"I know that the IOF’s Department of Public Safety is responsible for making sure that every citizen is kept safe. They were the ones who gave us the toys when we were in infant care; they were the ones who told us how wonderful the IOF was and how lucky we were to be living in a province where life was totally fair; they were the ones who sent us presents on our birthdays. We were taught that if we ever felt unsafe, we could go to them at any time of the day or night, and they would protect us."
"But, something isn’t right. And, brain-band zaps are stopping me from figuring it out. I’m taking our brain-band off so that you can complete the research before you start your job with the DPS. I’m not going to tell you any of my specific suspicions because I don’t want to influence your findings. I’m going to help you get your memory back and ask you to think about what you’ve learned. If I’m wrong about the DPS, then you’ll find nothing. But, if I’m right… well, you just can’t go to work for them. You just can’t."
"Four weeks of grad’bration should be plenty of time to figure things out. You’ll be able to wander around Alberta and discover what it’s like to have emotions. And, every now and then, think about the DPS and the IOF, and keep thinking about them until everything fits. Until that happens, you should consider anyone you see in the woods as a DPS agent looking for you. Do not let the DPS catch you without your brain-band! They won’t believe that you yanked it off out of curiosity. Get deep, deep into the woods and hide! There are rumours of dissidents without brain-bands living in the woods for years before being caught. A Z should be able to avoid discovery for a month."
# # # # # # # #
The first data folder in my bot held all the course assignments I had submitted over the last five years. As Zurt the First had promised, they brought back lots of school memories, so I lay back in my comfy hammock, looked up at the full yellow moon that was shining into the silent forest, and let the thoughts roll through my brain.
I didn’t really have any negative thoughts about school. I actually enjoyed being alone in my dorm room for days at a time with instructional materials playing into my brain. That didn’t mean that I never saw other kids – I was required to eat meals with my dorm mates and show up at the compulsory recreation events. Most students played games and socialized together in the evenings. However, I chose to work on my courses. What can I say? I was a Z.
The individualized instruction we all received guaranteed that no student ever failed a course. If a particular lesson was too difficult, the student got additional instruction and practice until he mastered the content. The lowest mark ever assigned was a C. The highest mark ever awarded was a B-. Since we all had essentially the same brain in the same body, it was only logical that just about everyone would receive straight C+ grades.
It was time to sleep, but my stomach was grumbling for something to eat. I popped the end of a food bar into my mouth, took a big chomp, and almost levitated out of my hammock. I had never tasted anything so wonderful before!
Food bars are dense packs of nutrients and are time consuming to chew. As I ground away at what was usually a tasteless piece of fossilized sawdust, the sensation of exhilaration subsided, only to be replaced by a variety of different tastes that swirled around in my mouth. They were good, but that first taste had been like eating … I don’t know what it was like eating, but I knew one thing. I wanted more.
I held the bar up to my nose – trying to find the origin of that sensational taste. As I passed it back and forth in front of my nostrils, I inhaled deeply but couldn’t get enough of the alluring scent. So, I placed the edge of the bar against the skin underneath my nose and breathed deeply. Each inhalation left me sighing. I raised the tip of my tongue to the bar and got a big gob of something soft and mushy as a reward. It made my tongue tingle. Leaving my tongue in the air, I gazed at the stars and then waited for this delicious goo to melt and trickle down my tongue. I could feel the little numblies on my tongue come alive as each tiny drip made its way into my mouth.
There was enough light from the moon to read the package. Chocolate covered nutrient bar.
That wasn’t the chocolate I was used to. This chocolate was rich. This chocolate was mind-numbingly sweet. This chocolate was … delicious.
I put one end of the bar in my mouth and tongued the chocolate off the top of the bar. Rotating the bar, I repeated the process again and again until half of the bar was bare. Then, I reversed it and sucked the chocolate off the second half. By this time, my fingers were covered in the melting chocolate, so naturally, I had to lick it off. Slowly – one finger at a time. I could feel a little bit of goo on my face so I used a finger to transfer it into my mouth. When all the chocolate was gone, I sliced off little chunks of the bar, which I rolled from one side of my mouth to the other until it had disintegrated. It took me an hour to finish the bar and I never noticed the time passing at all.
Forget getting any sleep! I could swear that my body was vibrating. My brain certainly was. I stood on a branch, hopping in place while watching the end of the branch flap up and down. If I could find a big enough branch, could I walk out far enough to jump to the nearby tree? Squirrels did this all the time. I was far heavier and not as nimble. Still, the urge to jump from tree to tree seemed like a perfect way to celebrate my discovery of real chocolate.
Then, the perfect idea just popped into my mind. I took out my bow and put it together. Since my bow was collapsible, I always had it in a pocket when I was in the woods. Grabbing my backpack, I groped for the reel of my all-purpose fishing line that I had invented during Spring Break. In its normal state, the line was a single filament that actually could be used for fishing. If you needed something stronger – say for constructing a raft – individual segments of the filament could be fused together. A line that was three filaments wide was enormously strong.
