CHAPTER III
If you book a night instead of an hour, check out time at the Southern Pines Motel is 10A.M. Alyson dropped the keys on the counter just before seven, and skipped the stale continental breakfast in the lobby.
As she walked through the parking lot of the seedy little motor lodge, she searched the pockets of her backpack for a small spiral bound notebook with a black plastic cover. She found it and opened to page two, where she’d written a list of fourteen hotels. From a former Holiday Inn rebranded as a Nite Stay off of I45 to the Less Pay Motel beneath an exit off of I10, there were a number of places that she didn’t intend to return to, no matter how dire her prospects were.
The Southern Pines Motel was scribbled in next to an uneven 15.
A subtle breeze swept the tail of her jacket, taking some of the heat off of her back. Her backpack, heavy from the weight of her supplies and computer, strained her already tired body. The floor of the Southern Pines room was among the least comfortable carpet she’d ever slept on, and the infrequent snap of gunshots woke her after the drunken man in B17 had been escorted away by the police.
Nothing had inspired her to mask the sound with a pillow.
Alyson already longed for another shower, and a clean place to sleep. More than that, she wanted to eat.
Seeing as she couldn’t trust a bowl of sugar coated flakes that the roaches had likely sampled, breakfast at the Southern Pines wasn’t happening; visiting a decent diner was at the top of her agenda.
Alyson dropped her mobile into her hand from its resting place in her wristband, and opened Eva Parkers information. The file was marked deactivated. Alyson whispered a curse, and closed it the document. She needed new ghosts. She needed a new host. She needed someone with more than three hundred dollars in their account.
Alyson stuffed her mobile back into her wristband, and stretched her arms back as far as her backpack would allow. She took solace in the fact that the Southern Pines wasn’t the kind of establishment to care about where the money came from. To Alyson, their problem with women being beaten in their hotel rooms was of more concern than fraudulent payment.
Downtown wasn’t far; two miles to inner city proper, and several decent places to grab breakfast in between. She checked her wallet, finding that she would be fine to spend a few dollars on a biscuit and a bottle of water until she had a new account to draw funds from.
The skyline gleamed in the golden haze, deflected by the steel strips of Oct track. Towers of brick and stone, iron and glass, cluttered the air with broken promises of progress and security.
Alyson remembered when those vows were taken. She remembered when they were annulled.
Amused with her bitterness, she diverted her attention to finding a restaurant.
An hour later, Alyson stepped into a steaming café with a streamlined stained blue aluminum face. She sat down at the bar between a young Asian woman sipping apple juice and a bespectacled teenager who chewed on the ends of his glasses while keeping a textbook propped up around a lukewarm bowl of oatmeal. Alyson hung her backpack over her knees and stared at the menu while she waited for the waitress to approach. She ordered a bacon breakfast sandwich, and asked for cheese to be mixed into the eggs.
She ate, and made small talk with the waitress about where she’d bought her jacket –of course, she couldn’t remember, having owned it for six years- and left, tipping the waitress three dollars.
Smog hung in the air, billowing out of the city before her. Shipping corporations still made their rounds, and clogged the streets throughout the day, and a series of decades old busses still made their rounds in the shadow of the Oct.
A shiver still ran down Alyson’s spine when the red and white train cars shuddered overhead. She would picture an old disaster movie where planes and buildings would tumble from the sky, and the idiots on screen would stand in the fray, screaming in shock that death was upon them. She couldn’t help but think that she would react the same way if the Oct fell from the sky.
Alyson stayed mindful of the time as she searched for a good workplace for the day. Rooftops were an almost quiet and respectable place to do perform her networking magic tricks, but she felt a hair selfish, and longed for the comfort of an air conditioned office.
She remembered visiting the corporate offices of Four Nations. Her father took her there to surprise her mother between meetings with lunch from Roman Roland’s Deli and Pizzeria. It was a vast room only a hundred yards beneath the central intersection of the Oct. From the long window, Alyson remembered being able to see the ballpark, and the Museum of Fine Arts. There was power between those deep blue walls, all focused on the throne behind the desk. Alyson remembered the twin monitors and keyboards, the pair of telephones with dozens of buttons that didn’t have numbers on them.
Her mother was surprised by their visit, but there was no delight in her eyes. Alyson remembered, even as a child, that there was a visage of obligation in her eyes, as she ate a quarter of the turkey sub.
