Sarah tried to dodge but her body was still immobile. It was no longer the woman warrior that was holding her down, but something else. She blinked and overcame her disorientation. She was strapped into the cooling chair in the ranch.
Willy was coming over. "Are you all right, Sarah?"
"Michael shot me!"
She turned her eyes to glare at Michael and saw him blinking awake. "What the hell, man?" she hissed.
Rad interjected. "Fenton, quiet. Kang, report."
Willy put a comforting hand on Sarah's shoulder as Michael spoke. "I disconnected us both, sir. I was being overpowered. They would have traced us back here."
"You shot me!"
"Sarah, I'm really sorry. It was the only way I could think of to—"
"You two can kiss and make up later. Once you got inside the Five Mile firewall, our ability to read your data feeds was impaired. So tell me, did you at least learn anything that would help you identify the enemy?"
Sarah closed her eyes and tried to recall what had happened. It was all a blur, all except for the moment when Michael had aimed a pistol at her face.
"She had red hair," said Michael. "And she called herself an Aeon."
Rad pursed his lips tightly and rubbed his hands together slowly as he turned to Willy. "Johnson, get the agents out of their chairs and then report to my office for debriefing."
"It's all right, Sarah. You did well," said Willy, as he bent down to undo her straps.
Sarah turned away angrily. She could have kicked herself. How had she not remembered anything? Michael was making her look bad, first by saving them both and then by being the only one able to make a coherent report to Rad.
***
Willy shifted uncomfortably and waved away the holographic data in front of him. "Sir, our response to the attack on Five Mile was a failure."
Across his stainless steel desk, Colonel Rad Jaeger flashed him an ironic grin. "Excellent assessment. Half a dozen pipeline junctions exploding under our agents' noses is a failure. Now tell me what the hell went wrong."
"It was their first time in the multinet, sir. They're still figuring out—"
"No, you're still figuring out how to train them." Jaeger's smile was now gone. "Show me what she did in that little scuffle in the canteen."
Without waiting for Willy to react, he reached into the holographic image that Willy had just waved away and quickly spun through a list of titles. He selected one entitled, "Ranch canteen surveillance feed." A three dimensional video began, taking up the entire space above the table.
The image showed Bob Eckers pushing Michael onto the ground while several of the other orphans snuck towards Sarah from behind. He was obviously trying to distract her from his compatriots' approach. And it had obviously worked, as Sarah stared right at him and betrayed no sign she noticed the others.
Then Olivia Freeman threw a bowl of food at Sarah and she inexplicably dodged it, apparently without ever seeing it. During the next several seconds, she managed to knock both Bob and Olivia on their backs with perfectly timed movements.
"That's pretty handy for a novice," observed Jaeger.
"She was obviously helped by her TacWave."
"I thought the TacWave would overheat if she kept it on for too long. Did she turn it on when Bob approached?"
"She's learned to constantly flash it on and off for a few microseconds at a time, so that it never overheats, yet can pick up small changes in her environment, sir. That's how she sensed the bowl flying at her head."
"So she's figured out a way of using the device we never anticipated."
Willy paused, knowing Jaeger was steering him towards an unfavorable conclusion yet unsure of how to dodge it. "Yes, but that's nothing like going into the multinet, sir. That's a whole new world!"
"Why are you so protective of this girl, Johnson?" Jaeger's enunciation of each syllable was gratingly precise. "Frankly I don't understand why you chose her for the TacWave. She may be smart and fit. But she has a terrible attitude. We had to physically restrain her to give her the implant and we had to hold her down in the chair to get her to go on this mission. And she failed it utterly. If Michael hadn't had the presence of mind to shoot her, that Aeon would have traced her signal all the way back to the ranch. She's not focusing on her training. Either she's too plagued by guilt about her dead mother or she's too distracted by her hormonal urges towards Michael. Yet instead of correcting her faults, you indulge her with all your winking and friendly homilies."
