married?”
Ezra surreptitiously wiped away a tear from the corner of his eye. “Almost eight years. After that, I quit the Marines and made a lot of changes in my life.” That much was true. What he didn’t say was that one of those changes involved joining the BCC in a personal quest to get everyone a File. It was Ezra’s way of dealing with his family’s death. Somehow, if he could just prevent someone else from having to suffer that same fate, he could feel like he had a reason to live.
A knock came at the door, and Kyle rose to answer it. A few minutes later, he returned, sullen.
“What is it?” asked Ezra.
“We’ve got a problem. A big problem. That was word from our southern states runner. He carried a message from Houston, and another from Pensacola. Both cells suffered raids in the last two weeks. Ezra, those were our last two chances for an active File. No other cells have one we can use. Without a File for our portion of the operation, it won’t work.”
“Because an active File is required for uploading the maggot.”
“Exactly,” Kyle said, flopping down into his chair in frustration. Then he was hit with inspiration. “Ezra! Do you still have access to any of the, er, resources that you used to, in your previous life as a File dealer?”
“What do you have in mind, Kyle?”
“Devin. He has an inactive File in is head. Maybe there’s some way you could . . .”
“There might be a way,” finished Ezra. He raised his finger to his pursed lips as he thought about it. “I may be able to resurrect some old contacts, make it happen.”
“You’ve got one hour. Once Devin’s File is activated, I’ll need to configure its commlink to carry the maggot safely. If I don’t do it right, it could be very dangerous for Devin, because although it’s safe once propagated, it is some very potent code to be storing in a File.”
“I better get moving,” said Ezra. “An hour is not much time.”
۞
Ezra pulled over to the shoulder on eastbound Interstate-80 and darkened his windows. The morning sun still cut through the windshield, so he put on his dark shades. He was about to contact Irving Butler, but hesitated. Although he was duty-bound to the BCC, his heart was not in this fight the way it used to be. He was becoming more and more reluctant to go on, but he knew it was what he had to do – it was what he had taken an oath to do. Ever since his days as a hi-tech combat specialist in the Marines, he had learned to take oaths very seriously.
But maybe he was on the wrong side of this battle – maybe he’d taken an oath to the wrong people. A quick records search of secure BCC files revealed that the Violator, the virus that had killed Kyle’s wife, had been released by a small terrorist faction of the Underground. But Kyle and his cell were not terrorists. There was a time when Ezra painted all Undergrounders with the same brush – he counted them all as subversives and criminals and terrorists. But Kyle and his people were not the people Ezra had been fighting over the years, and they weren’t ignorant Ludds who didn’t understand what they were missing by denying themselves a File. They understood exactly what they were missing – a sort of enslavement to technology, and a danger from deadly viruses. More than that, they understood that living in freedom meant having a choice as to how to live their day-to-day lives. If they wanted to buy, sell, invest, travel, communicate, vote or be educated; they shouldn’t have to do it on the government’s draconian terms.
And maybe this crusade to get everyone a File was not what Celeste would’ve wanted. Maybe if people had not become so dependent on the File, things would’ve worked out differently for them.
Ezra was getting sick of all the maybes in his head. Feeling angry and unsettled, he opened a comm to Butler.
“This is Butler.”
“Hendricks here.”
“I haven’t heard from you in over three weeks, Agent Hendricks! I was starting to wonder if you were going to fulfill this assignment at all. I’m sure you remember my wife Evelyn, the governor of Massachusetts?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Well, she’s about to announce – tonight - that she’s running for president of the United States on the New Whig ticket. If you don’t put an end to the Underground today, I’m sending in the Guard and we’ll take care of it the old fashioned way. Her campaign is centered on the slogan ‘A File in every head.’ Do not make a liar out of my wife, Hendricks.”
“I have no such intention, Sir. And congratulations on her pending candidacy. Sir, I am contacting you because today is in fact the day that it will all come to an end. But I need you to pull a couple strings for me.”