When she’d asked her father, he told her that she was just tired, or stressed. The nights when she’d come home early were the worst. Agitated snipes at her child and husband invaded dinner conversation. Phone calls would interrupt board games. Alyson relied on her father to get home from school in the afternoons, even when her mother promised to be there.
Alyson diverted her focus from the memory. She’d lived in Houston for so much of her life, and watched the Oct grow as her family was dismantled. She could trace the lines that spread from the center of the figure-eight track of the aging monorail to where she and her father had grown apart, and the day that her mother died.
The city had been kind enough to make the Oct suffer for taking so much from her by preventing the cursed thing from running worth a damn.
Alyson felt the short, waist-high columns and fencing of the highway turn into the walls of skyscrapers and aged apartment complexes. The sun hid behind the artificial mountains, and all that remained was the chilling breeze.
She breathed relief and smiled, feeling that it was uphill from here. She looked up and around, trying to decide where it would be best to camp out for the day.
The Psataria Complex, a sixty floor skyscraper at the center of the Oct, seemed like a fine place to work to Alyson.
Working in the Psataria complex was considered a challenge in Alyson’s trade. The entire building was a security nightmare for registered employees; ID cards and mobile ID pages were required at the door, and the elevator used its own coded address system. The first floor entrance was arranged similar to an airport, where metal detectors and security staff greeted incoming personnel, but an open path lead from the entrance to the exit.
Alyson walked into an Oct station, and dropped her mobile into her hand. She opened a page file, and fell into the queue for the central track. The machine scanned her artificial pass.
A green light flashed, and Alyson stepped into the station, pushing through the turnstiles and hiding in the flow of the mid-day rush. She checked her watch, hoping to not miss her train. Fifteen minutes later she boarded the train to Psataria.
She held onto a decaying plastic strap hanging from the ceiling, and watched the station float out of view.
Just beyond the central loop, Alyson could see a train locked in place on the track, dead and still as it hung from the track. She smiled through a sigh, and stuck her middle finger against the glass.
Somewhere, far below and miles away, a brownout killed four city blocks to bring the E train to life.
Alyson stuck out amongst the black suits and pressed shirts, knee length skirts and tight slacks as she entered Psataria Tower. She walked down the glass steps into the belly of the entry hall. Fountains lined the walkway, surrounded by shallow black pools and matching benches. The glass ceiling invited a wash of sunlight to drown out the strips of fluorescent lights that hung from the walls at an awkward thirty degree angle.
The security check point was stationed at the end of the hall. Six guards in generi
c white and black uniforms operated metal detectors, ID page scanners, and the latest in x-ray technology.
Alyson sat down on the bench by one of the fountains, and leaned over, pretending to tie her shoe. She looked beneath the bench, searching for a square black outlet.
No dice.
She brushed her shoe off, and pressed ahead. The room thinned out as people passed through security and into the office complex beyond. She counted fountains, seeking the system, knowing that as the crowds rushed off to their workstations and offices, she’d have to call the whole trick off.
Alyson pushed between two Asian men carrying on discussion in Cantonese before sliding into another bench, this time throwing her backpack off and stretching. A tall blonde stumbled over her foot, shouting “what in the hell are you doing?” as she continued. Alyson shrugged, and drew her legs back beneath the bench. She arched back, and faced the ground.
“There you are,” she muttered.
She searched for the eyes of surveillance cameras, entry guards, and militant executives who could spot someone not bearing the uniform.
She reached down, and jammed a SCH drive into the port. A green light burned on the tip of the back end of the tiny round disc. Alyson dropped her mobile into her hand, and started a connection with the disc.
The outlets weren’t special; each of the black boxes did nothing more than modify the fountain programming, including spray patterns and heights. The system was tied into the network for remote modification, but in emergencies, the twin basins of water could be emptied into the sprinkler system, and rerouted around the building. The lead officer at the security check point held one of the three keys to activate this function. One was held by the fire department and the other by the maintenance staff.
Alyson sat and watched in patience as the neon blue bar on the top of the screen on her mobile slowly stretched from one end to the other.
No footsteps filled the chamber now. All that remained was the idle chatter of guards, and the splash of water in the fountains. Alyson stayed on the bench, rocking back and forth in place against the wall of the fountain. She felt a misty spray on her head and shoulders.
Minutes passed. Alyson kept her mobile in her lap, checking the progress bar whenever she could. She didn’t pay attention to the guards. They would come soon enough. 85%.
