The Bar Code Rebellion (8 page)

Nate went first. The roughly six-foot rectangular bed of glowing coals threw shadows on his face. Drawing in a concentrated breath, he calmed himself, and in the next second he was off, briskly walking barefoot across the coals.

Francis stood in front of the coal bed next. The glow drenched his white undershirt with a vivid, flickering orange.

Images of fire blasted into Kayla’s thoughts, seeming to collide with one another. She saw again that searing fireball racing up the hallway of her house. The dream image of her mother, hair ablaze, returned to her with shocking force. She saw her own face alight with flame on the billboard in the night.

Francis took off his wire-rim glasses, drew in a very long breath, and stepped out onto the coals.

Feeling too shaken to watch, Kayla turned away from the group and walked into the desert on her own. A slight breeze carried the pleasant smell of a plant she couldn’t identify. The sky was a vast blanket of brilliant stars. In the dark she couldn’t see the distant mountains, which made the desert floor seem to stretch on to infinity. She was aware of the
low, encouraging murmurs of Drakians behind her, but the farther she walked, the more deeply she was engulfed by the immense silence surrounding her.

Ahead in the distance she spied a flickering spark of light. Curious, she walked toward it. When she had advanced several more yards, she thought she saw a dark figure sitting in front of the light, which she now could smell. A fire.

Something was burning in the fire. It reminded her of the plant smell she’d noticed earlier. As she closed in on the person, she heard a low, rhythmic chanting.

She knew the voice.

“Eutonah?” she spoke into the darkness.

The woman sat in front of the fire, looking very much as she had the first time Kayla had encountered her. She wore a cowboy hat that boasted a wide band of gorgeous feathers. Her tank top and jeans were faded and plain. “The sagebrush makes a nice smoke out here in the desert,” she observed calmly, lifting her eyes to watch the rising white smoke.

Kayla crouched near the fire, gazing at her mentor’s regal face and fathomless black eyes. “They released you?” she asked.

“They don’t have to release what is already free,” Eutonah replied.

“You’re still in the Global-1 prison?”

“Part of me is, but my spirit can travel, as you know.”

“Eutonah, who is looking for me, and why?”

“I have no new information, but I’ve come to tell you that I have had a strong dream of you. I saw you as a tree with many parts. Lightning struck, and the parts splintered into scattered branches. All the branches came alive and began screaming to be reunited. You are a being that is calling to itself, longing for itself. You must do things you will find terrifying. You must prepare for this by conquering your fears.”

“Kayla!” The voice carried through the still night, and she turned toward it. Someone from the group was calling to her. When she turned back to Eutonah, the wise woman was gone. Only her small campfire remained. The scent of sagebrush lingered.

“Kayla!” Someone was walking toward her, calling her name. As the figure grew closer, she recognized the voice as Jack’s. She met him halfway. “Why don’t you try the fire walk?” he urged when they faced each other. “There’s nothing left to be afraid of once you conquer your fear of walking on fire.”

Eutonah had dreamed of her as a tree struck by lightning. More fire. She’d instructed her to conquer what she feared most. There were many things she feared. Was fire the greatest?

Wild terror arose inside Kayla. The desire to run away was close to overwhelming. A fierce heat emanated from the glowing coals, giving her the sensation that her bare feet and ankles were already burning.

She remembered the dream in which she’d gone up in flames. The crowd of Drakians eagerly watched her in silence, no one encouraging her to go forward onto the coals until she was ready. The only advice she’d been given was that once she started she mustn’t allow herself to become paralyzed with panic or even to hesitate. “Just keep going, no matter what,” Nate had told her.

Like jumping off a high place, she stepped out into the unknown. Her mind was a blank as she moved quickly across the coals.

The soles of her feet were immediately hot, but she wasn’t aware of pain. Her only reality was the need to move.

Move!

Move!

Movement became all she was. There was no other Kayla other than Kayla in motion.

And then it was over.

Leaping from the burning coals, she stumbled to her knees and began to sob uncontrollably. If anyone came forward to speak to her, she wasn’t aware of it. She buried her face in her hands as
wave after wave of powerful emotion threatened to swamp her, to engulf her into their depths.

It was everything. Everything.

Her father’s suicide. Her mother, burned to death. Mfumbe gone. Betrayal everywhere. Confusion! The world! How had the world turned into
this
world? How could she live in such a world as this?

She lay on the dry, sandy dirt and drew her knees into a fetal position. Closing her eyes, she fell instantly asleep. And she dreamed.

