybe you should just take a step back.” He walked backwards as if to illustrate his clue. I could strangle this guy right about now. But before I could put my arms around his throat, it came to me.
Go back one letter. I subtracted one letter from the sentence and came up with ‘Duke Street six a.m.’ It was so simple.
“Pretty clever. So this is how you communicate?”
“Usually. With codes or symbols, and then we destroy the message. Paper, rocks, chalk, anything that won’t stick around. I use Lola since she has no network to be controlled like a drone.”
“Or noticed in a crowd,” I added. Then I thought about what he was saying. “How many of you are there?”
“Maybe six, definitely no more than ten.”
“Are they kids like us?”
“Not sure. We don’t celebrate birthdays,” he mocked. I made a face at him. “I honestly don’t know. We don’t communicate very much and never meet. A couple seem like adults by the language they use.”
“What do you talk about?”
Austin stood up to stretch and started to pace. “Lots of things. Like — are all other cities under the same security? Ways to avoid drones. Is the justice system corrupt?”
“Any answers?”
“Mostly theories. Someone suggested that the terrorists are still directing the city. Another person said there is master computer that is controlling all computer systems. One of the guys,” Austin leaned closer to me, “thinks that aliens are watching us.” I rolled my eyes. Although the more I thought about it, who says anyone’s guess is any sillier than the others?
“So what do you and your friends want? Isn’t it hopeless? We’re outnumbered by thousands to one. The drones never sleep, they come in all sizes and shapes. They can fly, they can run and they can swim. They’re faster than us. You’re kidding yourself if you think you can defeat them one on one.” Desperation crept into my voice and Austin moved next to me.
“That’s why we need to know where the drones are stored. They must go somewhere for repairs and modifications. No one has been able to follow them to their base. They just seem to appear, and someone must be building them. If I know where they are stationed, then we can destroy that building or disable the whole group of them. Once that’s done, you can escape.”
I considered his request.
“Put a tracking bug on one of them — see where it goes,” I offered.
“Silly girl. If it was that easy, why would I need your help? The drones get scanned at the end of a twenty-four-hour shift. Any foreign bodies are studied and destroyed. It’s impossible to follow or bug them.”
“What makes you think I can find their location? I tried following a drone today and that was a disaster.”
“Your dad! He’s within the Justice Department. He can find out — use one of his police or judge friends to find out.”
“My dad and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms. He’s probably not going to just give me the location.”
“You’re a smart and motivated girl. I’m sure you’ll come up with a plan.” He smirked.
He was right. I was motivated. And I realized that I wasn’t going to get out of the city on my own or without years of wading through red tape. It was a deal worth taking.
“You got yourself a deal.” I grabbed his hand to seal the deal. He smiled back at me as if I had become part of his team.
And then I knew what I had to do next.