Day 6
I also had the doctor's ID card. This would work for us a number of ways - first, it'd create the illusion of official business. Our doctor was clearly the kind who made house calls at any time of day, so his presence here wouldn't flag any fraud-detection algorithms in the banking computers. We probably had until sometime tomorrow until the card was canceled. Secondly, it'd hopefully give us an air of prestige that would lead to fewer questions being asked of us. While the doctor hadn't been a Trooper himself, he'd clearly been on Trooper business.
The only drawback was that none of us looked the part. Jamie and I were too young, and John had a number of scars which one would find difficult to acquire during the course of a legitimate medical career.
"I'll gas up." John said, in a tone that indicated he was volunteering for the less stressful duty before anyone else could. "You two head into the store, try to act all lovey-dovey or something. You'll get asked less questions that way, everyone loves to see a happy couple."
That could not be any less the case, but I nonetheless winked at Jamie and played it up. She merely gave me a look. It was a look which said that this idea was a poor one, John was a fool for thinking it up, and I was a greater fool for playing along. The look used more coarse language than that, however. I stepped out of the van and caught her grinning as she left. I repressed my own; clearly John's idea had been just as funny to her as it was to me, but Jamie didn't want me to know that. How she thought a mind reader wouldn't pick up on it was beyond me.
The doctor's ID card would say that he was in his early 60s. It would indicate his marital status, and some basic information about the wife, if any. None of it was likely to be anywhere close to the facade Jamie and I were trying to put up. On the other hand, maybe John had been right; give the cashier something else to think about. If he'd meant that, it'd be easy enough to distract the guy, why John hadn't just said so seemed a mystery.
Oh. He thought I was lonely and needed the company. That was surprisingly considerate of him; if it wouldn't embarrass and lead to hours of loud denying, I'd thank him.
John had exited the back and was starting to work the pump while Jamie and me entered the store itself. She moved instantly over to the freezers in the back, looking for water, leaving me to pay for the gas.
"Yeah, we're filling up on pump 4 there." I said, exuding an aura of casualness. "She's probably going to grab some snacks back there."
The attendant - Rory, by his nametag - had apparently already enabled the pump and was looking disinterestedly at me, occasionally slipping a glance at Jamie and trying not to let me catch him do it.
Jamie came up to the counter and dropped two gallon jugs of water. "I'll be back for food." she said.
I shrugged by way of explanation, and the attendant ignored me. I glanced over at the newspapers. The headline read "Simmons Wins Uncontested Election." I stifled a laugh; the paper was over a month old at this point and was clearly to lend an air of sophistication, however slight, to the gas stop. Rory glanced at me as though he'd heard me, clearly I hadn't been as quiet as I'd hoped.
Jamie had returned with donuts, chips, and other foods high enough in calories to keep us going. I handed over the ID card as casually as I could while Rory rang everything up. I kept my eyes on the newspaper, frowning slightly. It was somewhat odd, actually, that that particular newspaper was on display. Simmons had actually had an opponent whose name I couldn't recall even this soon after the election. The opponent had favored relaxing restrictions on the least harmful of the Afflicted; namely, those whose immune systems had defeated it entirely. For the most part, they passed for normal and many didn't even live in quarantine zones: A test was required to see whether they'd even been infected. Unfortunately, those tests were performed alongside standard mandatory drug tests, which were required for nearly every job. Simmons' opponent had claimed that these people had been walking among normal people for a long time now, and no new outbreaks had happened, so they were unlikely to be contagious. He hadn't enjoyed enough support to get him on the ballot, of course, which was how Simmons had earned the landslide. It'd been a shame, though, that the first Afflicted rights candidate in years had been shut down so completely.
<< Simmons was just pandering, I don't think he cared one way or the other about the Afflicted. Walter had conviction. <<
Being a telepath is dangerous normally, and being one outside of a quarantine zone is a criminally dangerous. I'd learned from an early age how to disguise my nature from other telepaths or, more often, the machines that worked as detectors. The key was to distract yourself with typical thinking, so I did the first thing that came to mind and started mentally undressing Jamie.
