Chapter 15

Zeus

I found the skinny biker chick I was looking for. She was perusing a large, nasty looking rifle. "Hi Zeus. I was just looking at something for personal protection. What do you think?" She hefted a M16 look-alike. "This is what I carried in the game." She propped the gun on her hip, under the watchful eye of the vendor.

"I think you're more likely to shoot yourself in the foot than do any damage to some attacker. And where are you gonna carry that thing anyway? You got a purse that big?"

"Geez. It was just a joke. I was just fooling around." She put the gun back on the table.

"Sir," I turned to the vendor who owned the booth and, not coincidentally, the rifle. "Do you think that weapon is a joke?"

He was glad to see that the girl's keeper had showed up. "Not with the kind of damage that'll do. It's no joke."

"See," I said to Arti, "not a joke. Not even close ... Now come with me." I took her by the hand and led her the several hundred yards over to Hollowpoint Sr.'s booth. Her hand was warm and soft, and she didn't pull away from me.

"Mr. H., do you think you can find something this little lady can use to protect herself from the big bad wolf?"

"You serious? I won't sell a weapon to a minor."

"Oh no," Arti said, and pulled her hand from mine. "I'm not a minor. Not even close. And I'll pass any 'are you sane enough to own a gun' test you have. Here..." she pulled a wad of cards from her pocket. Fishing through the library card, credit card, discount card at Wally's Wonderful World of Wegetables, she found a driver's license. " ... that's me, Artemis Desmonopolous. Age 23. See? 5'6", 120 lbs. I was heavier then, but it's still me. And here's my credit card ... they don't give those out to kids do they? And..." She was on a roll.

"Ok, ok, ok. I believe you." He put the driver's license down on top of a display case. "How about something nice; it will fit in your purse?" He showed her a small .22. It wouldn't do any serious damage to anything, but having a gun is better than not having one.

"That? That's a pea shooter. I want a real gun." She went down the line of display cases until she found something that looked like her idea of a 'real gun.' "This one. It's a Glock, right? I want that. Glock is a real gun, right?" This last was aimed at me and I nodded.

So he unlocked the case, and took out a small Glock – the G26. "I want the big one," she said.

"It won't fit your hand. It'll be harder to shoot. At least if you want to hit anything," he explained.

"Well, will it stop some guy – in a pinch?"

"You betcha. It's got plenty of stopping power," he said. She nodded. In a few minutes he'd filled out all the paperwork needed.

"I'm not supposed to give it to you for several days, but if Harv says you're good to go..."

"She is," I interjected.

" ... Then I'll just give it to him and adjust my records accordingly."

Arti stiffened a bit at his use of 'Harv' but said nothing. She was in the process of handing him her credit card, but I snatched her card away and gave it back to her. "I'll pay cash, I think." I knew about how much it should be, and added $100 for his accommodation. "Thanks. And I'll see you soon."

He covered the money with his beefy paw, and it disappeared from sight, faster than ... well, faster than anything you could name. He reached over, and found a belt holster and a couple of boxes of ammunition. Everything went in a brown, paper shopping bag, which I took, folded up and tucked under my arm.

"Anything else?" I asked Arti.

She wore that light-up-the-city grin again when she shook her head. Spinning on her heel, she took my hand and started to march out toward the parked car. "C'mon Sonny. Time to go." It wasn't totally clear if 'Sonny' referred to me or the dog. I voted for the dog, but Hollowpoint Sr. laughed. When we were out of earshot, she said quietly, "'Regular guy' stuff, right?"

"Pretty much," I admitted.

"It's got good stopping power," she said.

I looked sideways at her. She was smiling – still holding my hand as she led me down the garden path. "Pretty much," I said.

Monday morning found the mover's truck with 'my' furniture sitting outside the house at 0800. That's good; I was getting tired of the sleeping bag on the floor.

In the middle of moving the meager haul of furniture into the house, the phone rang. The camper was ready for pickup. I said I'd be down in a few hours. I looked out the window. Arti was sauntering over, munching on a toaster waffle. "I thought you didn't eat that stuff." Jeans with a bright yellow top that almost reached the belt line was the uniform of the day; to cover the inch of bare midriff would take a longer t-shirt or a less hip-hugger style of jean. Dangly earrings with a matching yellow stone gave her an entirely different look. No more goth biker chick, definitely more grown up. She still had the black high top sneakers though.

"It's whole grain, with blueberries ... What's on the agenda today?"

"They," I gestured to the moving people, "are moving me in." I turned to go back inside and she followed. "I'm going to have some real breakfast, and then I've got a camper to pick up." I looked around to make sure nobody could overhear, and dropped my voice to a near whisper. "And if you're going to come with me on this little trip, you've got some plans to make: mail? lawn company? etcetera? We're leaving soon."

She shook her head. "There's no 'etcetera.' I need to do the mail and lawn, but that's it. I can do the lawn guys online. If you can stop for a minute on the way to the camper, I'll take care of the mailbox ... I want to add something to your camper, if that's ok. You can get a carrier for my motorcycle. It fits on the back of the camper. No problem. Every dealer has one."

"Oh. You're coming with me? I didn't expect that."

"You? Unprepared? Whatever shall we do?" She laughed. "I told you: I'm in. Also I have some ideas about the electronics. Can we talk to Io again?"

"Sure."

"By the way, have you had any flashbacks in the past few days?"

"No. Not really."

"Good. My personal theory," she went on, "is that being with people – non-judgmental people, people who really understand – is one thing that keeps them away. That's one of the reasons that I went to the bagel shop every day. And dealing with friends on the internet. They don't ever put me down or say negative things."

