Chapter 17

Zeus

I had been bumbling out of my sleep at intervals that day, roughly coinciding with our stops for gas and food. On Io's word that the credit card was secure, I charged everything. If 5225 ever got hold of my credit card records, they'd have a blueprint of my movements. Perhaps I was getting less paranoid. Perhaps I just trusted the people – or beings – on my team to do their jobs. In the comfortable warmth of the H2, I stopped wearing the sheepskin coat and wadded it up under my head instead.

About 1620 I awoke for good. I listened for a few minutes as Arti and Io exchanged recipes. Not really recipes, but it might as well have been. They were talking about which movies, books and music each liked.

Arti, it seemed, liked romantic comedies, detective/murder mysteries and showed a broad enjoyment of everything except country music: jazz, pop music, classical, even show tunes, a genre I couldn't care less about. I didn't even know what kind of music Io liked: I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that an abiological intelligence without ears or hearing ability could even experience music. She didn't say much on this topic.

Io's taste in books seemed to focus on long-term best sellers or at least books that were 'well thought of, ' with a smattering of other things: everything from Dickens to John MacDonald's Travis McGee series, Perry Mason was well represented as much as John Updike and Truman Capote. As far as non-fiction went, she claimed to be reading 'everything' she could find about the crash of 2007 – which I thought interesting; she had lived through it, after all.

In movies she seemed to focus on documentaries, 'serious' films or those which showed how the economic divide impacted people: for example Wall Street, It's a Wonderful Life, Traffic, and A Beautiful Mind. She seemed particularly interested in movies which dealt with a person trapped inside his own imperfect body: My Left Foot, Rainman, The Miracle Worker and The Elephant Man got mentioned.

I shifted position and made other 'I'm awake now' movements. They stopped chatting like teenagers caught looking at pornography.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Just outside of El Paso," said Arti. "Boy, if the wind is right, that town smells like a manure dump."

"It's just the stockyards. If you want to eat beef, somebody somewhere has to live with the smell of stockyards."

"I'm considering going vegan, then. Whew! I couldn't live there."

"Oh, you'd get used to it pretty soon. I lived near the stockyards in Kansas City for about six months. It was Okay."

OK, if you excluded my personal demons: I was feeling particularly self-destructive in those 'recently out of the hospital' days. I had no job, no hope of getting one, no point in living, no wife any more, no parents, and no relatives I wanted to see. No nothing. If it hadn't been for Master Chief Martinez whispering positive thoughts in my head, I don't think I'd have made it. Of course, the other homeless folks didn't notice that I was talking to him, too. Finally he told me he'd had enough of this depression, that he couldn't take it any more, and to 'fucking snap out of it.' Did I think I was the only person to come through the war, beat up? And he just cut off communications for almost two weeks.

That was about as low as I ever got. When the voice in your head has given up on you, you either eat a gun, or you pull out of it. I did the latter. One day, I it just occurred to me that the world was the way it was, and I could decide each day how I was going to react to it: I could be happy, sad, angry, depressed, positive or negative. No matter what I decided, the world would not change a bit. That day, I went to the Salvation Army, got my first shower in a month, shaved for the first time in several weeks, and never looked back. I went to the VA hospital and got a check-up. Physically I was fine, but they wanted to admit me for 'tests.' Martinez was right again: he said I'd wind up in the looney bin, and by now I'd decided to trust him. So I politely refused their tests, and walked out.

"Things are better now, eh L.T.? You've got friends, money and some purpose in your life ... and you're traipsing around with a cute little twenty-three year old,"Martinez the letch said.

Not that I think of her in those terms, I thought back at him.

I stifled the thoughts of Arti in blue jeans, bent over the seats working on the computers.

"Maybe, maybe not. But I think we'd better find you a woman pretty soon, to keep it that way."

Io broke into a recorded session of old Louis Armstrong tunes. "Artemis, you have incoming email from Midnight."

"Oh. Let me boot up the laptop."

"If you would like, I can simply read it to you, and you can reply verbally. I shall format the reply for you."

It read: "T-Rex, I have found the right equipment. Dell's C8000 unit can be configured with a boatload of processors and can run 1 TB of ram, 16 TB of SSD3's and produces 8 petaflops. The problem is that it costs $30k. It's already piped for coolant. Est. delivery 1-2 wks for rush order at additional cost of $5k. Please advise, since I can't swing this."

After a brief pause, Io said, "I can use three of those. Two for operating, and one as a backup. Money will be no problem. Do you want me to draft an email?"

