spooks. George had enough to work with.
He stood, and went to her chair. Put his arm around her shoulder.
“I have to go. I need to get onto this.” he said.
George instinctively looked up as he left the restaurant. But the sky was vacant. He talked to Alice as he boarded the train back to the city.
// Michael
It didn’t make any sense to be each cooking a few metres apart. So Michael moved to Oscar’s camp site, and they began the preparations for a meal. Not many words were necessary, and to an extent they seemed superfluous. As if the scenery overwhelmed language. Later, sitting with the light fading, it was as if the stillness waited for something.
Oscar spoke. “CBSH. That was me.”
He glanced speculatively at Michael, as if expecting something. The question of how you get from there to here. Also the why.
// Quang
Quang and Liuping worked the system. He could see them working the geographic models, and the statistical models. It gave a branching view, with colors indicating the most likely. They worked the model, and flipped scenarios. It was like fishing. Change the lure, throw it in, scan the data and see if anything hits. Problem was nothing was working. They cast glances in Robert’s direction, clearly nervous that they were not making progress.
He could sense the difficulty, and walked towards them. That was the problem in chasing somebody who knew about the systems. Knew how they would chase.
“Ask where he would be most comfortable.” Quang said.
// George
George walked quickly into the fun palace, not making eye contact with Alice or Steve. He found a chair facing away from the wall. Just sat, and stared. Steve and Alice exchanged glances. They had never seen George like this.
“It didn’t go well?” Alice asked, tentatively.
George rotated the chair, smiled a grim smile. “Her son is missing. She wants me to find him.” he said.
“He’s not just out partying?”
“No, I don’t think so. Three days. I know, it doesn’t sound like much. But he would be always connected.”
“Image?”
George reached for his phone. He had one somewhere. In a moment it was up on the wall. It began to do its stuff. Steve motioned to the wall to show progress. Spidery links came and went. A fleeting picture of the famous one came to the foreground, then folded away.
“I don’t want to drag...” George began, then stopped.
“If it was one of us?” Steve said.
The wall was almost finished. It had a tag for Michael, and some possible locations.
“What is Ctrl-X?” Steve asked. Alice looked up.
“In the shadows. Tiny. Seem to be freelance. Wall links them to the CBSH takeover.” she said.
“The what?” George said.
“Bank takeover.”
“Takeover. He’s in business?”
“No. Suspected of damaging it so that it was ready to be taken over.”
George looked at the innocent image on the wall. Tried to imagine. But he just couldn’t. Last he remembered he was a small kid at a family barbecue.
“So how do we find him?” George said.
“He’s not showing up anywhere. Last register was...” Alice grappled with the wall, bringing up a trail that ended late at night three days ago.
“He’s Ctrl-X?” George asked
“Maybe. Either that or he is close to somebody who is. The wall definitely thinks that.”
George reached for a wall microphone.
“Tell me about Ctrl-X.”
A picture of Mia came up. A trail through Asia. A list of exploits. Ending with the vanishing some weeks ago. Thought to be in Melbourne, but no sightings. Then it branched off into the bank thing. With business stories that George did not understand.
He clicked, and Alan came up on the screen.
“Can you come up?”
“Sure.”
Alan was bemused. He hadn’t been summoned before. He looked at the wall as he walked towards the group. It didn’t seem to have any of the normal stuff on it.
“I want to find someone.” George said. He went through it all.
“Dangerous territory.” Alan said, glancing at the wall.
“I know. But it’s important. It’s personal.”
Alan glanced at Alice.
“Sure. Leave it with me.”
He made for the exit.
// Natalie
Natalie sat in the Qantas club, taking in the surroundings. So much nicer than the normal airport. No plastic chairs and rush in here. She thought about Oscar. They had to stay apart in the lead up to the attack, he had said. It was all a blur, the last few weeks. An incredibly pleasurable blur. The bank. The bank that was no more. Had she done it? Her fingers on the keys, yes. But it was Oscar’s design. In one electric afternoon, just as Oscar had said, it had all vanished. Such an abstract thing, trust. But once it is gone, it is gone.
