Chapter 180: On The Lam

Tuesday, May 3 to Friday, May 6, 2005

Vanessa's paranoia about being followed was a good attitude for me to emulate, so when I was out of Corvallis I did a similar test, turning into a side road, driving a mile or two, then pulling off the road and killing my lights just after I'd gone around a corner that blocked visibility. There was no sign of pursuit, so I returned to the main highway, and just went north.

When Vanessa had first talked about me going on a road trip until Friday, I'd imagined going 'around the block', something like north to Salem, west to the coast, south, then inland back to Corvallis. But I'd realized that was thinking too small. I'd be too easily intercepted as there's basically only one road down the coast. After thinking about it for a few minutes, it seemed that the further I was away from Corvallis, the less chance there was of me being found, so I decided to go quite a long way north and then head east.

Driving a car registered to the Williamses was not ideal, but replacing it was difficult. I couldn't see a car rental place giving a car to a 15-year old even if he did have a license. Giving them my fake ID might cause all sorts of trouble if they could do online checks of licenses. I had no idea whether they could, but it seemed like something they'd want to do, and it would immediately result in the police being called.

I wasn't going to steal a car, which left buying one, which I didn't like either. It'd use up a good chunk of my cash, there could be ID troubles again, I wouldn't want to have a breakdown. I'd also have to stash Julia's car somewhere because I didn't want to sell it, as that'd be an extremely suspicious transaction if the investigators did a search on vehicles owned by the Williamses. I decided to go as far north as I could before refueling, so if they looked for my car by asking gas stations, they'd have to ask a ridiculous number of them.

In just over three hours - a good chunk of which was spent battling my way through Portland, even at that time of night - I was two hundred miles away from home, in Olympia, WA, the road heading inland toward Seattle. Dad's parents live in Seattle, but I certainly wasn't going to go there. I needed gas and food shortly after Olympia, so I pulled into a gas station. While paying, I noticed a rack of flyers that included a brochure for a fishing lodge. That gave me a better idea than I'd had before, so I changed my plan. I finished paying, then drove south, back into Olympia and took WA-8 west.

Twenty odd miles west took me to a small township called McCleary. I found a secluded place to park, locked the car's doors, and settled down for a succession of 30-minute naps, using my ability to order myself to sleep for that time. I went to sleep, woke up, looked around to see if everything still looked safe, and then went back to sleep again, until the stores opened.

When I woke up after my first nap it was damned cold. I had the idea of ordering my body to feel warm. It took me a little while to imagine what warmth felt like, and then my order worked. After a few more seconds I worried that it might not be a good idea, because maybe my body was burning a lot of calories. I'd bought some food at the gas station, but not as much as I'd wanted because I didn't want the attendant to remember me, and I'd already eaten all of it. I canceled the warm feeling, instead merely ordering myself to sleep.

I ended up getting more hours of sleep than I normally required, which I thought was a good idea in case things got difficult later. When the town started coming to life, I started up the car and went looking for breakfasts (plural, as I had two of them in different places, to avoid being memorable).

Then I went shopping for cheap clothes, several days' food (none of which needed cooking), and a few other odds and ends: toothbrush and -paste, a flashlight, two blankets, a gym bag, a can opener, Swiss Army pocket knife, some books, etc.

When my purchases were loaded into my car, and I was ready to go, I drove to a public phone I'd noticed earlier. I turned on my cellphone. There were no messages from anyone, which surprised me, so I turned my cellphone off, then dialed Mom's work number on the public phone.

Once I got through to her, Mom said, "Hi Mark. Vanessa tells me you're tied up in LA for a few days?" Mom's voice sounded normal and not particularly concerned, so she presumably believed that story.

"Yeah. No big deal. The business is more complicated than we thought. Early indications are good, but I'm going to be VERY busy by the looks of it. I'll check in from time to time, probably once a day. I'm concentrating on stuff nearly all the time so my cellphone's turned off, so don't worry if you can't get through if you call it. I'm trying to get finished here as quick as I can, so I can get home to some meals where the cook knows how much I need to eat."

"Haha. Good to know I'm appreciated for something."

There was a little more, but just the usual mothering stuff, like, "What about clothes? You didn't expect to be away so long."

"Mom, they have clothing stores in LA, and Julia hasn't been my girlfriend so long that I've forgotten how to buy clothes. It's already taken care of. Time for me to get back to the grindstone. I'll talk with you later, probably tomorrow because I think I'll be working late tonight. Bye."

I hung up, got in my car, and drove off to the west. A couple of streets away I started a loop which took me back to the main highway heading east on WA-8.

I passed through Olympia and kept going east on I-5, then I-90. My little 'jiggle' west to McCleary had been to confuse any pursuers. Driving north from Corvallis takes you straight to Puget Sound, at which point you're forced to either turn west or east, or get wet. By phoning from McCleary in the morning, I hoped that any pursuers would think I was heading west toward the coast. Instead I was heading inland, to go fishing on one of the lakes. It seemed to me that the only way the baddies could find me was to find my car first. Parking it at some remote fishing lodge seemed a good way of making that difficult. I had a map that showed several lakes inland, so I headed toward them.