"What is all that gibberish?" I said. "The only thing I understood was the money parts of that."

Io had the answers at her fingertips? The tips of her bits? That sounded dirty. Anyway, she had answers.

"A megabyte is a unit of memory – a million bytes. A gigabyte is a thousand megabytes. A TB or terabyte is a million megabytes or one thousand gigabytes. An SSD is a Solid State Device; it's like disk storage that is on a set of chips instead of a disk. A petaflop is an arbitrary measure of computing speed. It is one quadrillion floating point operations per second. Or one thousand trillion flops. I have no idea what a boatload of processors is. I cannot find that unit of measure, but it apparently means 'a lot' in human-speak."

"And you need all that flops and bytes? That's good?"

I felt like Helen Keller in front of an audience: blind, deaf and uncomprehending. She, however, had the courage to talk to many such audiences. I was still floundering.

"It is much larger than anything I have available to me on a non-shared basis. I could make that a permanent home – well, a temporary permanent home, since we will sometimes shut down the H2." Could I detect itchy fingers on Io? "Also, Artemis, we will not need any special cooling device, the H2 is already plumbed for coolant to the computer area; there is a secondary coolant system that runs off the engine. That is why the mileage is lower than anticipated."

"Ahh. That's what those strange fittings are for, near the computers for this tank." Arti was mumbling to herself, but loud enough to be understood. "And we could get another big battery for the shutdown times, if they are not too long."

"Hey," threw in Martinez, to me and Io. "What do I have to do to get a processor and memory upgrade?"

I burst out with a short laugh, and even Io reacted.

"What?" said Arti.

"Nothing. I just had a funny thought." Damn, it wasn't going to be long before Miss Figure-out-the-mystery would tumble to Martinez' existence, somehow.

Arti again: "Two problems I can see. One is the money. He doesn't have it, and neither do I. You said it's no problem, but a hundred 'k' is a lot, and they want to have it before they ship. And the second one is the two-week delivery time. Are we going to be here that long?"

"No way," I replied. "I have an appointment with terrorists in Florida on Memorial Day. That is a firm date. We'll want to be there as soon as we can get there."

"That brings up another subject," she said, softly. "I trust you, Zeus. If you say there are terrorists who'll be in Florida on Memorial Day, then I believe it. But how can you really know that? I mean ... you've had that idea since I've known you, but I can't believe they stopped to send you their itinerary."

"Sorry, Arti. That subject is confidential. But I trust the source, one hundred percent."

"One more question: are the terrorists working with the black suits who are out to get you?"

"That one I can answer: no. In fact the black suits are hunting those same terrorists."

"Great. So we have to dodge them too? At the same time? Swell." She muttered in sotto vocé mode, again. Then in full wise-ass voice she said, "No problem, though. Zeus will just throw a lighting bolt at them, both of them."

She turned to look at me while she said it with a smile. I admit it was disconcerting: here we were whipping down the Interstate at about ninety miles an hour, and the person in the driver's seat wasn't watching the road. Of course, it was just a matter of adjusting my mind. The real driver was nestled in the computer in the back seat, and she was paying great attention.

It probably didn't occur to Artemis that the lightening bolts I was going to throw at them would be coming from the M200.

"What about the money? Do we want to forget the whole thing?"

Io came back with an immediate "No." If Pavlov trained computers, I would have bet that Io was salivating. "Just get the delivery instructions from Midnight. I will arrange the transfer of funds and communicate with the manufacturer."

"We still gonna try and involve Middie?" Arti asked. "It's not going to be ready in time, and so far all he has is my word that something freaky is happening."

"If we ship to, say, Florida; are you sure this installation is something you can handle, alone?" I asked.

"No. Not completely sure. And we won't have the place to work, or the tools."

"Then schedule delivery for June 5, in Scottsdale. We should be back by then."

Arti and Io voice-drafted an appropriate email to Midnight, and we were all back to discussing books and things as we pounded down the Interstate toward Albuquerque.

I-25 was full of radar cops, and we couldn't make much use of Io's enhanced speed, but at least we didn't get stopped. A sedate speed-limit trip got us to "Alber-Q-Q" at dinnertime.

I was a rumpled mess, and was in need of a shave. Arti said her brain was flat from sitting on it for so long. I laughed at that, and we got out of the H2 in the parking lot of what Io swore was the highest rated steakhouse in town. I headed to the camper to change and wash up, and Arti stretched her 'brain.'

I came out about ten minutes later to find Arti surrounded by a bunch of bikers. I was immediately in en gard mode. I felt an empty spot in the small of my back where the holster should be, but I had the K-bar in its scabbard at my belt. I approached them slowly, my body at an angle.