As it went down, she had walked. That’s what Oscar had told her to do. No looking back. Never look back, he had said. She looked at the clock. He was cutting it fine, she thought. She rang his number, but it rang out. Maybe he can’t answer, she thought. Time seemed to slow, and the hands of the clock hardly move between glances. The boarding pass. Bali. We’ll rent bikes, Oscar had said. Just drift from village to village.
It was almost a relief when the gaggle of men in dark suits came through the door.
// Michael & Oscar
At first you might wonder how to spend the day camping. Just sitting, for most of the day. But there was a ritual of things that had to be done. Making the meals, looking for firewood. In between that time just seemed to stretch. As they became more used to each other’s company less and less was said. They had told both their stories, of exit and fleeing.
“I have to post a message.” Michael said.
“Plaintext. Innocuous location.” he said.
“Yes. How did you know?”
“It’s what I would do.”
“So is there a public internet cafe somewhere?”
“Halls Gap. Only one.”
“So what do you think?”
“There is no street surveillance. Not like in the city. It depends if they are actively searching for you here. Does anyone know where you are?”
“No.”
“There’s always the drones.”
“Huh?”
“Solar powered. Low flying. But again, they would have to be tasked here. There would need to be a reason to send them.”
“Tomorrow?”
In the morning they packed everything. Then the swinging of the pack onto the shoulders, the momentum almost knocking them over. Somehow it seemed heavier. Laughing at the awkwardness of it all. Watching the sky for the glint of reflection from a drone. Coming into Halls Gap from the western side of town. For a long time they could see the town before they came down. Again, searching for signs. The road. It may as well have been 10 kilometres wide. Michael and Oscar huddled, looking for traffic.
“What I would give for a drone scan.” Oscar said.
Normally they would have all the scans they wanted. Wide area, and detail in the surrounding kilometre. You took these things for granted when you had them. But in the last half hour only two cars had gone past. The drones looked to be locked into a large circular search pattern. Meaning they had no idea where they were.
“Ready ?” Oscar said.
“Ready as I will ever be.”
Scuffing feet struggling to get traction in the red dirt. A broken run. Aiming for the gap opposite, the track that continued west. Tensing for the sight of drone slipping low and locking onto them. In the open like this it would all be over in seconds.
// George
Alan had an array of stuff on the wall. Props for his explanation.
“We insert a virtual boy into the street. Run him across a public space. We can make him close enough to the actual boy. Only later will they realise
they have been taken in. We can’t just hack into the surveillance network though. It has to be physical” Alan said. “ The codes change irregularly. If there is an error in the sequence, alarms go off.” Alice looked mystified.
“So we can’t just add to what is there?”
“No. The system is prepared for that. The stream won’t add up to the right numbers at the other end. Again with the alarms.”
Alice looked at the live feed on Alan’s screen. It showed two technicians working on the box above the square. They had nondescript uniforms on. Nobody was paying any attention to them. Alan continued.
“We clone the hardware. Monitor it working and work out the sequence. Then we substitute our hardware. ”
George walked in, and looked at the screen.
“Have you got our substitute junior terrorist ready?”
“Sure. Here he is.”
On another screen, the boy was walking across a nondescript square. It was only when you looked at it very critically that you could see that it was a construct, an artificial figure, rather than a real person.
“What if they don’t go for it?” George asked.
“Then we won’t know.”
“So what’s the first sign?”
“They will blank out the street surveillance. They don’t like to be watched. Then most likely they will just try and snatch him.”
“So how will we know?”
“We have our own cameras, our own feed set up.”
“OK. Good.”
// Alex
Alex looked at the wardrobe. Opened the door, and sat on the bed, looking at it. The rack of dresses. Catching sight of herself in the mirror, engaging with the ravages of time.
She knew from the way that George looked at her that it would only take a small move to set it all in motion. No, not that dress. Maybe that. She tried on the short dress. All that time on the treadmill had not been wasted.
// George
The virtual