John Barnes - Directive 51

“Where—?” Ysabel asked. “Where what? ”

Miss High Adventure explained. Ysabel was flabbergasted—so that was why everyone had been piled around the TV set in the waiting area before they boarded the bus. Ysabel had figured it must be the stupid World Series; now she realized that she was fleeing across a border after shooting down a piece of military hardware, during a major terrorist attack.

It might be wise to be obviously buddies with someone conventional. And Nerdette herself was just saying she was “scared to death, even though I know this is about as safe as foreign travel gets.”

So they chattered about everything in the world, with Ysabel changing just enough of her bio not to be too recognizable in case they were looking for her. She’d thought it was a pretty good joke to call herself Jane Llano—“plain Jane”—on her false passport—but now her head was filled with, must remember, must remember, my name is Jane, Spanish major at UT-Austin, please don’t let anyone ask about anything there because I’ve never been there—

The border guard got on, and said, “Folks, they’re asking me to scan all the passports and record them, because of what’s happened, but it shouldn’t take more than five minutes.”

Ysabel thought she’d explode, but Nerd Chick actually put a hand on her back, and said, “Hey, relax, you’re the old hand here. You know it’s nothing to do with us.”

“Yeah. I guess I’m having flashbacks. You travel down south of Mexico at all, into Nicaragua or Honduras, and sometimes border checkpoints are scary.”

They scanned the fake passport without comment. The guard even smiled and said, “Have a good time, Jane.” It would have been even better if the guy had happened to use SuperAmericanGirl’s first name too.

As the bus rolled into Mexico, Miss Texas Nerdface of 2024 was telling an apparently endless story about some elaborate prank that her brother had played on her other brother, which involved hiding underwear. From there she progressed to talking about how exciting-but-scary the world was.

Honey, you’ve got no freakin’ idea, Ysabel thought, between trying to think of more synonyms for that’s interesting and oh really?

Del Quintano was known as “Leprechaun” to his friends because, despite being solid Mexican as far back as the family knew, his bushy sideburns made him look more like the Notre Dame mascot than anyone had any right to. He’d made a virtue of it, growing his sideburns out and hanging the cab of his semi-tractor with little plastic leprechauns and decals, and he had to admit, his luck did seem to be pretty good.

He was listening to a talk station on IBIS radio, all the news about Air Force Two, shaking his head. Man, you never knew what was going to happen, except that when it did, every idiot in the world would call up every station in the world, and they’d all talk about it.

He had a mandatory sleep-layover coming up in Des Moines. A shower, a bed, and not being allowed to drive any farther until he’d had some sleep looked pretty nice to Del. Some of the old truckers complained about CELT, Continuous Electronic Load Tracking, because they couldn’t skate around the rest-rules and take more work, but as far as Del was concerned, it meant nobody else could cut in on you while you followed the rules and worked a reasonable pace.

But even at a reasonable pace, that last hundred miles or so could get pretty tiring. Maybe he’d put on some music, something lively to stay awake to. “Radio, search, find coustajam,” he said. He liked that new stuff.

The computer answered, “Searching, interruptions very frequent in IBIS, some scrawk .” Then it fell dead quiet.

“Radio, acknowledge.”

No sound.

“Radio, reboot.”

“Rebooting and loading—” a harsh squeal, then silence.

“Computer, internal check.”

A brief, rumbling hiss—then nothing.

Shit, he’d spent a fortune on a good voice-actuated system.

He pulled over at the next roadside rest. When he popped the cover, crusty gray-white stuff that looked like dried toothpaste fell out into his hand from the fuse box. He stared at the mess. It stung and burned where it had touched his fingers.

Del shook the mess off his hand into his litter bag, grabbed a wipe from his box, and swabbed his hands, looking in consternation at the tiny red dots that peppered his palms and fingers.

That gray-white stuff looked like battery corrosion. He took his flashlight around to take a look.

There were drifts and piles of that white crud everywhere, clustering and spilling around every little electronic gadget, engulfing every electric motor and encrusting every cable. The battery sat in a ball of crusty white goo the size of a beach ball.

“Holy shit,” he muttered. He closed up the compartment, got in, prayed—not something he did often, and seldom this sincerely—and tried to start it again. There were clunks and thuds on the first try; fewer of them after he’d tried a few times and then nothing at all.

Furious, thinking about a late load and all that would cost him, and about the bed and shower waiting for him in Des Moines, he took out his cell phone to make the call to the dispatcher. The phone’s screen was an unrecognizable scrawl of light and dark. Fighting panic, Del tried turning it off and on; it came on, wavered, and turned itself off. After that, it wouldn’t come on at all.

On a hunch he didn’t quite understand, he turned his phone over, pulled the battery, and tapped the phone in his hand; little gray-white crumbles fell out, stinging his hand again. The light in his cab went out, and wouldn’t come back on.

It was warm without being stifling in Zach’s Dadmobile. He drives like my dad, too, Jason thought. Dad always said it was his “precious cargo habit”—all those years of never looking away from the road because he couldn’t stand to have one of his kids hurt. Cool, actually, once you understand it. “You must be dying to get home.”

“Oh, yeah. Wrap up tight, down into the burrow with the cubs.” Zach smiled. “I still want to take down the Big System—but not before the Big System gets me home and lets me find out that everything’s basically okay. Speaking of that, I wonder why we haven’t heard from the President yet?”

“That is weird, isn’t it?” Jason said. “All I can find is recaps of what’s already been in the news.” His connection was still up and clear, and still tracking IBISNuStream Samuelson. In a fresh window he called up Goo- 22. “We’re not the only ones worrying. ‘Pendano’ is one of the five most searched words. But there’s just one statement out of the White House—he won’t be appearing at a fund-raiser in West Virginia in the morning. That’s it.”

“What do you suppose he’s doing?”

Jason shrugged. “The media always made a big deal about what good buds Pendano and Samuelson were. Maybe he’s crying.”

“I never liked him, but I hope that’s not true.”

“Yeah. I liked him, but I know what you mean. Funny how it still matters even when we know it’s all going away.”

“What’s all going away?”

“Dude. The Big System. I mean, Daybreak’s here. Whoever grabbed Samuelson, why they did it, everything—it’s all old stuff with no meaning, just history. This is just like a hangover or something. Once the Big System is down, we’ll stop having all these emotional attachments to media figures.”