Pennsylvania Omnibus (2 page)

There was that one time he’d gone with his father to
Cruville to bid on some land.  They’d lost the bid, but that was the first time
he’d flown on an airbus.  Another time was when he and his father flew to
Richmond for the hearings on whether the Plain People were going to be forced
to get TRIDs.  That was a trip that ended with a positive outcome.  As a result
of the Richmond Ruling, there were now two distinct airbus systems:  one that
operated within the AZ and served the Plain People; and another for the
English.

This was a Plain People airbus, and in it, the Plain
People could travel anywhere in the AZ without papers.  There were four AZs in
the North American Union, and Plain airbuses traveled between them non-stop. 
These buses didn’t require TRIDs, either.  The Plain People weren’t marked with
biometric TRIDs like the English were; the Richmond Ruling had seen to that.

Of course, if any passenger was heading out of the AZ, by
law they had to stop at the Columbia checkpoint and get papers.  And on any bus
that stopped or took on passengers outside the Amish Zone, the Plain People had
to have their papers with them at all times.  If not, things would get bad for
them.

Columbia was just like Jed remembered it.  The hustle and
bustle was disconcerting, and the city buzzed with a strange mixture of Plain
People and the English.  It was a place where two cultures met, and it was the
last checkpoint for anyone traveling into or out of the Amish Zone.

The Transport station at Columbia ran smoothly and
efficiently.  Travel had been streamlined a lot since the wars.  In general,
people were more docile.  Most of them were on the drug
Quadrille
and
stayed online anytime they weren’t actually standing in front of a government
official; and those who weren’t on the new drug, and who weren’t online, had
learned that resistance and misbehavior didn’t pay.  No one wanted to get sent
to Oklahoma, and that was exactly what would happen to you if you got out of
line anytime during transport.

The Amish travel advisor had warned Jed numerous times not
to “mess up” during transport.  Private transport had been almost uniformly
outlawed since the end of the wars, and transport law was now rigid,
inflexible, and merciless.  The Transport Police were feared like no one else
in the society.

Jed got in line for his papers, and there were only a
dozen or so other Plain People in front of him.  The English all had implanted
TRIDs, and they just flowed through ticketing and security without having to
stop at all.

When he reached the front of the line, Jed presented his
emigration papers without saying a word.  The customs worker, a pretty young
woman, glanced through them with disinterest before stamping each of them with
a transport code.  Next, the woman smiled at him as she reached over and yanked
out a few strands of his hair—without warning him—and placed them into a small
glass tube, which she then filled with a bluish liquid.  She asked him to roll
up his sleeve, and she took a skin sample by scraping the dry skin on his elbow
with a sharp tool.  She caught the flakes of skin in a second tube which was
also filled with a blue liquid.  He was asked to look into some kind of eye
machine, and there was a flash.  Whatever the eye thing was (she didn’t
explain), Jed knew that Transport was permitted to take material
from
the Plain People, but they couldn’t implant anything.  No invasive procedures
were allowed.  The Richmond Ruling was ironclad and court-tested, and the Plain
People had won their right, on the basis of their sincerely held religious
beliefs, not to be implanted with any identifying devices or markers.  Jed
figured that the eye scan was some way of identifying him biometrically, much
like the hair and skin samples.  No one messed with fingerprints anymore. 
Those had become too easy to fake.

Other than politely barked instructions, the pretty
customs lady made no idle chit-chat.  A couple of times she looked up with just
her eyes, as if she was sizing him up, but other than that she was going
through her checklist almost robotically.  She slid the two blue tubes and
something in the form of a small plastic chip into a hard rubberized band and
slid the band over Jed’s left hand, securing it on his wrist.  Then she forced
his hand into another machine, and he felt the band tighten on his wrist in a
way that made it seem like it had been permanently attached, even while he
could still feel that it didn’t hinder the flow of blood to his hand. 
Strange
.