She dreamed she was on a raft, swirling in a tempestuous storm of raging waves and howling winds. A wave lifted her on its cresting edge only to fling her with reckless abandon into the valley of the next swell. As she clung desperately to the side of the wooden raft, the immense force of the ocean roared around her on all sides.

The raft tilted abruptly just as a jet of flame sprang up at its center. The fire spread in a line, burning upward as the raft was sucked down into a whirlpool, spiraling with increasing speed into the center of the raging sea.

The first heat of the morning desert awoke Kayla. Coming slowly to consciousness, she realized that she was still outside the cave, lying on the desert dirt. She had the sense that she had washed up on some distant shore within herself — a place inside where nothing was any longer as it had been.

When Kayla asked Dusa to take her out to search for Amber, the Drakian was reluctant to leave the task of producing the fake tattoos. But Jack volunteered eagerly. “We can try the swing-lo.”

Kayla looked at him, not understanding. “The swing-lo?”

He smiled enthusiastically. “Come on. I’ll show you.” She followed him out of the cave and along a craggy rock formation at its side. Behind the out-cropping was a rickety wooden hut. Its door creaked when he pulled it open.

“Oh, God!” Kayla said, gasping when she saw the patched, round metal machine inside. It had no more than a ten-foot circumference. At its center was a cramped seat well where two people could fit side by side. In front was a computer panel — sleek, high tech, and completely out of keeping with the scrapped-together quality of the rest of the craft. “You built this?” Kayla asked.

He beamed with pleasure. “Sure did! It’s an individualized airborne transport. It’s the next big thing.”

“Where did you get the materials?”

“Everybody here knows about it — they bring
me stuff when they come into the desert. Like Dusa — she brought me this final-level welder’s torch so I can smooth out some of the rough edges.”

Kayla recalled the flaming billboard. “I saw it,” she said. “It’s powerful. What makes this go?”

“It runs on magnetic repulsion, but I’ve done something I don’t think anyone has done yet with a vehicle this size. I’ve amplified the force so that this baby can really fly.”

“Like George Jetson?” she asked, recalling the old cartoons from her grandfather’s childhood that he had sometimes played for her.

“Yeah, like that,” he agreed, “only I don’t have the glass dome over the driver’s seat, though I suppose it would be easy enough to add. These individual crafts are going to be huge. Everyone’s working on a version of one, but I don’t think anyone’s been able to make them fly like this one can. At least in theory, she should be able to.”

“But you haven’t tested it yet?”

Jack shook his head. “Not with any weight in it.”

“Why do you call it a swing-lo?”

He grinned, seemingly pleased that she’d asked. “Because I’m nuts about that old gospel song you Americans have.” He began belting it out in a melodic, pleasant, strong voice.

“I looked over Jordan and what did I see,

Comin’ for to carry me home!

A band of angels comin’ after me,

Comin’ for to carry me home!

Swing low, sweet chariot,

Comin’ for to carry me home!

Swing low, sweet chariot,

Comin’ for to carry me home!”

His comically sincere rendition of the song was meant to be funny, and it made her laugh. “So this is your sweet chariot?”

“Exactly,” he said, grinning even wider, like a proud parent.

“Let’s go, then,” she suggested. “It’s time for a test drive.”

He began kicking the wall of the shed, and for a split second Kayla was startled. She even wondered if she’d upset him somehow. Then she realized it was the only way he could get the craft out of the shed, and she instantly joined in, pounding on the wooden wall with sharp kicks.

With their arms shielding their faces, they flinched as the wall gave way and slammed down on the dry, sandy dirt with a resounding bang, sending up a cloud of dust and pebbles. Freed from its wooden casing, the craft gleamed in the desert sun. “Climb in,” Jack said, handing Kayla a motorcycle helmet.

Thrilled at the prospect of this wild adventure, Kayla put on the helmet and slid in. Jack sat beside her, his fingers flying as he pressed a series of buttons and toggles.

After a brief, initial hesitation, the craft lifted up with a gentle whirring sound. He hit a button and it lunged forward — but then abruptly stopped, throwing them against the computer. Taking a slim, palm-size computer from his back pocket, Jack fed an adjustment into the swing-lo’s circuitry, and the craft lifted once again.

In the next few moments, the swing-lo accelerated to a speed of eighty miles an hour. Kayla knew this from the speedometer readout. Otherwise, without passing trees, houses, or other landmarks, she wouldn’t have guessed they were moving that quickly.