Of course, other ropes had similar qualities. Mine was different because it could be electrically charged from the battery in my pinkie ring computer. Drive a low pulse down the length and the filament would instantaneously bind to a filament lying next to it. Change the pulse slightly and two filaments would separate. Increasing the voltage slightly would create a magnetic field around the filament. A different type of pulse would transmit an electronic signal from one end to the other. I hadn’t played with it since I had invented it, but I already had stored away some mental plans for a variety of electronic gadgets that could be created from a single piece of filament. All I needed was time to experiment and I’d get plenty of that this month.
Time to try out my brilliant idea. I cut off a long piece of filament, attached an arrow to one end, and buried the arrow into a distant tree. I wrapped the filament's loose end around the trunk of my sleeping tree and magnetized the line so that it became a taut cable connecting the two trees. I cut off a second, much shorter slice of filament and made the two ends into makeshift handles. Then, I suspended myself from the taut cable with that short line. The different fields in the two filaments propelled me quickly to the distant tree. A high voltage pulse caused the long cable to reel itself in. All I had to do now was shoot another tree, suspend myself from the cable with my short filament strap, and fly over the forest floor to my next destination.
I grabbed some water and a couple of food bars and an hour later, I was at least five kilometers away from my former camp and very much relieved. How could anyone track me through the woods if there weren’t any tracks on the ground to follow?
# # # # # # # #
It was late, I was tired, and I had no reason to return to my tree-camp, so I decided to bed down on the forest floor. The night was warm and I was soon asleep. I’m not normally bothered by forest noises, but the rustlings of some large animal pushing through the underbrush woke me. I think I would have gotten back to sleep quite easily if I had heard it moving away. I began thinking about what Zurt the First had said about dissidents being able to hide in the woods successfully for years before being caught. I couldn’t help
wondering what had happened to them after they were caught. With no chance of getting back to sleep, I decided to return to my base camp.
I sky-trekked to within a kilometer of my tree-camp before continuing on the ground. I was approaching my camp when the sky started to lighten, but, by then, I had become extremely angry with myself. In spite of Zurt the First’s warnings, I had already made some stupid mistakes and I hadn’t been hiding for even twenty-four hours yet. I shouldn’t have camped so close to the ‘bration site; I shouldn’t have left my pack unattended; and, I shouldn’t have skipped gaily out of camp without first setting some intruder alerts. This total disregard for security was very unlike me and I could only explain my foolishness as a reaction to the emotions that I had felt after eating the chocolate.
Resolving to pay close attention to security from now on, I began the slow spiral belly-crawl around my tree-camp that would reveal if anyone had come by in my absence. I was about three-quarters done when I heard the noises of what must have been a deaf, blind, and crippled deer. It wasn’t a deer.
A noisy hiker settled into a hiding place that was well away from my tree-camp but with an adequate view of it so long as she used the ‘nocs hanging from her neck. If I was to believe Zurt the First’s warning, she had to be a DPS agent. She was certainly spying on my camp. Since I had been my normal, careful self entering the woods yesterday, only an expert tracker could have spotted what few tracks I might have left.
As I watched the DPS agent, I began to get doubts. Not about her spying. She made no effort to examine my camp close-up but she was clearly waiting for me to return. I began to wonder how she could have found my trail when she obviously wasn’t experienced in woodcraft and especially not in surveillance. You see, no expert in woodcraft would ever wear white in the woods but she had shiny white sheaths on her lower legs that could be easily seen from a distance. And, of course, there had been all that noise when she arrived. I checked her back trail and became even more assured of her lack of woodcraft. Her trail was full of broken branches and was marked by clear footprints. Much more worrisome was the fact that she hadn’t followed my trail! She had walked in a straight line directly to my camp and from an entirely different direction than I had used to get there!
I wanted to follow Zurt the First’s warning and take off for the deep woods, but I had to retrieve my pack. The second pack in my copter had ample supplies and equipment; however, my brain-band was in the pack in the tree and I couldn’t let the DPS spy find it. I rubbed some mud and rotting vegetation over my exposed flesh and then eased my way closer to her hiding place. I’d just hide in the underbrush until she left.
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Chapter 3
The bright sun was high in the cloudless sky and I could feel its warmth in my hiding pit, so why was I shivering? All I had to do was stay hidden until the DPS agent left, grab my pack, and slip away undetected. After all, I had my filament and could escape without leaving a trail. So why was my mind obsessing about how the DPS could have known that I had taken off my brain-band? I stared at the squirmy agent munching non-stop on snacks and wondered how anyone so inept in the woods could have found my camp. The more I thought, the more I shivered. The more I shivered, the more I worried about what the DPS would do to me if they caught me.
By early afternoon, I had gotten an itch in the back of my neck. You know – the itch you get when someone behind you is staring at you. The urge to scratch the back of my neck became so intense that twice I circled around looking for signs of a second spy. Twice, I found nothing. But, moving around helped me to figure out why I was shivering. I had never been frightened before.
The DPS spy packed up and left at nightfall. I had spent the entire day trying to answer two nagging questions. How could the DPS have learned that I was band-less so quickly? And, why would they care enough to track me into the woods? The only way I could get the answers was by following the spy, so I did.