“Unilets?” the woman said with a smile.  Not really a
question, more of a statement.  She stepped out from behind the computer desk
for a moment, and as she did he saw her name tag. 
Dawn
.

It took Jed a moment to understand what Dawn was asking. 
Money
.  The English now paid one another in
unis
, and his money
had been converted for him when he’d picked up his approval papers.  Unilets
were originally designed to be a fair representation of time worked.  Back when
they were first introduced, after the wars, there was some computer algorithm
that supposedly determined the value of unis day by day.  Eventually, the
original idea of unilets as a form of straight trade or barter of human work
hours had been dropped, as everyone knew they would be co-opted by governments
and banks.

Jed knew a lot about unis because the Plain People had
considered accepting the currency early on, back when the new money system was
just called
LETS
.  The LETS were initially designed to be a local trade
and barter system, and that was something Jed’s community could really
appreciate.  But the “wait and see” attitude of the Plain People had paid off
once again.  It didn’t take long before LETS were changed to unilets, and the
Plain People chose not to participate in the system.  Unilets were not accepted
as money anywhere in the AZs.

Jed pulled the plastic card from the front pocket of his
vest and handed it to the customs woman.  She thanked him and waved the card in
front of the monitor on her computer, and then she looked back and forth
between his face and whatever now appeared on the screen.  She sat staring at
the computer for several minutes as if she were frozen in place.  She didn’t
press any keys, and her eyes didn’t scan back and forth like she was reading. 
She just stared blankly for a very long time.

Jed wondered if Dawn was on the Internet in her head.  He
didn’t know what else to call it.  He wasn’t even really sure what an
“Internet” was, except that it was how the English did everything on
computers.  Now they had some way to get this Internet in their head, and he’d
seen the far-off, blank gaze in the faces of tourists before.

After what seemed to be an interminable wait, the customs
woman stuck his plastic card into a slot and did some procedure on the
computer, typing furiously for a few seconds.  Satisfied at last that
everything was good and ready to go, she again grabbed his wrist—the one with
the black band on it—and flipped it over so it was facing her.  She took the
card out of the computer and touched it against the armband. A light blinked on
the band, which apparently convinced the woman that his unilets were now
resident on his band.  She then let his wrist down onto the desktop and stared
at the computer for a few more seconds.

“Yep,” she said.  “You’re good to go now.  Do you know how
to use the band to buy things?

“Not really, ma’am.”

She smiled, and for the first time it was like a light
went on in her mind that indicated to her that she was dealing with a real
human.  He smiled back, and he noticed that she even blushed a little.  Maybe
he did, too.

“Okay, well, the band has your unis in it,” she said. 
“Place the wrist portion against or near a charging station and the amount
indicated on the charging window will be deducted from your total… got it?”

“I think so.”

“Any other questions?”

“Well… yes.  Couldn’t somebody steal this plastic band and
make off with all of my money… or, er… um… my unilets?”

“Nothing to worry about, sir.  We’ve solved those problems
long ago.  The band can only be used when it’s touching your body, and only
while you’re alive.”  She nodded like this last part should make him feel more
comfortable about carrying all of his money on his wrist.  “The unique
identifiers are digitized now, and the charging stations will scan your eyes
and other biometric identifiers automatically to make sure it’s you that’s
making the purchase and that you’re not under duress.  So it’s totally safe. 
You have nothing to be concerned about, okay?”

“Okay.”  It was all Jed could think of to say.

“Anything else?”

“Just… well… thank you, Dawn.  Thank you very much, and…
where do I catch the airbus for the next leg of the trip to New
Pennsylvania?”

Dawn smiled again.  This time there was another look in
her eye.  It was a far-off look that he couldn’t rightly quantify.  Perhaps it
was sadness, or maybe she felt sorry for him.  He really wasn’t good at trying
to figure out the motivations of the English, but she paused for just a moment,
as if a thought, previously unconsidered, passed through her mind.  Her smile
tightened and she blinked before answering, and all of her mannerisms taken
together gave him a weird feeling in his stomach.