Footsteps chimed on the tile, each clap of rubber on tile growing louder with every second.
The progress bar reached ninety-five percent as a portly gentleman loomed over Alyson. She stared down at the floor for a moment, noticing that one of the black leather shoes he wore was untied. She twitched, and jerked her head up. “Holy shit,” she exclaimed, sliding away a few inches. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“I’m sorry ma’am. Is there something we can help you with?” he asked, a narrow and insincere smile plastered between his pale cheeks. A bald spot crowned his thin black hair. A few loose strands were evident on his uniform white polo shirt.
“No. No, I’m just waiting for someone, I’m meeting her for lunch,” Alyson said, returning her focus to her mobile. The Psataria Network directory spilled out onto the screen of her mobile.
“Would you like for me to send them a message to let them know that you are waiting? If you don’t have access to the building, they might be able to begin the registration process to get you a guest pass.”
“No, we’re dinning elsewhere, but thank you,” Alyson said directing her attention away from the guard. A meeting was in progress on the tenth floor, concerning the marketing plan for a yet-to-be-decided celebrity endorsed fragrance. It had started two hours before she arrived; no good.
“Well, I’m afraid that you’ll have to meet your friend there,” the guard continued. She felt her breathing become shallower. She couldn’t recall the last time it had taken this long for her mobile to make a connection.
Alyson palmed her mobile, keeping the monitor pointed away from her, and planted her hands on the bench, sighing. “I wonder if her meeting ran late.”
“That’s probably what happened. Would you like for me to escort you to the exit?”
“No,” Alyson chuckled, looking up at the guard. His ID bore then name Terrance. “I’m sure I can manage.”
She picked up her backpack, and looked back at the mobile, thumbing the screen. Theatre seven, a conference on the ethical dilemmas raised by the recent release of the AV-C2 surveillance system, technical staff six, guests twenty, three presenters, just started; she opened the attendees, and set about her work.
Judith Berkshire, an R&D supervisor from Atratech, worked on the thirty-first floor, signed into the presentation at the last minute using a C2 security clearance.
Alyson copied her information, deleted Judith’s check in to the AV-C2 presentation, and signaled for her next stunt; a time-honored direct denial of service attack.
She spun on her heel, still smearing the fingerprints on the mobile’s screen to summon a fresh guest pass from the digital abyss. She took two steps, and Nicholas Gathe’s 12:30 guest pass transformed into Victoria Danby’s, complete with a table at Harrisons on the 22nd floor.
Alyson stepped up to the security platform, and tapped on Terrance’s shoulder. Victoria Danby’s ID page file was open on her mobile. “She changed our plans without telling me,” Alyson sighed. "She said I should be on your list.”
Terrance, still leaned over his monitor, typed and tapped on the screen. “Can I see your ID page?”
She presented it her mobile, and held it in the air, looking around the hall. “This Harrisons place, what kind of food do they serve?”
“Fried stuff, beer; it’s supposed to mimic a British pub, but it’s kind of crap to be honest,” Terrance replied.
“Great,” Alyson said through a sarcastic chuckle. “Judy owes me, damn it.”
“Can you put your bag in the tray, and step into the metal detector?”
“Of course,” Alyson said.
She took a deep breath, and stepped between a pair of steel rods.
Black consumed the security station. The monitors died. The spray and splash of ornate waterworks crashed to silence
“Damn it,” Terrance muttered. “What just happened?”
“Did the Oct kill our power?” a tall, narrow, brunette at the far end of the metal detector asked.
“That’s not supposed to happen,” Terrance shouted. He clicked the button on his radio. “This is DePont, what’s going on with the power?”
Static filled the chamber.
“Okay…guys? Can I go now?” Alyson’s voice shivered.
Terrance searched for an answer, his arm ascending like a preacher’s, and threw his arm towards the exit. “Check her bags manually, and hurry.”
The brunette, Vera according to her name badge, ripped the zippers open wide, and switched her flashlight on. She glanced at the laptop, the wadded up clothes, and the battery supply. “Any restrictions against a portable power supply, Terry?”
“No,” he snapped.
Vera nodded and zipped the bag up. Alyson swallowed the sigh that threatened to break her act. Vera slid her hands over Alyson’s jacket, not bothering to take it from around the shoulder strap of the bag. “Looks clean, have a great day ma’am.”
Alyson nodded, stepped toward the entrance, and took her bag. “Thank you.”