There'd been times in the past where it would have been handy if at least one of the people in my group were a telepath. This was not one of them; had Jamie been a mind-reader I'd be in a great deal more trouble at the moment. She'd left the cashier to do the scanning and returned with more water, and by the time she had I was full into my imagination. Any nearby mind-readers, like our increasingly suspicious-looking gas station attendant, would think that I was simply thinking intently on the person who they would also think was my wife, or at least significant other.
<< I already did that earlier, I think you noticed, so you don't really need to fill me in on what your imagination thinks she looks like naked.<<
I ignored him, and kept trying to convince my conscious mind that Jamie was someone I'd been with all my life. Nothing suspicious here, just a doctor and his girlfriend out for a ride.
<< You're not the doctor. The card says 60, widowed, and needs glasses. You're 25, single, 20/20 vision, and not the man I saw earlier today who looked a lot more like his ID. <<
Jamie had left the counter again and I slowly turned my gaze from her to Rory.
>> What do you want? >>
"Your gas is done." he said simply, gesturing out the window. What was he playing at? If he was a Trooper in disguise, and it wasn't a bad idea, plant a telepathic trooper by an on-ramp and radio in anybody suspicious, he was certainly being roundabout.
<< Try to keep up the conversation. This place is under surveillance by those cameras. They're not just anti-theft devices, Troopers come in every week and take the footage out. Act naturally. <<
"Thanks," I replied, trying to sound as natural as I could and failing. "Is that it, Jamie?"
Jamie caught something in my voice, because she gave me a strange look, but she merely shrugged and said "Yeah, that's about all I could find. Sorry it couldn't be healthier, but it's a gas station. No offense."
"None taken" Rory replied.
<< Good. I saw the doctor earlier, and when the bad guys come in on Wednesday and ask me why I couldn't tell the difference, I won't have a good answer for them. So I'm going to have to call this in once you're gone. <<
I frowned, but merely asked "How much is the total?"
<< I'll tell them I think I saw you headed north, and if you could say something along those lines it'd be great, but where you want to go on that highway is south. <<
He gave me the total, subtracted it from the card, and handed the latter back to me.
>> Why should I believe you? >>
<< We don't have time for this. You're free to ignore my advice, but if you do go north the Troopers will catch up to you and you don't want that. You want to go south. There's an unmarked road down the way, right across from a field full of sewage treatment plants. Take that road. Your map will show it doesn't lead to anything, but your map is wrong. <<
"Have a nice day." he said, smiling as though it were the most natural thing in the world, as though he hadn't tensely been relating directions right into my brain.
"You too" I replied, and got the hell out of the shop.
"Hey, help me with this!" Jamie said, struggling to get through the exit under the bulkiness of her purchases. I went back and grabbed some water from her and then went to the van. John had already climbed inside and was next to Dana, watching her carefully.
Jamie hopped into the driver's seat. "Something seemed off about you in there. Anything going on we should know about?"
>> Drive. >>
Only telepaths could talk mind-to-mind. If I tried to think to a non-receiver, I'd end up putting thoughts in his or her head all right, but they'd be subconscious demands. I'd gotten good enough at it that I could implant basic commands with ease and even more complex tasks. I could have made the doctor simply hand over his keycard and stand there while we broke out, but of course that would have revealed the helmet's weakness so I'd had to be more inventive. All this aside, I'd taught my team early on what these suggestions felt like, and how to recognize them. Jamie didn't get the exact message I sent her, but she felt the need to drive, and she recognized it as coming from me. She also knew I'd only do this in an emergency. So she didn't panic, she didn't resent the intrusion, she merely phrased a question in her own mind for me: Which way?
I decided on trust, for now. We could always change course later, if needed.
