Beth noticed the guards were using some device on each person as they shuffled up to the checkpoints. It flashed a bit of light into each refugee’s face, the guard stared at the device’s screen, then allowed them to enter the camp.
It looked almost like the E.M.P. emitter Dr. Miller used to freeze up Tarov — and had failed to detect “Gary” as a meat puppet.
Someone about a dozen places ahead of Beth in line started getting a little antsy. When one of the guards who was tasked with keeping order in the lines walked past him, he stopped them.
“Excuse me, what are the guards up there doing to people in line?” the nervous man asked.
The guard followed his gaze. “They’re testing everyone’s implants for any I.I. presence,” the guard replied. “Making sure no meat puppets enter the camp.”
“Really? How does that work?”
“It’s an E.M.P. emitter,” the guard explained. “If it detects any I.I.s, it will delete them and destroy its host implant.”
Someone else in line overheard the answer and spoke up. “I’d heard that the I.I.s figured out how to sneak past those devices,” they said. “You might as well be using potatoes.”
The guard seemed annoyed. “We’d heard about that. The scientist who developed these took that new information into account. These new emitters cycle through an almost infinite number of frequencies, making it impossible for an I.I. in hiding to block. We’ve stopped several meat puppets just today.”
The nervous man who asked about the emitter seemed to grow even more uncomfortable. He looked around in line, as if gazing for someone he’d lost, but didn’t seem to find what he was searching for. He stepped out of line.
“Where are you going?” the guard asked him.
“I just remembered that my cousin has a place nearby,” the anxious man said. “I should have thought of him earlier. He’d probably let me stay with him. I don’t want to waste your time.”
“Don’t you want to stay the night, at least?” the guard asked. “It’s late.”
“No, no,” the man said. “I should check on my cousin right away.”
The guard looked over at one of the other armed personnel patrolling the line. He nodded at her, and she came over and grabbed the nervous man by his upper arm.
“Let me go!” the man shrieked. “I don’t want to go in! Just let me leave!”
“Give him the test,” the first guard told the second. “He wanted to leave as soon as I explained how the E.M.P. emitter worked.”
“No!” the man screamed. “No! This isn’t right!”
They raised the emitter to eye level and activated it. The flash of light washed over the nervous man’s face and seemed to steal the life away from him. His body went limp as the guard holding him kept him from falling to the ground. His face was cold and blank.
“Looks like we caught another one,” the first guard said, looking over at everyone in line watching the scene. “When will they learn?”
“Hopefully not too soon,” the other guard replied, carrying the corpse away with the first one’s help.
Uh-oh, Beth thought.
“I know, it’s not ideal,” Simon replied.
You’ll be deleted, she pointed out. We have to leave.
“They’ll just hold us and administer the test,” Simon said. “But we might have another option.”
What?
“You have an old fashioned cerebral computer, while everyone else here has neural implants,” Simon said.
So?
“So, one reason the E.M.P. test is so effective is than an implant cannot be deactivated. It is always on as long as the user is still alive. Your C.C., however, can be turned off. You should be able to switch me off, take the test, and pass like anyone else would.”
Are you sure that would work? Beth asked. Seems like just a theory.
“We don’t have much choice, do we?”
They argued like that for another dozen minutes or so. Then it was Beth’s turn to get scanned.
“Turn your C.C. off now,” Simon said.
If this doesn’t work, Simon — Beth started to think.
“I’ll be here when you turn it back on. Trust me.”
With a mental command, the device was deactivated. She couldn’t hear anything without the aid of her C.C. Shapes were rough blurs at best. She took a deep breath and stepped up to the checkpoint. The guard holding the emitter seemed to size her up. Beth even started getting paranoid that the guard could see into her mind and hear her uncertain thoughts. Then he raised the device and the light flashed.
Nothing changed. Beth almost expected a sharp, stinging pain to take over her brain, like an instant migraine. She expected to feel the light go out within her, to faint, or something along those lines. None of that happened, however.
The guard seemed to say something, then he gestured towards the front gate of the camp. He turned and bellowed something to the line.
Beth walked past the checkpoint, a little light-headed. She felt like she must be in a dream, and the plan had actually failed. After a few minutes in the next part of the line — where people queued up to get someplace to crash — she dared to turn her C.C. back on.
Simon? she thought. Did it work?
There was silence for a moment, and she realized her C.C. hadn’t fully booted just yet. Then she heard him.
“I’m here,” he said.
Propaganda
A group of people gathered around the television set that was hooked up in one of the lounge areas scattered throughout the refugee camp. It was one of only four such devices in Fort Leddy, rigged to receive broadcasts of various kinds without exposing themselves to the Liberators. This television overlooked the camp’s unofficial watering hole, where dirty and sullen folk lost themselves in warm and flat drinks.
The television was showing a global address from Master General Blake Tarov himself. It was one of