One of them saw my approach and said, in a pretty loud voice, "Whoa, cowboy. We're just talkin' with Artemis here."

The aforementioned Artemis turned around and said, "What?"

Another biker turned around, too. He was a hefty three hundred pounds plus, wearing leathers and sporting a ZZ Top beard ... a stereotypical biker, in other words.

He immediately put his hands up and said, "Easy there. We surrender!"

Arti still didn't see anything wrong, but obviously the half-dozen bikers knew a hostile stance when they saw one.

"What?" she said. "Mitch and Tiny..." she motioned to the hefty ZZ Top biker " ... were just telling me that I ought to put an anti-theft chain on my bike. I was about to invite them to have dinner with us."

Why are guys like that always called 'Tiny'?

I said to Arti, "Are you OK?"

"What?" she seemed to be stuck on that word. "Chill-ax, Zeus. Now let's get some food."

So saying, she held the door for the bikers. I now saw it was a mixed group of men and women. I 'chill-axed' and went in after them.

"Sorry about that, folks," I said as the hostess seated us, "but you just can't be too careful, these days."

"No, you can't," said the black gal, who seemed to be paired with Mitch. "I never would have thought that Artemis, for example, would hang out with such a dangerous character."

She was smiling when she said it, but she was also more than half serious.

We had an interesting dinner. Who would have thought that Tiny was an opera fan? His wife, Tina, didn't like traditional opera in favor of modern day opera: country music. Yes, they were Tina and Tiny. The salt and pepper couple of Mitch and Irene were into classic rock – which was easy to believe. It even fit into the stereotype. The third couple – Charlie Black Foot and Cloris Speaks with Her Hands – were both deaf, but carried on an interesting conversation anyway. They were Cheyenne, originally from Wyoming, but were now teaching in a school for the deaf in Las Cruces, NM.

They were willing to carry on the party at a nearby bar, but I pleaded the press of our continuing journey. We'd try to settle in at Gallup, NM, for the night. I thought I'd done well, meeting new people and all, without even thinking about the potential threat they posed – well, I mean, after the initial 'greeting.' But when we got back to the H2, Artemis beat me on the right arm until I was sore. She kept saying that not everyone is out to get me.

I – calmly I thought – pointed out that some people were indeed out to get me, and that I thought a little caution was called for, especially since they had her surrounded. Arti quieted down at that point, obviously not having thought of the situation from my point of view.

We were soon back on the road again, with the indefatigable Io doing the driving. She was much better at it than I, although she pointed out that at night, she wouldn't be able to see the surrounding area nearly as well. We had only another two hours or so to go, and we were fresh, though human, drivers. I reassured her that we'd keep alert, especially in the city.

Gallup had a nice WalMart parking lot where we stopped for the night. We actually could have pressed on, but I had no idea how to contact Navajo Pete, the man I was counting on to enhance the optics on my rifle. Martinez had said that we should seek him out, and that was all I needed.

We parked and braced the camper. After a little finagling, I discovered that the batteries in the camper could not only draw on the H2's electrical system, but they could power it as well, if there was sufficient draw from the Hummer. So I left the key in the auxiliary position and locked the doors. Io could open everything up in the morning. I really should get a duplicate key made, though, just in case.

I didn't feel self-conscious about my preparations for the night. Shaving again (for the second time in three hours), laying out my Velcro'd sneakers, locating my gun, locking and double checking the doors and windows. Arti just sat in a XXL t-shirt that said "The Princess Sleeps" on her fold-out bed at the far end of the camper and watched.

When I turned out my light, she asked me if playing a little music would bother me. She found an old John Coltrane album on her IPod clone, and set it by her bed. Actually, I kind of liked the music.

In the morning, I woke to the smell of coffee. I never woke to the smell of coffee.

"I figured that you brought the coffee for a reason, and morning seemed like a good excuse to me," Arti said in a chipper voice.

She cracked some eggs and made scrambling motions in the frying pan.

"We have some 'regular guy' stuff to do today, so I thought we should get started."

I fumbled around 'till I found the cell phone – excuse me, "mobile device" – and learned that it was just after 0700. I peeked into the kitchen area. She was still in the Sleeping Princess t-shirt – I couldn't detect any other clothing, and who knew. She was barefoot. The t-shirt showed a lot of bare leg. She had attractive legs, although I acknowledged that any woman in the next room wearing what she was wearing – or not wearing – might have been classified as having attractive legs.