Kyle Kirkland - Connections

“That’s your bread and circus?”

Barbara gave me a long look. “Very funny. Science is truth, not entertainment. There’s a lot left to be learned.” She inhaled a lungful of smoke. As she blew it out she said, “Want some advice? Distribute the wonder drug to people, even if they don’t want it. Do it secretly if you have to. Smart people can handle freedom whereas ignorant people can’t. Isn’t that what Thomas Jefferson once said?”

“That really makes sense to you? Think about it, Barbara.”

She shrugged. “Politics isn’t my thing. You decide. Well? Are you in or out?”

“I have another plan. How about we publish your discovery, and tell everyone—not just Yoobie and Ops scientists but the public—about the drug and the AIs. At least the knowledge will be out in the open and less subject to abuse. In the meantime, there is a thing or two you need to learn, and I’m not talking about science. I know two people who want to be your friend if you’ll let them.”

Barbara initially thought I was kidding. Then she saw I was serious. She set her cigarette down on the cup, and the muscles in her face and neck tightened. “I like my plan better.”

“There are a couple of problems with your plan. You’d be able to understand what I’m talking about if you were a little more mature.”

She sneered. “Who’s playing childish games all the time?”

“Me. But I’m starting to see the light. That’s the difference between you and me. You can’t see the light, you can’t see your own problems. And you never will, until you start getting along with people, or at least start appreciating that other people have feelings and needs just as much as you do.”

I’d recently found out a lot I didn’t know about Arden, and most of it wasn’t good. But everyone had flaws, and I owed the man a lot for helping me so many times. I wanted to return the favor by helping his daughter. I’m sure he would have wanted that. Circumstances deprived Barbara of a normal childhood; she turned out pretty well, considering, but her great intelligence had put her—and other people—in danger. Barbara needed to grow up, and I figured Jake and Sandra would be good role models. Well, at least Sandra would.

But Barbara wasn’t buying it. “I’ll turn you in,” she said fiercely.

“And Yoobie will catch you too.”

Barbara paused. “Yes, but what I didn’t tell you before is that they’ll save me. They won’t wipe my mind. I’m sure they won’t. They won’t do it once they know the truth. They won’t save you, but they’ll save me . I can fix the problems with the drug.”

I shook my head. “Now it’s my turn to clue you in about Yoobie. The one thing they fear above all else is violence.”

She started to say something, then she looked thoughtful.

I pressed my advantage. “They’ll find out you blew up the car. And despite your assurance that no one got hurt, two people who were nearby suffered second-degree burns.”

“How do you—”

“Your monitors. That’s how I found out. You have them hooked up to the institute’s cameras and security system, but with some maneuvering I tapped into the news circuit a short while ago. Yoobie will trace the chemical residue. They probably wouldn’t find out you did it without my help, but once I set them on the right track, they’ll know for sure you’re guilty. And my guess is that you’ve done this more than just once.” I paused. “They won’t save you, Barbara. They’ll be more afraid of you than anyone else.”

Her face became bright red. She screamed and slammed her fist into the wall with a surprising amount of force. I was betting her fingers ached more than mine did, but in her agitated state she probably didn’t even feel it. “I won’t submit to you!” she cried. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”

“That’s your choice,” I told her.

She gave me the most evil look I’ve ever seen. Her voice shook with rage. “My only consolation is that what happens to me will happen to you.”

I was counting on it.

Barbara’s criticism of the Opposition was right. When you counted hearts instead of votes, we were in the majority.

There were some scary moments. The Yoobie agents who took Barbara and me into custody spared little feeling in their disdain. They wanted to begin rehabilitation right away.

A bureaucratic tussle ensued in my case. The Yoobie agent who had been trailing me carried a specific message, but Yoobie hadn’t caught onto my investigation of Kirst at the time—I had instead been selected for jury duty. My E.R.C.B. qualified me, and the Court Bureau and the Reform Bureau engaged in a spat with me in the middle, until the higher-ups sensibly ruled that rehabilitation overrode jury duty.

An indescribable anxiety swept over me as the technician sank the needle into my arm. The white uniforms, white walls, white floors, and white cot in the room crushed me, washed away all contrast and variety. Swathed in a white robe, I lost my identity, my separation from the environment.

The drugs would have finished me off, had they been given. But after ten of the longest minutes of my life, I discovered the I.V. contained nothing but saline, with an addition, perhaps, of a mild sedative. The sedative may or may not have been in the solution—my relief was so great that it may have just felt like it.

I had not been saved officially. Unofficially, someone along the line—the technician who administered the drug, the pharmacist who dispensed it, the nurse who supervised the procedure, the physician who prescribed the treatment, or even the orderly who turned down the bed sheet—someone had secretly intervened on my behalf.

It’d been a risky bet. But if the majority belonged to the Opposition, I figured somebody would come to my aid, especially after the importance of the charges against me leaked out. Ops were especially attuned to cases that Yoobie tried desperately to hide.

Barbara had also been given saline. I saw her a few times in the hallway, pretending to stumble about, as I was doing. But when we passed, we shared a glance that told each of us all we needed to know. She was okay. Still a bit peeved, but intact. And smart enough to play her role as convincingly as possible. She understood the consequences of failure.

We had to play the game a little while longer, then Yoobie would release us. By that time, I felt, Barbara would be more receptive to my ideas. I figured that this experience was just what she needed to broaden her understanding and give her a taste of what it was like to be the helpless subject of a brutal, insensitive authority. Maybe she wouldn’t be so quick in the future to do the same to other people.

I had no plans to keep my feelings hidden once Barbara was safely out of rehab. And if I could convince Barbara to join the Opposition, all the better. Not the old Opposition—the new Opposition. We wouldn’t be able to change all at once, but the time had arrived for us to take the first steps in getting our connections out in the open. A few well-placed advanced AIs could do wonders in publicizing our dissatisfaction with the current regime and promoting a public discussion of alternatives to the bloated, draconian system that had been weighing all of us down for far too long.