Pennsylvania Omnibus (23 page)

The plow dug into the soft loam,
and the earth offered little resistance as the share turned the deep black soil
up and out of the furrow. Jed clasped the reins in one hand, and used the other
to pull off his hat and wipe his brow with his sleeve.  This was going to be a
new field for Matthias, beans for man and beast along with more nitrogen fixed
in the soil. It was an important addition to Matthias’s farm, as it meant
independence from the feed store, and more product to share and trade in the
community. Over the past year, the horses had grazed here, fertilizing the soil
for the crop to come; now they’d been moved to the north field so that this one
could go into production.  As for Jedediah, he was being cut in on half of the
prospective profits, to be used to pay for his barn when it came time to build
it. Work like today’s was money in the bank for a young Amishman.

The plow was fancy as far as Jedediah was concerned—far
more than he would need to get started. It was a two-bottom with step pedals in
the forecart, so the farmer could plow in either direction without circling
around each time like he had to with a single-bottom plow. Matthias had said
he’d bought this plow from a young blacksmith who was fabricating them based on
plans someone found in an old catalog from the City. Of course, that was back
when there
was
a City. Back before the explosion.

Meeting tonight
, Jed thought as he looked back
across the field. The elders had called a voluntary meeting so that the Amish
could talk about the destruction of the City, and what that portended for the
community.

Ten days had passed since the big bomb had ended the plain
people’s love-hate relationship with the City. And with the closest urban
center reduced to dust, ash, and soot, things had necessarily changed in the
AZ.  Things were tighter now. There was some trepidation and worry; some of the
Amish had grown too dependent on city goods and services. Trade with the
English had ground to a halt, traffic at the emigration point had virtually
stopped, and memorial funerals for those Amish who’d been out of the AZ and
doing business in or near the city were still taking place on Sundays. Ten at a
time on most Sabbath days, and sometimes there was a single service for a whole
family. The funerals would probably be going on for a month or more, Jed
thought, as he pulled up at the end of the row. He tied the reins around the
brake and stepped off the forecart to stretch his back and legs.

That’s when the lights went off in his mind again—the
first time it had happened since the big bomb—and he found himself once again
standing in the inky blackness, staring at the white screen. It always scared
him when it happened, but somehow he knew, somewhere deep inside himself, that
he wasn’t going to be harmed.

He expected her. The woman he thought would soon appear
before him. The woman that he knew he loved. He didn’t know
how
he knew
this, or who the woman might be, but still he knew that he loved her. Right
now, standing in the darkness, he couldn’t even picture her, but with only the
bright glow of the screen illuminating his form, he waited for her. And then
she was there.

“Jed,” Dawn said.

“Yes.”

“Do you remember me?”

“No.”

“I’m Dawn, and I’m your friend.”

“I know.” Somehow he did. Now that she said it.

She took his hand, and when she did, a part of his mind
engaged, and he remembered her more completely. The screen expanded and wrapped
around them like he knew it would, and they were at his farm in Old
Pennsylvania. It stopped being a screen, and it felt like they were really
there. As they passed the barn, walking up to the old porch, he felt the pull,
and he glanced up and saw that the window was still missing.

Dawn led him by the hand until they were seated on the
porch. Jed felt the soft breeze and smelled foxglove and touch-me-nots in the
air, and off in the distance he saw himself walking down the drive, away from
his home, heading for the airbus stop up by the road. They were in his last day
on Earth.

Just as Jed was becoming completely absorbed in the scene,
Dawn threw up her hand, did a little tap with it, and everything around them
froze. Then Dawn swiped her hand, and the scene shrank down to a tiny square
that she moved to one side with her finger. As she did this, the word
“minimized” appeared in Jed’s view. The word followed the small picture, and
once he’d noticed and absorbed its meaning, it faded away.

That’s when Jed realized that some kind of program must be
giving him the vocabulary for whatever was happening. It was a little alarming
to him that he hadn’t really registered this before, and yet all of this
knowledge overflowed him like he was being baptized in it. He’d always been too
wrapped up in the strangeness of it all to recognize the background reality.
But now he understood that his mind was being rapidly trained to function in
this new world, and he realized that Dawn—or someone else—had probably done
this for him.

Once again, the two of them were standing together in the
dark room.

“Do you know what year it is, Jed?” Dawn asked.

“This… this vision—when I left home—was nine years ago.
When I emigrated. That was the day I met you. I was eighteen, and the year was
2068.”

Dawn nodded again and smiled at him, “So what year is it
now? Right now. While you’re plowing that field in New Pennsylvania?”

“Nine years of travel,” Jed said, “so it’s 2077,
right?”

Dawn smiled, but it was a nervous smile, as if she wanted
to soften a blow, but had something she really needed to say. “Wrong. It’s
2121, Jed. You arrived here in the year 2121.”

Jed’s eyebrows lowered and he narrowed his eyes.  “How can
it be 2121? I’d be… I’d be… somewhere around seventy years old!”

“You slept for a very long time.”

“I’m sleeping
now
,” Jed said. “This is a dream.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s real.” Dawn reached over and took his
hand in hers. “You have a BICE unit in your head, and I’ve hacked into it.
Transport hasn’t connected with you in a while. They’ve been busy ever since
they destroyed their own city with an okcillium bomb.”

“If I’ve been asleep for that long,” Jed asked, “then why
has the technology basically stayed the same?”

“Well, it’s not exactly the same. This is a pretty
advanced implanted reality system right here. Better than anything from the old
world, but you wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“But there are airbuses, BICEs, Q, TRIDs. I just thought
the future would be more… different.”

“There are reasons for that,” Dawn said. “Not the least of
which is this war. But with access to okcillium now, TRACE is making advances
greater than you can imagine.”

