Chapter 12

Month 80—August in LA

THE PLAN WORKED. Mostly. Cali and I went by transporter to my house. Ubie had checked out our arrival location with drones before we made the transfer and confirmed the house was empty.

“Ubie, we need some kind of one-way shielding for the windows of my car so people can’t see who’s driving it or who the passengers are,” I said.

“I’m not as skilled with nanites as Confederacy AIs,” Ubie responded. “They’d just attach themselves to the windows to block light and you wouldn’t be able to see out, either. I can give you some one-way tinted screens to attach to all the windows. They’re in the replicator.”

“That will do this time,” I laughed. “Okay, Cali, let’s go.” We headed for the garage to apply the screens.

“Uh ... Cali? I think you should go back to the island real quick and put some clothes on,” I said. “Not that I want you covered up, but you’re going out in Los Angeles.”

“Oh, my God! I didn’t even think. Be right back.” By the time I had all the plastic-like film attached to the windows, Cali was back, dressed in a fairly conservative—for California—slacks and blouse. She even had a little cap on her blonde curls.

“That looks great. So, you know the plan. You pick up the refugee and hightail it to your house. Dakota said you have an empty spot in the garage so you can pull in, right?”

“Yeah. I hope we didn’t leave anything there, like the lawnmower,” Cali giggled.

“Good. I hope you’re right. So, you pick up our refugee and head to your place. You enter from the garage and spread out the transporter. I’ll join you there. You and the refugee...”

“And her kid,” Cali inserted.

“Oh, yeah. We’ve got a kid on this run, don’t we? Shit. Well it should be okay. It’ll be here before anything really significant happens. So, once you are all inside, you spread out this transporter pad. Ubie will take control as soon as you have it open. You’ll take our rescues through to the island. When you’re here, you’ll get them settled in with Dakota. I’ll transport from my house to yours. I’m going to find a good place in your house to conceal the pad. Dakota suggested your closet.”

“Why my closet?” Cali asked.

“Because,” I smirked, “your wife tells me you don’t have that many clothes since you don’t usually wear them.” Cali blushed. “Anyway, as soon as I’m reasonably comfortable that the place is secure, I’ll get in my car and drive back here. I’m leaving one of my garage door openers in your car and taking one of yours. When I get home, I’ll leave the garage door open and walk around the front of the house to check out something. That will establish that I’m home. Then I’ll go back inside and close the garage door. I’ll stay a day, just to make sure people know I’m there. They’re not used to seeing me much because I’m a recluse. As soon as I think it’s safe, I’ll transport back to the island.”

“Got it, Boss. Thanks for mansplaining that. We’ll get it set up.” I snorted and handed her the keys, making sure the extra garage door opener was on the seat. Cali gave me a kiss on the cheek and took off.

I waited.

It took a lot longer than we anticipated. Nearly three hours later, I got the signal that the transporter had been set up and was clear. I transported to Dakota and Cali’s house and concealed the pad in a closet. I chose a different closet than Dakota had suggested because it seemed the clothes in the closet would better conceal the pad. Then I drove home, noting the new garage door opener on the seat of my car.

Late the next day, I got back to the island.

Month 80—August on Anouilh

“WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?” I demanded as soon as I saw Cali. “It shouldn’t have taken more than an hour to pick up the target and get to your house. I was near panic!”

“Don’t worry, Boss. When I got to our community, I realized I didn’t have a garage door opener for our house with me. You can’t open the gate to the community without your opener,” Cali explained. “I had to call for a security guard to come to the gate and check my ID. Then I had to register your car. It took a while. Then, because I didn’t have a garage door opener, I had to get out of the car and manually enter the code for the garage door. Just as the door was about to open, Mr. Merrill next door waved at me and started chatting about having not seen us in a few days. I had to explain we were doing a lot of location work and I’d just flown back to get things ready for Dakota before she came home. By the time I got back to the garage door, I couldn’t make the code work. I had to call the security company and get the code reset before I could open the fucking garage door.”

“Jesus Christ! Everything was okay after that?” I asked.

“Pretty much. Summer and Leon were frantic, scrunching down in the back seat for nearly an hour while I did all the negotiations. I had to fix them a little something to settle down when we finally got inside. Then I got the pad set and realized it was in view of our picture window. I pulled the drapes, but moved upstairs to the bedroom to spread the pad and transport from there.”

“Well, it looks like everything worked out. For future transports, we should mix up the sequence. Transport to your house and pick up the target then return to your house. Same with my house. And about every third or fourth pickup, we transport to one house and drive to the other house. We need to keep mixing it up,” I said.

“We have a system now,” Dakota said. “We’ll handle it from here. There’s no sense in you being involved with pickups.”

“Thanks. Just make sure we have room for anyone we pick up and that Ubie has cleared the site before you transport,” I said. “Okay?”

“Okay, Boss.” I took one more look at their bare tits as they kissed and turned away.

Month 86—February on Anouilh

“RED, WHAT THE FUCK is taking so long with that strafer glitch? You’re supposed to be a hotshot programmer. The strafers keep shutting down in combat tests.” I didn’t rag on my team too much, but things were getting tense. We had over two hundred women and a few dozen kids in residence. I was impatient to get some crew to our ship—which was still at least a year away. Everything was behind schedule.

“A Hawk. The strafer is a Hawk. Call it by name. Our fucking AI keeps getting in the way. Everything I do, it keeps interrupting and telling me, ‘No, you can’t do that. I spend half my time arguing with it,” Red Star yelled. He was a little guy and probably hadn’t taken a break to shower in the past few days. The room was ripe.

“Ubie! What’s the problem?” I shouted at the ceiling.

“Boss, you cannot use intelligent entities on suicide missions unless they specifically volunteer,” answered the AI.

“They’re unmanned.”

“They have sophisticated computers that have the potential to become self-aware beings. You cannot simply order them to their own destruction,” the AI insisted.

“Oh, holy mother of God! Mark!” The core engineer, as usual, was alseep at the table. Narcolepsy.

“Yeah. I can configure an artificial intelligence that is not self-aware,” Mark answered as if he’d been listening to the heated discussion. “And shut up, Uberman. It won’t even be related to you. If you start treating every computer like it’s a self-aware being, I’ll buy you a membership in PETA.”