I had plenty of time for memory tests while I was driving. The usual tests were easy and simple, so we got more creative. For example, mind #1 created an algebra problem and sent it to #3. #3 had to retrieve the knowledge necessary to answer it, and did so fairly easily. It required some effort, but not much. #3 was 'indexing' into the knowledge far better than we'd managed yesterday.

To make the test even harder, after sending another problem to #3, #1 concentrated on NOT letting #3 retrieve any knowledge. #3 was able to solve the problem, presumably by retrieving the knowledge from #2, but it was noticeably more difficult, presumably because #2 didn't know what the problem was, and therefore didn't know what memories were required to solve it. Another test we did was to have both Algebra-knowledgeably minds refusing to allow their knowledge to be accessed after the problem was sent, which stopped #3 cold.

We tried many other combinations, and the final result was that our memory sharing ability was usefully better than it had been yesterday. It wasn't perfect, as the owner of a memory could access it much easier than someone else, and it was even more difficult if the owner didn't know what the retriever wanted. We thought it was now good enough - we hoped - that we no longer had to fear the multiplicity of prerequisites in our college courses. As a simple example, #1 and #2 knew algebra, but we thought #3 and #4 could successfully study next year's algebra course. It'd be slower and take more effort, but we thought it was doable. Plus we expected our memory accesses to continue to get better, although we had ZERO idea of how that was being achieved, other than "Our body is getting better," which wasn't exactly a detailed explanation from which accurate predictions could be made.

I drove a long way, all the way across Washington and into Idaho. I had a little, hopefully helpful idea. I stopped to buy a set of screwdrivers, then in every town I passed through, I drove around a little looking for a car of the same make, model and color (roughly) as mine. It took a few towns until I found one parked in a good spot. I parked my car, stood somewhere I could see what I was doing, and used NP to unscrew that car's license plates, surreptitiously floating them under a few cars then I bent down and put them in the bag I was carrying. NP is very handy.

I resumed my journey. When I found somewhere nice and quiet, I stopped to manually put my new plates on, keeping my old ones in the trunk under the mat. Having false plates should make it much harder for Binion's minions to find me. I'll repeat the same trick every day in case someone reports their plates missing and the cops look for them.

I was aiming for Sandpoint, a small city on Lake Pend Oreille. Before I got there I started seeing billboards for the sort of thing I was looking for. When I saw a very rundown looking sign that gave directions ("15 miles [arrow]"), I turned off to follow the arrow, arriving at a suitable looking place - by which I mean it looked like it needed the business and would welcome cash - at about 6pm. The trip had covered just over four hundred miles and taken about eight hours.

My plan was to spend the night here, spend most of tomorrow (Thursday) fishing, coming back to the lodge in time to drive into Sandpoint before Mom finished work. Then I'll check my cellphone, call Mom from a public phone, then skedaddle by driving south during the evening and night. If anyone was chasing me, I'd be long gone before they could possibly get to a little place like Sandpoint. I doubted they had people they could call already stationed in Sandpoint, which they might well have in large cities.

It wasn't a difficult plan to follow. The guy was willing to ignore paperwork for a cash payment. It was surprisingly expensive, but affordable for one night. I refused the expensive guided fishing charter he offered me, saying, "My father used to take me out fishing in a rowboat when I was a boy. He died a few months ago and I just want to recapture those memories. Let me have a little dinghy and a cheap rod, and that'd be perfect." Not a total fabrication, as Dad and I have gone out fishing like that a few times, enough so that I knew the theory of how to row, although Dad had done most of it as I'd been too clumsy. The lodge owner probably had the impression that I wanted to lay low for a day, but that was ok. Even if he called the cops and told them my car's plate number, it wouldn't matter as the owner of those plates probably wasn't a wanted felon.

"Certainly Mr. Jones." (That's me, Tucker Jones.) "Have you got your license already?"

"Huh?"

"Your fishing license. The wardens are very vigilant, so you have to have a license."

"I never thought of it. What's involved in getting one?"

He started describing the process, but very early in his description he mentioned that it required ID, so I didn't need to know any more. I interrupted him with, "Don't worry about it. I'll just go out for a paddle; that'll be just as good. That's okay, isn't it?"

"It's fine."

We made the abbreviated arrangements, then I retired to my room. I had dinner alone, to avoid having to make up plausible lies to the few other guests in the dining room, then went to bed, ordering my body to sleep in fifteen minute chunks so I could do frequent checks around the area to make sure nothing worrisome was happening. I got up in time for my crack-of-dawn fishing.