"Have you spoken with your friends on the 'net?" I was concerned about this possible breach of security.

"Yes, I've chatted with them. Told them you were a new neighbor. And that I might be taking a trip, so they wouldn't be alarmed if I'm not online as much as before ... I had to tell them something. I'm usually on like sixteen hours a day."

"I don't like telling anybody anything."

"Don't be so paranoid," she said. "Not everybody is in the conspiracy to get you. I can't believe that people I've known for years, set out to meet me on the off chance that some character named Harv would move in next door, and I might spill the beans that maybe I'd be on a trip. I didn't even mention you in connection with the trip."

"But..."

"Chill-ax, Zeus. These guys are cool. If they had to pick a side, they'd be on your side." She put her hand on my shoulder and shook it.

I hadn't realized how much tension I carried in my shoulders. I tried to 'chill-ax.' She was probably right about her internet friends. "Ok. But no details. All it takes is the wrong somebody intercepting your chat and..."

She laughed so hard she nearly fell off the chair. Really, it was almost ROFL. "Wait ... you don't understand ... These guys are hackers. Good ones. You'd have to be a god to intercept and decode our chat." Perhaps I'd have to have Io 'chat' with them.

So ... when the moving people had finished, I loaded Sonny and Arti into the H2, and fired it up. Io was online in a few seconds. "Hello, Zeus ... and company." I think she was referring to Martinez but couched it in generic terms in case I wasn't alone.

"Hello, Io. I'm here ... where else would I be?" said the Master Chief.

"Hi Io," said Arti. "Say, is this chat we're having secure?"

"Well ... Zeus, I do not know how to answer that." Io was uncertain. I'd never seen her uncertain about anything, really. Perhaps she wasn't sure about telling a partial truth – or complete untruth.

"Arti, the conversation with Io goes through the computers in the back seat. They are normally set up to control the car, more or less independently but with a human controller, but Io's overridden that temporarily to serve as a scrambler. That's why she needs the additional computing power, so we can re-enable the car's computers and still have her online." It sounded like a pretty good story to me.

Arti thought this over for a few seconds, while I drove toward civilization and the nearest MailBoxes-R-Us, that came up on the GPS direction finder. "Zeus, huh? That your code name?"

"No, it is his name in Dragon ConQuest." Io interjected. "That is where I met him."

"Oh. DCQ. I played that game years back. You should really step up to a more modern game, with better graphics. DCQ is mired in the past ... Zeus and Io. Cute. You got a Greek mythology thing going?"

"No, Artemis. We have no Greek mythology thing going on," I said. "How 'bout you?"

"Hey, I didn't pick the name. You picked Zeus."

"Well, I was a wizard who threw lightening bolts around. It seemed to fit. That was my first character. Now I'm a Paladin."

"A Paladin, huh? Holy fighter for good, emphasis on seeking justice. But the whole 'follows the law' doesn't seem to fit you." She had a grin on her face.

"It's a game, Arti. It's not my life. I have different rules in life."

"Chill-ax, Alex. We're just sparring here," she said. And then after a while, "So, you need this enormous computing space to be a buffer for encrypting conversations? Really? Io's conversation is not even delayed a little bit, as things stand now. And I doubt that the hardware/software setup to control a car could easily be overwritten to provide a communications buffer. What's the real story here? Io? Alex? ... Or is this more 'regular guy' stuff and you're going to drop a dark curtain over the whole thing. I can do a better job if you just tell me."

"Artemis," said Io, "that was just Zeus trying to guarantee operational security. The truth is, I will need as much space and processing power as you can provide. I am going to download an enormous patch to the car's software, so it is really an independent vehicle. It will be almost an artificial intelligence. And, I by the way, it will provide the communications security that Zeus outlined."

"So, you're a super programmer who's out to help a slightly mysterious 'regular guy'; one who can reprogram a James Bond car. Just like that," she snapped her fingers. "That doesn't track with any understanding of reality that I have." Arti was too smart for her own good.

"And that is where I have to drop the dark cloth over this conversation," I jumped in to the conversation. "I'm not a secret agent, Arti. Io has resources that we can't go into. Please stop poking and prodding at everything. There are reasons." And I started to fade out to Afghanistan...

"Io, steer to the side of the road. Into some parking lot. Tell Artemis not to panic." I could hear Martinez sending to Io, somewhere on the edge of my consciousness.

"Artemis," said Io, "do not panic or be scared. Zeus will return in..."

I faded back to the present day. Sonny was in the front seat, and the back cover was all pushed back to allow Arti to measure. She noticed I was back among the conscious. "Welcome back, Zeus. Hope it was a good memory ... There's plenty of room back here for lots of processors and memory, Io. I wonder if we can steal some room for a coolant and compressor. Maybe we could vent it to the outside. I'll have to contact Midnight to find out."

"Who or what is Midnight?" the avatar on the dashboard asked.

"Middie is a guy I know from the internet. I'm gonna need his advice on setting this up – he's a real hardware dweeb. Lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. He'll know all about how to interface the processors together and how to feed the result to the H2 software – probably. It's not like he's done a lot of automobile artificial intelligence retrofits before."

Io was her usual chirpy self, "I just looked up Scottsdale. It is relatively close..."

"No!" I interrupted her. "No way. Enough people know about this already. We are not bringing him in. I refuse. If you want you can do this without me. But I refuse."

All three of my 'advisors' began to talk at once:

Arti: "But he's not a risk. He thinks the government is out to get him too. He may not even help, but we need..."

Io: "Zeus, if he is necessary, he is necessary. The interface between the equipment is crucial and..."

Martinez: "L.T., I agree with you. Not telling anybody else is important. So we'll just have to do without Io on this little excursion."