Willy sighed silently before responding. He was indignant that Colonel Jaeger was questioning his expertise in psychology. Yet he could not deny that the man had a point. Despite her strong performance in many parts of the competition, Sarah's psychological makeup had obvious weaknesses. Willy had chosen Sarah to be one of the two TacWave recipients precisely because he believed Sarah's psychological vulnerabilities would make her receptive to the indoctrination program he had designed especially for her. In the end, her weakness would become his asset.
Nevertheless, Colonel Jaeger would not appreciate Willy's careful planning. He just wanted a fully competent and loyal soldier as soon as possible. It was time to bend the truth for the greater good. The ends would eventually justify the means.
"Sir, we've all gone through the psyche evaluations, and I've been working with her every day for months. On the surface she seems superficial and rebellious. But that's just an act she picked up to protect herself when her mother died and she was taken in by the orphanage. She's been playing the role for so long even she believes that's the real her."
"As do I," retorted Jaeger.
"It's a survival instinct, sir. At heart she is competitive, even driven. You saw that during the footrace on the first day of the competition. And she can be very loyal to people she considers as close as family. She watched her mother die; since then she's been looking for a new family. We can make ourselves that family."
Willy softened his tone slightly. "So, yes, she is a potentially amazing asset. But to develop her we can't beat her over the head with harsh training and crude indoctrination. That will just alienate her. We've got to use some finesse, to get her to come along in her own way."
Jaeger eyed him back angrily and rubbed his hands together animatedly. "No more coddling, Johnson. Stop trying to be Sarah's father and start acting like her commander. Ramp up her indoctrination so she learns whom she's working for. If her attitude doesn't improve, I'm personally going to take over her physical training. I'll kick the sass out of her."
Below the table, Willy closed his hand into a tight fist. At least Jaeger was not threatening to replace Sarah with someone else. Yet Jaeger's interference in Sarah's training could derail Willy's carefully planned program for her psychological development. And that could impair his ability to guide her development in the necessary directions. Willy knew continually contravening Jaeger amounted to insubordination, but still, he had to try to prevent Sarah from falling directly under Jaeger's control. "I don't think that's wise, sir. Your methods may not be what she needs."
Jaeger stood deliberately to his full height and leaned forward over his desk. He was a smaller man than Willy, but his posture conveyed command. And menace. "I don't care what she needs. I care what I need. And you are way out of line, Major. Dismissed."
***
Nick had now spent six months in the ether and had met most of his fellow MindWave users, or Aeons, as Laura insisted on calling them.
The Aeons had two pastimes. One was hedonism. They would play out fantastic adventures in worlds they created. They hunted dragons, refought famous battles, and celebrated their victories with feasts. Feasts quickly devolved into Roman orgies. Soon, the orgies became the most popular form of entertainment, crowding out the rest.
The MindWave was capable of simulating any sensation, and of arousing all of the pleasure centers of the brain for hours at a time. And romantic encounters were completely without worry. There was no chance of contracting a disease, of becoming pregnant, or of performing badly. There was no need for exclusivity, and therefore no need for jealousy. If the person you wanted to cavort with was preoccupied, you could create a simulated copy of them with your MindWave and get on with it.
Nick soon realized that Laura partook of this pastime much less than most of the others. Laura was much more focused on another popular pastime: making money.
While all of the Aeons were from the wealthiest families on the planet, most of them were on limited allowances dictated by their parents. They made sport of hacking into corporate servers, and using what they learned to speculate successfully in the securities and commodities markets. When you had insider information about every company in the world, it was easy enough to build a small allowance into a small fortune, and then to grow that small fortune into a large one. They marked their financial successes by using their new money to buy jewelry, cars, or whatever other baubles they desired.
This behavior troubled Nick, even though he was complicit in it, too. He still remembered the words of his father – the MindWave was a tool he could use to make the world a better place. Even though he knew his father's bright contributions to the world had come with a dark side, Nick wanted to live up to the man's idealistic wishes. But Nick and his new friends exclusively used their fast-growing abilities for idle amusement and unfair self-enrichment.