Without street regulations or grids to follow, and going at speeds as fast as a hundred miles an hour, Jack quickly brought them to an area of the desert outside Carson City. Hovering there, he typed the name Emily Thorn into his small computer. An address instantly appeared. “Second star to the right and straight on ’til morning,” he pretended to read.

“Okay, Peter Pan, what does it really say?” Kayla pressed.

Looking up from the handheld, he pointed at a trailer off in the distance. “If that’s trailer twelve, Great Basin Desert, maybe that’s it.”

They whirred forward, stopping in front of the dented trailer with duct-tape-patched cracked windows. The door flew open and a skinny woman in a shapeless shift faced them, a wide, crude, metal
gun in her hand. “Get lost, alien scum!” she shrieked, cocking the gun.

Kayla lifted in her seat to address the woman. “We’re not aliens, we —”

The woman fired. Kayla and Jack ducked low as a ball of paint bounced off the side of the swing-lo, spraying them with a fine mist of orange. “It’s one of those old paintball guns from back in the last century,” Jack realized, laughter in his voice.

“Well, the swing-lo needed a paint job,” Kayla pointed out as she bent forward, hands over her head.

Jack peeked up and was instantly hit with a splat of red paint before he could bend back down. “Yes,” he said, “and there’s more good news. I saw the name on the mailbox. It seems we’ve found dear Aunt Emily.”

Jack jumped out of the swing-lo and ran a zigzag path, dodging Aunt Emily’s paintball onslaughts. This maneuver gave her a good enough look at him to be convinced that he was not from another planet. When Kayla followed and asked about Amber, Emily Thorn’s face twisted into a snarl of disgust. “A pack of ingrates! The whole family! The bar code knew they were no good. That’s why it turned on them, made their lives a living purgatory! The will of the greater good is being served through the bar code.”

No wonder Amber had felt she had to escape this woman! “Is Amber here?” Kayla pressed.

“Walked off! Just like the rest of them did. My no-good brother was the first to go. Then his rotten boy took off with some biker gang. The mother is in Carson City Hospital. She got a bad case of TMP.”

Jack looked to Kayla. “TMP?”

“Tattoo Mania Psychosis,” she explained quickly and quietly. “People get so desperate to get rid of their bar codes that they burn them off. My friend August did it, but sometimes people burn to death or set themselves on fire accidentally. It’s how my mother died. Global-1 is trying to tell people it’s a form of mental illness.”

“What are you two plotting?!” Emily Thorn shrieked. “Speak up so I can hear you!”

“I was explaining about TMP,” Kayla said apologetically.

“TMP is a terrible form of insanity,” Aunt Emily said, walking toward them. “Losing your mind is a curse on the sinful.”

Jack turned his face away from the ranting woman and rolled his eyes at Kayla. She responded with a quick grimace.

Kayla remembered Amber’s words from her letter:
I think I’ll walk off into the desert and keep going until I turn into dry, sandy dirt and blow away.
She was becoming more and more worried
that Amber had done exactly that. Kayla’s brief experience of the desert had already taught her that this might be a very short walk. “Do you know where Amber went?” she asked Amber’s hostile aunt.

Emily Thorn pointed out into the vastness of the desert. “She just started walking that way.”

“Where would she be heading?”

“How should I know?” the woman snapped. “Maybe you
are
alien life-forms, after all. I bet you snuck out of Area fifty-one and you’re here to suck my mind dry so you can get the information you need to make us all your slaves.”

“That’s not it at all,” Jack told her. “We only want to find out what happened to your niece.”

“Wait here,” Emily Thorn barked at him, turning to go into her trailer.

Jack smiled at Kayla, proud of the way he’d smoothed the situation, diverting Emily Thorn with his charm. Kayla wondered how often he used his good looks and engaging smile to get what he wanted.

Emily Thorn emerged from the trailer staggering under the weight of a heavy glass tank. Something was moving inside it. Kayla blinked into the sunlight reflecting off it, not understanding.

Then she remembered Amber’s name for Aunt Emily — Tarantula Woman.

“Get ’em, girls!” Emily Thorn shrieked as she
jerked the tank, flinging its contents toward them with surprising strength. Twelve very large tarantulas twitched their furry legs.

“Time to get back in the swing-lo,” Jack said quickly, grabbing her by her arm.