She didn’t even try to leave the way she came in. She just pulled a compass out of her pocket, shone her pinky-ring light on it, pointed herself in the direction of the ‘bration fields, and started walking with her pinky-ring light on max. She altered course only when she encountered an obstacle too big to blunder through.
At 10 p.m., the ‘bration site was illuminated by bright floodlights so the spy was able to walk easily along the edge of the fields. I kept pace with her from a position about fifty-meters in the woods. A shadow stepped out of the woods near the Tower of Doom in the waterslide area and she changed course and followed the shadow into the woods. I had already spotted the glow of the campfire and so arrived there ahead of them. I used the noise of their arrival to crawl within hearing distance. Sitting around a campfire, their night vision would be destroyed so I didn’t have to worry about being seen. After watching them long enough to recognize them again, I kept my eyes buried in my sleeve to protect my night vision in case I had to leave suddenly.
Three people were around the campfire. The spy was a woman named Abby. The man who had met Abby and guided her to the fire was Rick. He was about the same size as Abby but was different from her in every other possible way – at least as far as woodcraft was concerned. Where she was clumsy and noisy, he was agile and quiet. She sat down with a grunt; Rick folded into the ground effortlessly. She couldn’t get comfortable; he adopted a yoga position and remained motionless. When Abby went to get more firewood, I could hear her progress from where I was hidden; Rick rose directly from his yoga position, glided into the darkness, and returned fully laden without making a sound. Of course, not everyone is skilled in woodcraft, but that was all I was concerned about right now – could I stay hidden from the DPS? Abby may have had other skills, but she was not a threat to discover me. Rick was another matter.
Like Abby, the third person was out of place in the woods. While Abby and Rick were wearing camouflage, Gary had a white shirt and tie. Abby and Rick sat on the ground; Gary had a folding camp chair and remained in it the whole time, leaving the other two to replenish the fire, food and drinks.
The initial conversation was mostly greetings and getting food and drinks distributed. Abby complained to Gary about having to swat at insects in the woods all day long and that started the real meeting.
Gary: “Zurt never returned to his camp?”
Abby: “I was there at dawn and I left when I could no longer see my hand in front of my face. He never came back.”
Gary: “But, it was Zurt’s camp, right?”
Abby: “He had a sleeping hammock high in a tree. It held a heavy weight that must have been his pack. I had expected to see the remains of a camp fire, a cooking pot or two, but I saw no other sign that he had been there.”
Gary: “Are we sure it's his camp?”
Rick: “It’s his camp. The pack is in the tree to keep his food safe from animals. Zurt never leaves any sign on the forest floor where he camps.”
Gary: “With all of his supplies in the tree, he should have returned to eat and sleep. You must have scared him off, Abby.”
Abby: “I was nowhere near his camp. I was hiding behind a rotting log full of ants the entire day. I was put on this assignment with only a half-hour notice and in an environment that I haven't been trained for. I catch dissidents who hide in cities, not in the wilderness. I’m tired, I need a hot bath and I resent you…”
Rick: “It would not be unusual for Zurt to spend one or more days away from his base camp. He could have decided to explore the area and simply didn’t want to haul his pack around with him. He’d only need a few food bars and some water. A one day absence means nothing.”
Gary: “So, he’ll return?”
Rick: “If he didn’t notice Abby and if that was his only pack. Did anyone check his dorm room to see how much of his camping equipment is gone? That will give you an idea of how many packs he brought. You have a full inventory of everything in his dorm room, right Gary?”
Gary: “Of course we do. But
, I’ve been busy coordinating our response. I’ll send someone to inventory his dorm room tomorrow.”
Rick: “Have someone find his copter too. He may have left a pack in it.”
Gary: “So, if Rick is right, he’ll return to his camp in the next day or two…”
Rick: “IF he didn’t see Abby and IF he doesn’t have another pack. I’m not guaranteeing anything, Gary, and don’t make it out that I am. This never should have happened in the first place."
Gary: "My office has had no experience with a Z. How was I supposed to predict what Zurt was going to do?”
Rick: “Letting his hair grow was an obvious change in behaviour. You better hope that a certain person doesn’t ask why you didn’t alert us.”
Gary: “Had I been properly briefed on Z behavioural patterns, I would have. You’re supposed to be the expert on Zurt – do we have Abby stake out his camp again or not?”
Rick: “What were you going to do if he did show up at his camp, Abby?”
Abby: “I was going to tell him that he and I had been given a school year-end project in preparation for working together as a team for the DPS. Naturally, I’d be wearing my teen-age face. After the project was over, we were expected to report into DPS headquarters in Calgary to be debriefed and then assigned to our first real job.”
Rick: “How will you explain his brain-band being off?”
Abby: “I’ll tell him that a DPS doctor safely removed our brain-bands in order to increase the stress and difficulty of the exercise. He’ll have lost most of his memories and will be confused. I’ll have a copy of the DPS letter to me and it will identify him as my partner. I’ll show him my fake brain-band to prove that I took off my band too.”
Rick: “You’re confident he won't see your real band?”
Abby: “I have a miniature version for these kinds of situations. Nobody can see it and he won’t be pawing through my hair.”