Jed shrugged. “Well, I’m probably not the best judge of
any of that.” He looked at the minimized scene of his barn, and then he touched
it and enlarged it just a bit. He flicked his finger, and the scene played
forward. He watched himself boarding an airbus out on the lane, and then things
started to occur to him. Forgotten memories began to surface, but they were
random, and he wasn’t sure how he knew things. He just knew them.

“But I’m not on Q now. I haven’t smelled the orange zest
smell,” he said. He minimized the scene again and looked at Dawn.

She closed her eyes for a second and then opened them
again. “The Yoders have been bringing you your meals, haven’t they?”

“Yes, but—”

“Your food is laced with Q. You probably haven’t noticed
it because they kept you on it during your entire sleep cycle.”

“The Yoders are working for Transport?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. And they aren’t the only government
spies who’ve infiltrated the Amish community.”

Jed was silent a while. Once again he enlarged the image
of the farm and activated it—and watched as the airbus lifted off and departed.
Then he flicked his finger and the scene disappeared. Dawn was still in front
of him, still in her Amish dress. He shook his head, then looked down at her.
“Do you know who they all are? The spies?”

“No, not all of them.” Dawn said. “I’m doing the best I
can with what I have to work with. Things are… tricky right now. With the
bombing of the City, the war has moved into a new and more dangerous phase.”

“And you’re saying Transport bombed their own city? Why
would they do that?” Jed asked.

Dawn responded with a question. “Who are the Amish saying
did it?”

Jed took a deep breath. “According to Matthias, most of
them think the rebels did it.”

“Exactly,” Dawn said. “And are the Amish still trading
with the rebels?”

“I don’t know,” Jed said. “Probably not as much as they
were.”

“Now you’re answering your own questions.
That’s
why Transport did it. They did it because they were going to lose the City
anyway. The writing was on the wall. They didn’t want to turn it over to TRACE,
so they blew it up and blamed it on their enemy. It’s called a ‘false flag’
attack. It’s as old as war itself.”

“So Transport just killed all those people? Even people
that supported them? And all the Amish who were there?”

“They did.”

Jed walked past Dawn, and with his hand he enlarged the
white screen. He played with its size and then, without knowing just how he did
it, he brought up his BICE control console. His was preset and organized in the
form of a huge wall of drawers, like a filing cabinet. With his mind he changed
the format so that the information bits appeared as envelopes, and then as
glowing red dots, and then milk cows in stalls. All the while, as he played
with his BICE control setup, Dawn just looked on patiently and did not
interrupt.

After a few minutes, Jed changed the control icons back to
drawers and then turned to Dawn. “It’s a lot to take in,” he said finally.

“I know it is,” she said.

“The year 2121 you say?”

“Yes.”

Jed reached out and opened a drawer with
BICE Control
Programs
written on it. “How does this work? This information system in my
head?”

“It integrates into your brain functions. Every brain
deals with the information differently—so the question is hard to answer.
Sometimes the brain takes the new reality and input and creates its own system
of dealing with it.”

Jed was nodding now. “Like when Carl Miller got kicked in
the head by a horse?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Dawn said.

“Well, due to the pressure and damage in his brain,
doctors had to remove almost a quarter of it. They said he’d never talk again,
and that the part of his brain that controlled walking was located in the
portion that was removed, so… you know… he had to live in a wheelchair.  Then…
it’s weird, but a few years later he started walking and talking again. The
doctors said that his brain rewired itself. That it doesn’t always happen, but
it happens often enough.”

“Yes,” Dawn said. “It’s like with Carl Miller, then. Every
brain is different, and not every person processes information in the same
way.”

“Why are you so good at it?” Jed asked.

“I don’t know,” Dawn said, and as she spoke she brought up
an animated schematic, which looked to Jed like an aerial view of a big city at
night from high in an airbus. The lights moved somewhat chaotically, but at the
same time they all seemed to follow paths and get where they needed to go. “I
just
see
the information flow, like maybe when you’re milking a cow or
out plowing Matthias’s field—how you just see what you should do, and all of
your senses work together to show you what’s happening and what you should do
next.”

“Can you show
me
how to do that?” Jed asked.

“I’ve been showing you—mostly while you’ve been sleeping.
You’ll recall more and more of what I’ve taught you when you need the
information.”

“I just wish you could stay here and teach me,” Jed
said.

Dawn was silent for a minute before she spoke again.

“Jed?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember the stories your parents would teach you
as a child about the early Anabaptists—the early Amish—and how they’d meet for
worship out in the woods, or in a secluded barn?”

“Of course,” Jed said. “We’re all raised with stories of
persecution. To remind us that it can come back at any time.”

Dawn nodded. “Right. And do you remember anything about
those stories of secret, underground meetings that applies to what we’re
learning now about your BICE?”

“I don’t know,” Jed said. “What… what do you want me to
say?”

“Think about it.”

Jed tried to imagine those meetings, when the Amish were
being pursued by the Catholics or the Protestants, and how they’d always try to
find a place where they could flee quickly if need be. “There was always a way
out. Always a place to run.”

Dawn smiled. “Exactly, Jed. In programming we call those
routes a ‘back door.’ And a back door goes both ways. It can be a secret way
back into a program, or a secret way to get out.”

Jed nodded, but he wasn’t yet sure what she was trying to
tell him.

“Always remember that just about every system, every
program, has a back door. Almost invariably. All of this technology was
designed by people, and many of those people had the same fears, and the same
spirit of independence and freedom, that our—that
your
—ancestors
had.”

“But how does all this apply to what we’re facing today?”
Jed asked. “Tell me something I can use right now, Dawn.”

“Well… how can I say it?”

“Just say it.”

“New Pennsylvania was always a back door. And sometimes
even back doors have back doors.”