At the birthday party of an Aeon from Hong Kong named Chengwen Xu, as they watched gifts of fabulous expense being casually exchanged, Nick remarked to Laura, "You know, the more time we spend in the ether, the better we become at making money. But the more time we spend here, the less we need that money. It's not like Chengwen is actually going to spend time in the real world driving the sport cars he received today. Why would he, when he can just as easily create a world where he's flying a fighter jet?"
Laura flipped her long red hair back over her smooth bare shoulder and gave him a sidelong glance: "A man buying his third sports car in a year or a woman buying her fifth diamond necklace in a season is not buying to use, but buying to make a point."
Nick was confused that he could find no one among the Aeons who shared his interest in behaving selflessly. He wanted to understand why. He wanted to know if he was simply being naïve, mindlessly believing in platitudes that everyone else was wise enough to dismiss. "What point?"
"That they can buy it."
"That's the point? That's pointless. Shouldn't we put the money to better use? We have all the abilities necessary to do something worthwhile. Yet we spend our time pursuing nothing but our whim of the moment." Maybe he was naïve, but it seemed that the other Aeons were no wiser than he was. He turned away from Laura in disgust.
Laura placed her ivory arms around his shoulders and pulled him back flirtatiously. "In the near future, we Aeons will save the world from cataclysm. And then you'll understand just how worthwhile you are. Our importance means that our own wellbeing is the most important thing in the world. The momentary whim of an Aeon is more important than the direst need of a human."
She pulled him closer, so that he felt her perky breasts pressing into his broad chest. She raised her mouth to his ear and sighed, "And I have a particularly strong whim right now.
***
Sarah smiled at Michael as he walked into the small briefing theater at the ranch. "Ready to get another butt-whupping?"
He rolled his eyes. "You were angry at me for two weeks after Five Mile, just because I did a little better than you. Now you're finally acting friendly again because you've found something where you can make me look bad."
After the Five Mile mission, Willy had begun requiring Sarah and Michael to play sports relying only on their TacWaves to provide the sensory information needed to steer their bodies. While she was clearly second to Michael in terms of navigating virtual worlds in the multinet, Sarah proved especially adept at using the TacWave in the real world. With each new sport she played, she further surpassed Michael. Michael had taken his series of defeats in stride.
"It's a good thing you're being a good sport about being bad at sports. I can't wait to see what Willy has planned for us today. Maybe boxing?"
"Knowing my luck, it will be sword-fighting," Michael answered as he sat down next to her.
Willy walked into the theater, looking strained. "Hi guys. I've just got a minute."
Sarah exchanged a surprised look with Michael.
"I wanted to let you know I'm not going to be running your physical training anymore. Don't worry, I'll still be overseeing your neurological drills." With that, Willy gave an unsmiling wink and walked out of the room.
"I guess it only makes sense," Michael said. "Remember that during the fight in the cafeteria, Bob bragged about how he was learning combat from Hank Green. It must be our turn to train under him."
She rubbed the silver cross around her neck and wondered if she could ever build rapport with Hank like she had with Willy.
Yet when the door to the theater opened, it was not Hank, but Rad who entered. He was dressed in a khaki T-shirt with matching pants and cap, and wore desert combat boots. Sarah repressed a curse. She knew whatever was coming was not going to be pleasant.
"I hope you had fun playing house with Major Johnson," said Rad in his characteristic condescending tone, "because playtime is over."
"Are you going to train us from now on, Rad?" asked Michael, not even trying to hide his surprise.
Rad took long strides until he was so close to Michael that their noses were almost touching. "This isn't summer camp and we're not on a first name basis. From now on, you will address me as Colonel Jaeger, or as sir. And I will address you as maggot and you," now he turned to Sarah, "as maggette."
Jaeger instructed each of them to place a small device into the single jack in the back of their skulls.
"What is this for, sir?" asked Sarah.
"You won't want to use your TacWave while this is plugged in," Jaeger responded. "Now, get above ground and run to the fence and back. I'll be ready for you by then."