“Make a right directly at the end of this counter.  Down
at the end of the concourse, turn to your left.  Then to the end of that
walkway and you’ll be at Gate 13.  Okay?”

“Okay.  And thanks.”

“No problem.  Have a safe and prosperous trip, Jed.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Jed looked into her eyes one more time before he turned to
leave, and again he saw a hint of sadness there, as if she were saying, “After
you are all gone, what will become of us?”  But maybe he was projecting his own
thoughts into a woman who might not even really care.

There was a vending machine at Gate 13 that purportedly
served food, but Jed had learned in his few journeys among the English that the
term “food” could only be loosely applied to whatever came out of a machine. 
He was hungry though, and the brochure plainly instructed pilgrims to eat
before boarding the airbus to the SGT station out in West Texas.  There would
be no food for nine years once he boarded this airbus!  He thought about that
for a moment and shook his head.  To think, this machine food was going to be
his last meal. 
Ech!

He selected a sandwich and a bowl of chicken soup, and
noted that the two items would cost him a total of two thousand unis. 
Two
thousand unis!  For soup and a sandwich!
  It was difficult for him to do
the conversion in his head, but he was pretty sure he could buy a new pair of
work shoes for the equivalent of two thousand unis.  He couldn’t find anything
that was remarkably cheaper, so he tapped his wrist against the charging
station on the right side of the glass, and the machine whirred into motion. 
As he leaned over to pull his meal tray from the slot in the machine, he
noticed the computer screen above the slot.

Your charge:  2,000 Unilets

Your balance:  598,000 Unilets

598,000 Unilets!  Wait a minute.  That’s way too much. 
Something is wrong.

He tried to recall how the money system worked.  After
converting his AZ money into unis when he’d first picked up his transport
orders, he’d had two hundred thousand unis for his trip.  That was all.  Two
hundred thousand unis.  No more.  That was how much he’d brought with him. 
Now, for some reason, his uni account had just tripled! 
Maybe something is
wrong with the machine.
  He looked up at the screen again, then glanced all
around.  His face flushed with embarrassment.  He felt guilty for some reason,
like maybe he’d stolen the extra unis.  Balancing the tray with his right hand,
he looked at his wristband to see if there was any readout that might tell him
how many unis he really had.  There was none… at least there wasn’t one that he
knew about.  He looked around again, and now he felt panic rise up in him; his
heart began to beat faster.  He felt sweat building up on his brow, and just as
he turned around again, he saw Dawn walking quickly toward him.

She wasn’t smiling.

Most Plain People are used to
feeling guilty when they’ve done nothing wrong.  It’s part of the physiology
and culture of being different.  Usually this feeling only creeps up on them
when they’re out among the English.  There was something in the way the English
looked at them that conveyed a sense of accusation.  Even when tourists were
smiling and pointing and saying “How cute!” and asking for pictures, or
snapping them anyway while pretending not to, there was always a subtle
covetousness in the way the English looked at the Plain People.  Maybe it was
something around the eyes, but the gist of it was that somehow life had been
unfair, or maybe the Plain People had done some great wrong to have to live an
unadorned life of simplicity.  The whole thing was an insoluble enigma.  Even
though the English man or woman may not want to be plain—wouldn’t change places
even if they could—there was still the communication of some want, or need… or
blame that made the Plain People cringe inside.  An elder had once called it “a
criminal charge that comes through without words.”

Seated in the airbus, Jed was attuned to this feeling of
guilt.  The situation with Dawn and the extra unis was troubling enough, but
now he was on an English airbus by himself for the first time, and the looks
and stares from many of the English brought back that oppressive feeling of
guilt that Jed could not explain, even to himself.  The passengers who were on
Quadrille or lost on the Internet in their minds didn’t pay him much heed. 
Others, not on the drug and not busy online, stared openly or secretly, usually
one or the other, and always there was the wordless accusation… or maybe it was
just a question…
why?