As I Walk These Broken Roads

Chapter 28

Raxx stirred restlessly. He was exhausted from the day’s drive, but he could only sleep in fits. His long legs felt trapped under the steering wheel, and paradoxically the monotony of the night’s rain kept drawing his attention. Finally he relented. Putting the truck in accessory mode, he turned on the vents and cracked the window open another notch. Then he lit a cigarillo.

The situation with Slayer and the Mennites was still bothering him. Staring out at the silvery darkness offered no catharsis. His mind coasted, settling into the moment but going nowhere.

Shifting his cigarillo to his left hand he turned on the radio. He kept the volume low and the fade forward, so as not to disturb the others, keeping it just loud enough to hear over the rain which was beginning to slacken.

He shifted frequencies one click at the time. The interface was digital, one of the few non-analog devices to survive the war. He’d click the button, moving up by 0.2 MHz each time, and spend a few seconds listening. The hiss of background radiation came from the speakers mounted on the inside of the doors, random and meaningless. Sometimes a high pitched oscillating hum would play on one of the bands. Whether it was the side-effect of some powerful generator, the fingerprint of a binary system, or even something else entirely, he couldn’t say. Other times he would think that he heard human voices in the background, but he couldn’t be sure if it was just his imagination playing tricks on him.

He had cycled through the upper limit of the commercial bands, 107.9, as high as his receiver went, and was just beginning to cycle back up through the low frequencies when a faint voice came out of the speakers. Surprised at finding something, he turned up the volume to try and make it out.

“Two-one-india, this is niner-one-charlie. Message, over.”

Several seconds passed before the same voice came back on.

“Niner-one-charlie is the sunray at your position, over?”

Once again there were a few moments of silence. Whoever was receiving the messages must have been or a different frequency or they had a weak transmitter.

“Niner-one-charlie, tell him that figures two foxhounds have arrived with the papa-oscar- whiskeys. We require his presence at our position, over.”

“Niner-one-charlie, Rodger, wait out.”

“Niner-one-charlie, figures two kilometres north of your present position. Inbound on MSR niner-alpha-zulu. Niner-one-charlie out.”

Raxx waited, but nothing more came on. He pondered the cryptic jargon they’d been using but couldn’t decipher it.

“That’s what’s known as Radio Voice Procedure.” Wentworth lay unmoving, but awake. He’d forgotten to take his goggles off; they were two silver pools in the darkness.

“Oh, hey, Wentworth; sorry for waking you,” said Raxx in a muted voice.

“No, don’t worry about it. I couldn’t sleep either.”

“So do you know what they were talking about?”

Wentworth shrugged; Raxx could hear the motion even if he couldn’t see it. “The boss is trying to talk to some of the guys lower on the totem pole. They captured some prisoners. Oh, and they’re two kilometres apart. That’s the genius behind voice procedure — if you’re the one doing it, it’s both fast and specific — no wasted words. But if you’re eavesdropping and you don’t know what context it’s coming form it’s cryptic as all hell.”

“Do you think that might have been your people?”

“Maybe. Doubt they’d be using these frequencies, though. It’s not like voice procedure’s a huge secret, any more than Morse code. I’d be surprised if it was them, honestly. We’re a long distance away. I don’t figure they’d send a sunray after me.”

“Hm. Sometimes during these rainstorms the signals do interesting things. Bouncing off of the atmosphere, so it might be them. So you really prefer Wentworth?”

“It’s what I’ve gone by most my life. But whatever. Say, I just realized I never asked what you’re last name was. Or would that be your first name?”

“Just Raxx. Never had another name.”

Wentworth fumbled around for his cigarettes. He’d left them in his jacket pocket before going to sleep. He pulled them out and cursed; they were soaked through. He put them on the dashboard by one of the vents, and bummed a cigarillo off of Raxx. The shadows played across his features as he lit it, the flame flickering.

Raxx continued cycling through the stations, spending a few seconds on each. He was leaning back in his seat as he did this, staring out towards the sky. Spears of lighting forked across it.

“Hey, I think I heard something on the last one.”

Raxx switched back and then he heard it too. He turned up the volume until the voice became clear. The background hiss was almost indistinguishable from the rain and he didn’t think it would wake up the two in the back.

“…waiting until such a time as a senate majority was in place. The Ayn Rand Corporation, at the time a powerful group of…”

“Hey,” said Raxx, “I’ve heard this guy before.”

“Where’s he from?”

“I don’t know, just listen.”

“…tensions were growing around the Glass Sea, the Eastern regions continued to hold onto primitive animism, while the African nations continued to struggle for regional dominance.

“All of this set the stage for the New Eugenics Program. The failure of democracy was self- evident; this had been noted and fought for during the twentieth century, ending in the triumph of the socialist- democrats. It was under their incumbency that the old order’s mistake came to light — deficiencies in the genome- analysis of the swarthy European races. With New Eugenics, or NEP, the focus was shifted, correctly, and analysis of each race’s deficiencies began at once…”

The voice faded for a moment as the beep of an SOS signal took over. Its sound was cold and lonesome. After several cycles, the voice returned.

“…the distribution of the new products was to be multi-longitudinal. Capitalism had perfected the distribution network, and this became an important tool which they fully exploited. Experiments first went underway at the beginning of the century, modifying cow-milk with hormones. This was deemed a failure due to the enhanced breast-development and sexuality of young women. Both are clearly evident from popular culture of that era.

“The root of the problem was that they were using the biological vectors. Two weeks ago I discussed Area 51, and how ultimately it was not the militaries that resisted the invasion, but rather the aliens’ lack of immunities to our home-grown virals and pathogens. This was the lesson the socialist-democrats needed to learn, but couldn’t know because of the cover-up; biology is negative in nature, not positive. There were a few radio broadcasts about the Area 51 event, but no print media was ever released. And those that heard the broadcast were convinced by government agents that it was in fact nothing more than a fictional program.

“So, without this knowledge, the first NEP experiments relied on biological agents. The anthrax in the water scares encouraged the drinking of bottled water, but these were all failures. Gradually they moved to more and more artificial forms of genetic implantation. In twenty-oh-seven the Kraft Corporation, in conjunction with Rand, created their individual processed cheese slices: these were just the solution that the NEP had been looking for. Individually wrapped in plastic, they each contained two litres of milk. The best of both worlds — the necessary biological vector combined with the technology of product placement. Government funding was diverted from the armed forces (as I mentioned last week, this forced the shift to mercenary armies), and was diverted to underwriting the cost of this new food item, to ensure its popularity. At first it worked as hoped, but then they found that tolerance was increasing.

“Before I go on, I must return to the matter of the bomb, and the myth of petroleum. Multiple projections charts show that on the one hand there was — and still is — plenty of this valuable substance laying underneath the Glass Sea surrounding Mecca, enough to have held out during the development phase of synthetic generation methods, while on the other hand it goes without question that the effectiveness of an ICBM at relevant velocities and altitudes…” the voice began to fade out again, falling below the background threshold. Eventually there was nothing. The static hiss jumped, and a clicking noise appeared in the background. Raxx turned