Sarah glanced at Michael and saw her own unease reflected in his features. "Yes, sir" she said, as the two headed towards the large escalator that led to the surface.
The pair ran together to the fence wordlessly. As they reached the chain links, Sarah turned and looked at the device in the back of Michael's skull. It was a small metal cylinder, maybe half an inch long and a quarter inch in diameter, with a tiny green LED built into its tip. "What do you think these things are for?" she asked him.
"I don't know, but I'm sure it's not good," said Michael. He touched her elbow, letting his fingers linger there for a second. Despite her anxiety about training under Jaeger, Sarah felt her mood improve from the physical contact. She realized that this was the first time they'd been completely alone together in weeks, and that Michael was taking the chance to show his feelings for her. Their eyes locked for a moment, and then Michael withdrew his hand. "Let's head back. I don't want to make Jaeger any more unpleasant than normal."
By the time they crossed back through the cold waters of the stream, Jaeger was waiting for them, holding what looked like a remote control in his hands. He had set a medium-sized metal can on the ground. Sarah recognized it as an empty Langar Foods peanut butter container. There were a half-dozen tennis balls about 10 feet away from the can.
"Maggot," he said, addressing Michael, "Stand here behind the can."
Michael jogged over behind the can and stood expectantly.
Jaeger flipped a switch on the device in his hands and Michael fell to the ground, screaming in pain.
Sarah immediately turned towards Michael but Jaeger stepped in front of her and held out his hand so it dug into her solar plexus, knocking her backwards. "Maggette, the only way for you to help maggot over there is to get three of these tennis balls into the can."
Michael was rolling around and clawing at his head.
"What's wrong with Michael, sir?" demanded Sarah.
"He's in terrible pain. And you're wasting time. Get three balls in the can."
Sarah stared at Jaeger in disbelief for a moment and then bent down to pick up three of the balls.
As she rose back up, she was struck by an intense burning pain that raced up and down her spinal cord. She felt the dusty ground smack her in the face and realized she had fallen.
As suddenly as it had come, the pain was gone. She pulled herself to a sitting position and glanced over at Michael. He was still contorted in agony.
She looked up at Jaeger.
He stared down at her mockingly, rubbing his hands together. "Obviously, you are not allowed to carry the balls. That would be too easy, wouldn't it? You will throw them one by one into the can from where I stand."
Sarah shook her head clear of the residual pain and began dragging herself to her feet.
"Don't bother getting up yet. Ten pushups each time you touch a ball."
Sarah wanted to protest but she heard Michael groaning in pain and she decided the best thing to do was to start knocking out the pushups. When she was done, she grabbed one of the tennis balls and ran to Jaeger's side.
As she tried to aim at the small target, her gaze kept slipping to Michael, who still lay writhing in pain just beyond the can. She felt her arms trembling from the pushups she had just done, and was afraid she could never hit the target.
She threw the ball and it landed a full foot from the can.
Jaeger said, "There's a punishment for missing." He clicked his device and the wave of pain came back, knocking Sarah to the ground again.
After it passed, he nudged her with his foot. "Do your pushups and try again."
Sarah did ten more pushups and grabbed another ball. Her arms were still shaking, she was still distracted by Michael's gasps of pain, and now her eyes were beginning to tear up. "Sir, I can't," she cried.
Jaeger sounded almost bored. "Use your TacWave, Maggette. That's what it's for."
"But you said..." hadn't Jaeger just warned her not to use her TacWave while the device was plugged in? One look at Michael's contorted face convinced Sarah to try.
As soon as she turned the TacWave on, she was hit by another wave of pain like the ones that had floored her twice already. She fell to one knee and inhaled a short breath. She turned her TacWave back off, and the pain disappeared.
"I said you wouldn't want to use your TacWave. But now you need to, or your friend maggot here is going to need a six foot hole in the ground."
Sarah choked back a sob at the arbitrariness of Jaeger's sadism and stood again. She planted her feet and braced herself for the imminent onset of blinding pain.
The pain was as bad as before, but at least this time she was prepared for it. She inhaled sharply and
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