>> South.>>
"No," I lied in response to Jamie's initial question, the mental exchange having taken only a second during which it had appeared as thought I was considering my reply. "I'm fine."
We pulled out of the gas station and returned to the road. Moments later, when the highway on-ramps appeared, we turned onto them, headed south.
The only drawback was that none of us looked the part. Jamie and I were too young, and John had a number of scars which one would find difficult to acquire during the course of a legitimate medical career.
"I'll gas up." John said, in a tone that indicated he was volunteering for the less stressful duty before anyone else could. "You two head into the store, try to act all lovey-dovey or something. You'll get asked less questions that way, everyone loves to see a happy couple."
That could not be any less the case, but I nonetheless winked at Jamie and played it up. She merely gave me a look. It was a look which said that this idea was a poor one, John was a fool for thinking it up, and I was a greater fool for playing along. The look used more coarse language than that, however. I stepped out of the van and caught her grinning as she left. I repressed my own; clearly John's idea had been just as funny to her as it was to me, but Jamie didn't want me to know that. How she thought a mind reader wouldn't pick up on it was beyond me.
The doctor's ID card would say that he was in his early 60s. It would indicate his marital status, and some basic information about the wife, if any. None of it was likely to be anywhere close to the facade Jamie and I were trying to put up. On the other hand, maybe John had been right; give the cashier something else to think about. If he'd meant that, it'd be easy enough to distract the guy, why John hadn't just said so seemed a mystery.
Oh. He thought I was lonely and needed the company. That was surprisingly considerate of him; if it wouldn't embarrass and lead to hours of loud denying, I'd thank him.
John had exited the back and was starting to work the pump while Jamie and me entered the store itself. She moved instantly over to the freezers in the back, looking for water, leaving me to pay for the gas.
"Yeah, we're filling up on pump 4 there." I said, exuding an aura of casualness. "She's probably going to grab some snacks back there."
The attendant - Rory, by his nametag - had apparently already enabled the pump and was looking disinterestedly at me, occasionally slipping a glance at Jamie and trying not to let me catch him do it.
Jamie came up to the counter and dropped two gallon jugs of water. "I'll be back for food." she said.
I shrugged by way of explanation, and the attendant ignored me. I glanced over at the newspapers. The headline read "Simmons Wins Uncontested Election." I stifled a laugh; the paper was over a month old at this point and was clearly to lend an air of sophistication, however slight, to the gas stop. Rory glanced at me as though he'd heard me, clearly I hadn't been as quiet as I'd hoped.
Jamie had returned with donuts, chips, and other foods high enough in calories to keep us going. I handed over the ID card as casually as I could while Rory rang everything up. I kept my eyes on the newspaper, frowning slightly. It was somewhat odd, actually, that that particular newspaper was on display. Simmons had actually had an opponent whose name I couldn't recall even this soon after the election. The opponent had favored relaxing restrictions on the least harmful of the Afflicted; namely, those whose immune systems had defeated it entirely. For the most part, they passed for normal and many didn't even live in quarantine zones: A test was required to see whether they'd even been infected. Unfortunately, those tests were performed alongside standard mandatory drug tests, which were required for nearly every job. Simmons' opponent had claimed that these people had been walking among normal people for a long time now, and no new outbreaks had happened, so they were unlikely to be contagious. He hadn't enjoyed enough support to get him on the ballot, of course, which was how Simmons had earned the landslide. It'd been a shame, though, that the first Afflicted rights candidate in years had been shut down so completely.
<< Simmons was just pandering, I don't think he cared one way or the other about the Afflicted. Walter had conviction. <<
Being a telepath is dangerous normally, and being one outside of a quarantine zone is a criminally dangerous. I'd learned from an early age how to disguise my nature from other telepaths or, more often, the machines that worked as detectors. The key was to distract yourself with typical thinking, so I did the first thing that came to mind and started mentally undressing Jamie.
