She was silent.
“I’m thinking about buying time on the Politico Network, on the Free Speech Forum, and telling the world about you – what Travels is doing to you. It can’t be just you, there may be others. I’m going to fight it.”
She remained silent. The fear still shone in her eyes.
“I have the day off tomorrow,” he told her. “I’m going to stay home, and for once and for all I’m having Travels disconnected from this apartment.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “I won’t watch it.”
“I won’t watch it either, so I’m not going to pay for it.”
“It, it doesn’t hurt you if you, if you just watch it for a little while.”
“There’s no such thing as watching it for just a little while.”
“I can set the timer on the TV to go off in an hour–-”
“No Travels on this television,” he said firmly. “Get that through your head. No more Travels. If you want to watch Travels, you move out and you never come back.”
She was crying openly now into her soup. She was still holding the spoon awkwardly above the bowl, droplets of the soup running down the handle and onto her finger tips. She didn’t notice. “I’m so fucked up,” she said, sobbing. “I’m so fucked up over a television show.”
“Yes, you are Sheila.”
“I’m so fucked up …”
Dodd got up and walked around the table, kneeling beside her.
“It’s okay. You’re realizing it, it’s a big step toward fighting it.”
“Oh God,” she sobbed. She put her arms around him, spoon still in hand, soup dripping down his back. They hugged, and he rocked her like a baby.
26. UNKNOWN ARMED ROBOTIC DEVICE
Savina lay belly-down in the grass, aiming the lightweight rifle at nothing in particular. There was some sort of autonomic farm drone out in the field to the north, and Aaron had told her to just wait. It would scare rabbits out into a clearing and that’s when she could get them. “Look for big, rectangular-looking drones that hover about 5 feet over the crops,” he’d told her.
Well, this one looked like a long ovoid with spider legs, reminding her of an overlarge police drone. It was painted with a chameleon paint that shifted with its surroundings, and didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular to the crops.
There was a little butterfly-wriggling sensation in her stomach. She didn’t know if it was her baby or if the drone was giving her the creeps. As she watched a few rabbits ran out of the crops and across the clearing in front of her. One came to a halt, sitting up, watching the drone. Savina centered the rabbit in the rifle’s scope, putting the red dot of the laser right on its back; it wouldn’t hold still, her hands were shaking. She couldn’t do it, she just couldn’t. Aaron’s going to have to do the hunting, she thought. She lowered the rifle.
The drone came closer, and the rabbit ran again. Why would a farm machine have chameleon paint? she thought. She watched it hovering slowly over the ground, weaving to and fro. It moved out of the field and into the trees, heading south. It passed within 20 meters of her.
That’s not farm equipment, she thought. It can’t be. She folded the gun barrel back into its stock and retracted the laser sight, and slipped its strap over her shoulder. I’ve got to get ahead of it, she thought. It’s heading right for the camp.
Savina waited for it to pass out of sight among the trees, and raced across the clearing to where she could get more cover, then turned south, parallel with the thing. It had been moving at a fast walk; if she ran, she thought she could pass it and get to Wiley and Aaron with enough time to warn them.
Grasshoppers and swarms of bugs leaped for safety as she made her way through tall patches of grass, leaping fallen branches and dodging around old rusted barbed wire. The line of old foundations and thick hedge brush angled in on her, forcing her to veer a little to the east. She caught sight of the thing, and dodged from one oak tree to the next, hoping it wouldn’t see her. Savina had no idea what it was programmed to do, she didn’t know what kind of senses it had or what would catch its attention. To be safe she had to avoid it altogether.
There was some clearing to the west and she sprinted for the ruins, keeping them between her and the drone. She tried to leap a large patch of blackberry bushes and it caught her feet, slamming her down into a nest of thorns. She had learned a whole new vocabulary of swearing and cursing from Wiley and Aaron; she used every single one of them as she hurriedly disentangled herself and continued on. By the time she reached camp she had no idea how much of a lead she had on the drone. She stumbled into camp, startling the two hackers, and collapsed to her hands and knees, panting. “Drone,” she said, forcing the words out between rasping breaths. “Large. Chameleon paint. Coming. This way.”
“From where?” Aaron said.
“The north. Straight. Down the. Line.”
“Damn it,” Aaron said. “Damn it, this would have to happen now.” He began breaking camp, tossing everything into the back of the jeep.
Wiley started a shutdown procedure on the laptop computer and sat it on his folding chair, letting it run. He pulled everything out of their big tent and stuffed it in the jeep, then took down the tent. Savina, recovering a bit from her run, helped him roll it and fold it into the small square that fit into a bag the size of her arm.
“We just located the line,” he told her. “We just needed a few more hours.”
“Think they detected you?”
“Maybe. They must have detected something. We’ve inserted a virus into their diagnostics, thought – it’s probably the only reason they didn’t pinpoint us. If that drone is travelling the whole length of the line it means they know something is up but they don’t know where it is. How far away was that thing?”
“I spotted it when I was about a half mile up there. It’s going to be here any minute.”
“Shit! Okay, let’s hustle.”
“Your shutdown is finished,” Aaron called.
“Okay. Let’s just disconnect and cap the splice line. Its a good thing we buried the rest of it.”
“They’re going to find it.”
“Maybe not.” Wiley ran over to Aaron and took the capped end of the fiber optic cable. “I’m going to lay it down like this,” he said, pulling it along the ground, “and then arrange this stuff over it here. It’s all inert, it shouldn’t be detectable to a drone.”
“Who knows. I’m going to start up the jeep.”
Savina finished folding up the small tent and threw it and the last few packs into the jeep as Aaron started it. Wiley dragged fallen branches over the optic cable and then ran to the jeep, pushing Savina inside the passenger side and then shutting the door. He hung onto the outside, standing on the running board.
“Let’s go,” he said, and Aaron put it into gear, pulling out from under the trees and heading west. It was the same escape rout they took the night Savina had spotted the planes. Two minutes later they were behind the lee of a gutted house, and Aaron stopped.
Wiley stepped off the running board and went to the rear of the jeep, opening the hatch and digging through the hastily packed equipment for a pair of spotters.
Savina found a pair at her feet and got out of the jeep, walking around the ruin and peering back the way they came. Wiley and Aaron were to either side of her a moment later, Wiley holding the other pair of spotters. “Is it there?” Aaron asked. “Did it stop?”
Savina saw the probe hovering under the trees, poking at the ground with what looked like a grey rod. The spotters attempted to identify it but failed. “Unknown Armed Robotic Device” spelled itself out in glowing letters above the bracketed image.
“It’s scanning the ground where we pitched the tents,” Wiley said.
“What is it? A police drone?”
“Worse,” Wiley said. He didn’t elaborate.
Impatient, Aaron took the pair of spotters away from Savina.
“Oh shit,” he said.
“What?”
“It’s military,” he told Savina. “Did it see you?”
“No, not that I know of.”
“Good thing.”
“It’s found our tire tracks,” Wiley said. “Looks like it’s following them this way, doesn’t it?”
“God, it does.”
“At least it didn’t find the splice.” He lowered the glasses and walked back to the jeep.
“I bet that thing has as much fire power as we do,” Aaron said.