^

I had a pleasant day's bobbing around on the lake. I enjoyed rowing, as my rowing ability had unsurprisingly improved dramatically, and I could go quite fast, even without NP assistance. I let the boat drift while I read some books, and I did catch a couple of fish - I had come here to fish, after all. I used NP-cages, as large as I could make them. Being invisible, fish would swim into them, and bump their sides, which I could feel and it told me when to close the trap. I just lifted the box to the surface, admired the fish, then let it go. During the day, a warden did check whether I was fishing, easily seeing that I wasn't and didn't have any of the gear, so it was just as well that I hadn't tried to fish without a license (it pays to be honest). Plus I didn't want to spend several more days driving around the country with dead fish in my car.

I also had some very successful memory tests. Memory sharing had improved even further; less effort being required to access even more vaguely indexed memories. Accessing each other's college memories had improved considerably more than non-college memories. While that was very welcome, it was also very puzzling. But I guess the entire process was puzzling, and impossible to understand, so there was no point it getting worked up about it.

In town I filled up with gas again and bought a quite a few more provisions. When I was lined up to pay for them, I saw a headline in the rack of papers for sale, "$11 Million Win from Binion's Casino." That paper got quickly added to my pile of purchases.

I read it as soon as I was back in my car. The article was pretty much a repeat of what Ted Binion had said in his speech before Prof's second bet, plus the result of the second bet. There was no picture of Prof, he was named only as Mr. Ivan Roberts. There were very few quotes attributed to Binion's, and those were promotional rather than about the event itself, such as "Binion's is proud to be the casino of choice for real gamblers." Nothing they were quoted as saying confirmed that the bet had been paid. There was no quote from Prof, just "Mr. Roberts could not be contacted for comment."

I drove to a public phone, then checked my cellphone. No messages again, either verbal or text, which surprised me even more than it had last time I'd checked. It felt weird that no one was contacting me. I turned it off and called Mom's work number on the public phone.

Mom's greeting was somewhat different than yesterday's, "Mark! Thank God. There are people ALL over town looking for you...

"Looking for ME? Personally?"

"Yes, for you. Whatever you're doing to hide, do it better. Vanessa says you've got to stay hidden. She hopes it'll be over tomorrow, but she warns that it might not. I've got a list of things to tell you, hang on." A small pause, then, "Okay. First, your cellphone is giving your position away whenever it's on and they'll be able to get access to that information, so throw your phone away. Second, abandon the car, they'll know about it by now. Don't buy airtickets in your name. You need ID, so don't buy any commercial airtickets. If you must travel by air, contact a flying club or small air charter company, and get them to fly you informally if you can. If they do get your real name, their passenger data often isn't loaded into any of the big databases in a timely manner. Better to use buses or something like that." Mom went on to give me advice about stuff that Mom had no business knowing. Someone had been giving her pointers.

She finished with, "Here's a new phone number for you to call Mark. Are you listening carefully?"

"Yes."

"The first digit is..." Mom proceeded to give me a series of trick questions for each digit. My favorite was, "The last digit of the date that you lost your virginity; not the month, but the day of the month, the 1 to 31 number." (April 1st, so "1".)

At the end Mom said, "Have you got them all?"

"Yeah, no problem."

"Good. Best to call it during work hours, but you can call other times if necessary. Don't worry if it takes a long time for someone to answer, just hang on. Don't call it now because you've got to get moving. Tomorrow would be good though. Take care and we look forward to having a very good talk with you about this when you return. Love from all of us, bye."

#1: <How do we get moving without the car?>

#2: <Let's take the car. It's the quickest way out of town, and by the sounds of it we have to get moving pretty damned quickly now that they know we're here. We'll drive through the night like we intended because they won't be able to see it at night. We'll hide it somewhere before daybreak. In a covered parking lot would be a good place. Then we'll grab a bus out of whatever town we're in.>

#3: <Sounds good. See that Canadian truck parked over there. How about turning our cellphone on and wedging it somewhere on the truck. Wherever it's going - hopefully back to Canada - will divert them.>

#1: <Sounds good. Let's delete all our phone numbers out of the card first though. I don't think the baddies will find the phone, because I don't think it's locatable to within less than several hundred yards, but deleting the numbers can't do any harm.>

#2: <Delete the recording of Mr. Eaton's attack too.>

I turned it back on, did the deleting. There weren't many numbers so it didn't take long, even with pausing to memorize a few numbers just in case, such as for Dad's work and OSU. I walked around the truck, but couldn't find a place to wedge it that I thought it'd stay in for more than a mile of two, considering how much I expected the truck to vibrate and bounce around.

I noticed another much more practical truck: a flatbed truck carrying a load of building material: wood, boxes of nails, pipes, and all sorts of other stuff. I walked past it, tossing my phone in, using NP to push it somewhere inconspicuous. I didn't know where the truck was going, but I doubted it'd be five hundred miles south to Boise, Idaho.

Then I got in my car, drove north a couple of blocks, west a couple of blocks, then turned south, for the same reason as the last time I'd done this, just in case the baddies found someone who'd seen me walking around, and they remembered which way I'd driven. Not likely, but playing safe seemed like a very good idea.