“Excellent! What do you need?”
“I need a certain File activated and given clear access. I’m transmitting the File’s serial number on channel two as we speak. If all goes well today, Sir, the Underground as we know it will cease to exist before the sun goes down.”
“Hendricks, I knew I could count on you. Consider your request granted. I look forward to hearing from you later today. Butler out.”
۞
With Devin’s File active, and set up with a clean account, Kyle got to work on configuring it for transmitting the maggot.
“Alright, we should be good to go,” said Kyle.
“Dad, there’s just one problem. What if I don’t want to do this?”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe I don’t want to bring down the NI. Did you ever stop to consider that?”
“Well, no. I don’t suppose I had thought of that,” said Kyle.
“Now I’ve got what I’ve been waiting for all this time. Ezra has finally come through on his deal with me. Why would I now destroy the very thing I’ve been trying to get?”
Kyle’s fists balled in frustration. “Because I thought I taught you better than that! I thought I brought you up to know it’s more important to think of others than yourself!”
“Well, maybe that’s part of the problem, Dad. You’ve spent all these years, all your efforts, thinking of other people. Other people, Dad. Not me, not Mikayla. All you care about is your crusade to free humanity from the File – but I don’t share that vision. I want to be a part of the world that exists now, not the backward world you’re trying to bring about. I want to go out and make a place for myself. And now that I’ve got my File, and the NI account access, that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
“You’re not serious! Do you realize how many other people are depending on you right now? How much has been sacrificed to make today’s operation possible?” Kyle had never struck his children, but for the first time, he felt like he could back-hand Devin.
Ezra stepped in and took Kyle aside, speaking in a whisper. “Kyle, wait. Just let him go. If he wants to choose a different path, he’ll love you and respect you more – maybe even return on his own one day - if you don’t stand in his way now. If you push the issue, if you choose to fight this battle, you may make an enemy of your own son forever. And what would your success with this operation mean if you failed in your own family?”
“But what are we going to do? He’s our only hope to make this work.”
“Trust me. I have a plan.”
Kyle stared into Ezra’s eyes for a moment, then turned to his son and breathed a heavy sigh. “Alright Devin. If that’s what you really want, then go ahead. Go ahead and leave.” He paused as Devin looked back at him in bewilderment. “And son, know that you will always be welcome back here. This is your home. And I don’t care about the cell rules – you can come back, even after you’ve gone online.”
Devin looked down, a mixture of shame, excitement, and admiration playing on his features. Then he rushed into his father’s arms. “Thank you, Dad. I love you.”
“I love you too, son.” He shook his hand, man to man, and Devin left to go say goodbye to his sister.
“Now what?” Kyle asked Ezra. “What’s your big plan?”
“You’re not going to like some
of what I have to say. Actually, you’re not going to like most of what I have to say.”
“Just tell me the operation is going to work,” said Kyle.
“It will work. You just may not want to talk to me again after it’s all said and done.”
۞
“He’s what?” said Sascha.
“He’s BCC. Well – ex-BCC, now,” said Kyle.
“I knew there was something wrong with him.”
“But he’s no longer working for them,” said Kyle.
“Are you sure you can trust him? I mean, he’s been lying to us this whole time! Kyle, we’ve had the enemy among us for months now. Who knows how he’s compromised us? For all we know, he’s planning to sabotage the operation, not help us.”
“I know it’s hard to believe. No BCC agent has ever turned before. But I do trust Ezra. He’s been honest with me about why he’s doing this. I could tell by the way he talked about his wife, about how he’s come to understand our point of view - how it has become his point of view, now.”
“Kyle, he knows your history. Isn’t it possible he isn’t really a widower at all – that he’s just using that as part of his cover, to get under your skin?”
“No. Of all people, I’d know if someone was lying about something like that. Ezra and I are more alike than you realize. We just went in different directions when we lost our wives. If circumstances had been just a little different, it could have ended up being the other way around –