Time Salvager (Time Salvager #1)(107)
Hameel looked uncomfortable. “It will take time to replicate. Neural bugs are rarely used, for obvious reasons. Once it’s in the handler’s system, it will take time for it to latch on to his synaptic nerves and transmit his thoughts. Director, I have to officially protest—”
“I expect word as soon as Smitt’s morning regimen has been dosed,” Young said, struggling to stand. “I want that detector removed as soon as we receive word about the fugitive’s location. Not a word outside this room. Now get out of here.”
FORTY-ONE
BIG BROTHER
There was a bright yellow flash followed by James hunched over puking up his lunch. He exhaled as a second surge of vomit crawled up his throat and dribbled out of his mouth. He counted down from ten and exhaled, and then added another ten-count. When his mind and stomach cleared, he stood up and took a deep breath.
Everything looked much different than it had just a few seconds ago. In the present, the city had long been abandoned, a giant metal relic half-sunk into the brown ocean. He was standing in a park, except in his time, all the soil, grass, and trees had long since washed away. In their place, several meters of dried ocean mud caked the ground, angled at a thirty-degree slant.
The dome above him now was clear with the sun just appearing in the northeast. In the present, the glass was shattered, with only a few jagged edges still remaining. The sun in the present was too weak to penetrate the heavy soot clouds that perpetually covered this entire area.
“Are you all right?” There was a note of concern in Grace’s voice. “You’re reacting worse to it every time you jump.”
“Don’t worry about me,” he said through gritted teeth. “Remember, keep the chatter low. The neural bugs here can’t detect you, but my brain waves might react in a way they can detect.”
“I do pay attention to the briefings, James.”
James was standing on the grass in a large park with a row of perfectly trimmed hedges on one side and a grouping of evenly spaced trees on the other. A marble path to his left cut through the center of a sea of green grass and made a right turn at the far end. He jumped into the hedge and nestled deep into the vegetation. Being caught on the grass was a level-two offense. He had fifteen minutes to prepare for the next few hours.
James checked the time: 5:43 A.M. Seventeen minutes until the night curfew lifted. He’d have to stay in hiding until then. Jumping in thirty minutes before the curfew lifted was optimal for a chronman in this time period. Jump any earlier and he would be moving through curfew, where the security eye patrols were highest. Coming in any later, during operating hours, carried a high risk of being seen. The city was crowded with people who would report him in an instant.
James cleared his mind and steadied his breathing, putting his body through the mental exercises he had learned at the Academy when acclimating to the specifics of this time period. There was a mental calmness that a chronman had to maintain when moving through the Publicae Age. James stayed very still in the bushes and breathed in and out in an almost meditative state. When he felt prepared, he opened his eyes and stared at everything in his field of vision, making sure each identified item filled up his entire active thought.
The blade of grass was green. Green and symmetrical. Symmetrical and trimmed. Trimmed to the edge of the walkway. The walkway was clean. Clean like the air. Purified air was life. Life was the morning. Morning was the sun. His thoughts continued on, occupying his mind so that stray thoughts that could betray him would not be detected by the neural bugs.
“It’s six A.M., James,” Grace said, her voice evenly measured and monotone.
James stood up and jumped onto the grass. Standing on grass was being wrong. Being wrong was undesirable. Undesirable was committing offense. Offense to society was violating the social contract. Social contract was Adonia.
James walked down the path. He saw the first neural bug perched on one of the light poles off to his right farther down the walkway. By this time, he had calmed his heart rate and cleared his mind. The AI band would pass along the proper forged identity to the system, but there was no way to mask an active brain scan, and in Adonia, there was no escaping those.
He felt a slight buzz, as if an invisible hand had just brushed his hair as he walked nonchalantly under the neural bug, its flickering blue light following him like a watchful eye. James kept his thoughts empty and his emotions suppressed as he turned the corner. In the distance, roughly forty meters away, was the next neural bug.
The path led to a statue up on a small grassy hill overlooking the entire park. To any of the security eyes, he was a devout Adonian making his morning pilgrimage, which, while not necessary, was a common and approved-of behavior.
Behavioral approval is important. Importance is proper. Proper is good citizenship. Good citizenship is devotion. Devotion is pilgrimage.
The statue was of two robed men, mirror images in every way, studying each other for discrepancies. The plaque below them read:
HAPPINESS IS UNIFORMITY OF MIND AND ACTION
2253
“Whoever said the Technology Isolationists were the precursor of these carbon-copy idiots were morons,” Grace grumbled. “Twisted and stupid.”
“Both of your factions believed in isolationist superiority.”
“Yes, but that’s the extent of it. We understood that intelligence and creative differences went hand in hand.”