Kayla and Jack spent the rest of the morning and the afternoon searching the desert, hovering just above the desert floor in the paint-spattered swing-lo. They saw nothing but sagebrush tumbling aimlessly along. From time to time Kayla was again struck with the sensation that she was looking out on the ocean. When she reported it to Jack, he nodded.

“Everybody sees that out here,” he told her. “I guess it’s just the heat coming off the land. But, you know, all this was once ocean floor.”

It was amazing to her how much the world could change over time. Was it changing even now? Scientists said the temperature had climbed an average of twenty degrees in the past century. The ocean water was turning acidic, the coral was almost all gone. Would the ocean someday be desert, just as this desert had once been ocean?

“I like to think of the water mirage you’re talking about as the ghost of the ocean that was once here,” Jack said, looking off into the distance.

“A vision of the past rather than of the future,” she remarked. “And maybe it’s something everyone
sees because we all share the same past — at least as a species. Mfumbe says all people have the sight. Some just aren’t able to use it yet.”

“Makes sense to me,” Jack agreed.

“My friend Allyson won a scholarship to study advanced genetics at Harvard. She says genes are everything. She believes that genetic technology is the biggest thing in our future.”

“It’s sure one of the biggest things. Look how it’s changed our world. Your genes affect whether you make it in this world no matter what you do or who you are. As long as we’re forced to wear the damn bar code we’re all controlled by the genes we were given at birth. Does she like Harvard?”

“She wound up going to Caltech to study nanotechnology instead,” Kayla told him.

“Microscopic robots! Final level!” Jack said, pounding the dash of the swing-lo excitedly. “Ever read
There’s Room at the Bottom
? It was written in 1959. This complete genius, Nobel Prize–winning guy, Richard Feynman, wrote it, talking about how machinery could be made really, really, really tiny — molecule-size. In 1959! Can you imagine?!”

“Feynman!” Kayla cried, recalling the name from Allyson’s letter, the one the Postman had delivered to August. “She’s doing research with a professor who studied with Feynman.”

Jack threw his hands up in a gesture of longing. “I would do
anything
for a chance like that!” The
swing-lo veered sharply to the left before he grabbed the control stick again. “What a great thing for her.”

“She had to get a bar code tattoo in order to do it.”

He grimaced, his eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Maybe not; maybe there are some things I
wouldn’t
do.”

Hunger and the heat compelled them to turn back toward the cave. Jack promised to take her out again the next day to continue the search. When they arrived at the mouth of the cave, Dusa and Francis were outside. “How high did it go?” Francis asked as they hovered and then landed.

“We stayed only five feet above the ground,” Jack reported as he hopped out. “I didn’t want to push it the first time ’round. It drives smooth and gets great velocity. You can’t beat it for going around the desert.”

Nate came out and showed them a handheld computer. The screen carried the headlines of an online newspaper. “Read page four when you get a chance,” he said. “Some real bad news about David Young.”

“What?” Jack asked, concerned. In seconds he brought up the page. Kayla peered over his shoulder, interested in the story. Before she could see it, though, Dusa stepped up to Kayla and put a hand on her shoulder. “I want to show you something,”
she said, heading for the cave and gesturing for Kayla to follow.

She led Kayla to a low table where a file of freshly minted fake bar code tattoos sat in a pile next to a handheld computer. “Yesterday Jack translated the information in these files into bar codes for us,” she said. “He deleted the death dates and any damaging information like health liabilities or criminal records. Today we’ve been printing them out and making them into fake press-ons.”

Kayla’s mind was still on the Decode leader, David Young. “Do you know what bad news Nate was talking about?” she asked.

“No. I haven’t talked to anyone all day because I’ve been busy with the fake bar code background checks. And listen.” Dusa paused and her eyes shifted uneasily as though she wasn’t a hundred percent sure she wanted to proceed. Then she set her jaw and decided to go on. “I think you should see what I found.”

Kayla leaned closer, suddenly uneasy. “What is it?”

Dusa held up a hand-size metal box with an infrared glow on one side — a scanner. “I’ve been scanning new bar codes to make sure they work and to record the info in them. We keep a log of all the deceased people who’ve contributed to the operation just in case somebody needs to know. While I was scanning, I found something you might
be interested in.” She took a fake tattoo from her jeans pocket and scanned it. A name came up on the slim computer monitor lying flat on the table:
KATHRYN MARIE REED. BORN JULY 6, 1959.

Kayla stared at the words. “Grandma Cathy?” she wondered.