There'd been times in the past where it would have been handy if at least one of the people in my group were a telepath. This was not one of them; had Jamie been a mind-reader I'd be in a great deal more trouble at the moment. She'd left the cashier to do the scanning and returned with more water, and by the time she had I was full into my imagination. Any nearby mind-readers, like our increasingly suspicious-looking gas station attendant, would think that I was simply thinking intently on the person who they would also think was my wife, or at least significant other.
<< I already did that earlier, I think you noticed, so you don't really need to fill me in on what your imagination thinks she looks like naked.<<
I ignored him, and kept trying to convince my conscious mind that Jamie was someone I'd been with all my life. Nothing suspicious here, just a doctor and his girlfriend out for a ride.
<< You're not the doctor. The card says 60, widowed, and needs glasses. You're 25, single, 20/20 vision, and not the man I saw earlier today who looked a lot more like his ID. <<
Jamie had left the counter again and I slowly turned my gaze from her to Rory.
>> What do you want? >>
"Your gas is done." he said simply, gesturing out the window. What was he playing at? If he was a Trooper in disguise, and it wasn't a bad idea, plant a telepathic trooper by an on-ramp and radio in anybody suspicious, he was certainly being roundabout.
<< Try to keep up the conversation. This place is under surveillance by those cameras. They're not just anti-theft devices, Troopers come in every week and take the footage out. Act naturally. <<
"Thanks," I replied, trying to sound as natural as I could and failing. "Is that it, Jamie?"
Jamie caught something in my voice, because she gave me a strange look, but she merely shrugged and said "Yeah, that's about all I could find. Sorry it couldn't be healthier, but it's a gas station. No offense."
"None taken" Rory replied.
<< Good. I saw the doctor earlier, and when the bad guys come in on Wednesday and ask me why I couldn't tell the difference, I won't have a good answer for them. So I'm going to have to call this in once you're gone. <<
I frowned, but merely asked "How much is the total?"
<< I'll tell them I think I saw you headed north, and if you could say something along those lines it'd be great, but where you want to go on that highway is south. <<
He gave me the total, subtracted it from the card, and handed the latter back to me.
>> Why should I believe you? >>
<< We don't have time for this. You're free to ignore my advice, but if you do go north the Troopers will catch up to you and you don't want that. You want to go south. There's an unmarked road down the way, right across from a field full of sewage treatment plants. Take that road. Your map will show it doesn't lead to anything, but your map is wrong. <<
"Have a nice day." he said, smiling as though it were the most natural thing in the world, as though he hadn't tensely been relating directions right into my brain.
"You too" I replied, and got the hell out of the shop.
"Hey, help me with this!" Jamie said, struggling to get through the exit under the bulkiness of her purchases. I went back and grabbed some water from her and then went to the van. John had already climbed inside and was next to Dana, watching her carefully.
Jamie hopped into the driver's seat. "Something seemed off about you in there. Anything going on we should know about?"
>> Drive. >>
Only telepaths could talk mind-to-mind. If I tried to think to a non-receiver, I'd end up putting thoughts in his or her head all right, but they'd be subconscious demands. I'd gotten good enough at it that I could implant basic commands with ease and even more complex tasks. I could have made the doctor simply hand over his keycard and stand there while we broke out, but of course that would have revealed the helmet's weakness so I'd had to be more inventive. All this aside, I'd taught my team early on what these suggestions felt like, and how to recognize them. Jamie didn't get the exact message I sent her, but she felt the need to drive, and she recognized it as coming from me. She also knew I'd only do this in an emergency. So she didn't panic, she didn't resent the intrusion, she merely phrased a question in her own mind for me: Which way?
I decided on trust, for now. We could always change course later, if needed.
>> South.>>
"No," I lied in response to Jamie's initial question, the mental exchange having taken only a second during which it had appeared as thought I was considering my reply. "I'm fine."
We pulled out of the gas station and returned to the road. Moments later, when the highway on-ramps appeared, we turned onto them, headed south.
posted by Roger Ostrander at 4:52 PM
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