Driving north through the darkness, it took several tries dialing. Eventually, an hour before dawn, Burk answered. “Sorry, Michael. I was sound asleep and I’m not used to listening for a cell phone.”
“Burk, can you tell me where you are?” The noise from the wind made it tough to hear, but he felt the need for cool moisture from the summer rain to keep him alert, and this old pickup didn’t have air conditioning.
“Well, right now I’m about twenty-five miles northeast of where you dropped me. There’s an old abandoned orchard off in the country. Some of the trees are ripe for picking, and we have a sort of festival eating the fruit in various ways. You’d be welcome to join us, especially if you can get us another bag of flour and some sugar so we can make a pot-cobbler in the morning for breakfast. We’ve got plenty of butter.”
“How much flour and sugar? And how do I find you?”
Chapter 7
It was uncomfortable sleeping in the cab of his pickup, but he felt peaceful and safe for the first time in a long while.
He was glad he had left his old road cup in the pickup the last time he drove it. You could only get a cup of hobo coffee in your own cup. Burk had traded some trinkets he found walking the highways and back-roads for an extra spoon. It was brunch, and the promised pot-cobbler smelled of Heaven, served in recycled number 10 cans. The shade had just shifted over the pickup, and the two sat on the tailgate.
Michael savored the taste, not just the coffee and cobbler, but of the sense of freedom and release. He had often asked himself if he could return to the standard of living he managed when struggling as a freelance writer, just out of college. While his apartment and year-old car might be waiting when he returned – if he returned – along with all the fine haberdashery in his closet, he decided it didn’t matter. The Bible studies of late had carried an under-current of searching: Would we let God have everything if He asked, and do without? He knew as he fled the publisher’s building the answer was a solid “yes.”
The fancy duds were back in the big city. He had brought comfortable work clothing, his old laptop, the pickup, and a bit of camping equipment he had gathered over the years. Even now he was deciding how to hang the pup tent over the bed of the truck so he could take a nap to make up for the light sleep from which he had stirred that morning. The weight of the excellent cobbler in his stomach was a siren call even this strong hobo coffee couldn’t overcome. Still, he needed to hash some things out with Burk.
“I got close enough to the Shadow Government to realize it was more powerful than I’d ever dreamed.” He waited to see if Burk would comment.
“Yeah.” The younger fellow chewed some cobbler, then took a sip of coffee. “The only way you can defeat something like that is to live where they can’t touch you, outside their sphere of interest.”
“Explain.”
With a boyish grin, and the wisdom of old men, he said, “You’re seeing it right here.”
Of course. Who noticed hobos? Only other hobos and a few residents who decided to take exception to them. “I’m not quite ready to go that far just yet. Will I be safe enough living on the fringe of this?”
“For awhile, at least.”
“Okay, so I keep my truck and stuff, and my driver’s license. I know better than to use my bank cards anywhere near a place I plan to rest. However, I don’t know any other means to tap my reserves of cash.”
Burk looked into his empty can, as if to find words to answer. Finally he looked out across the orchard where the other hobos socialized in clusters. Nodding his head in their direction, “They don’t keep much cash.”
“No, I’m sure they don’t. However, I had one other piece of advice and I intend to take it. I was told to pick a battle on my level, something I could afford to lose myself, without hurting those uninvolved. Not that I should quit fighting, but to choose an enemy I could reach. I can’t just run away. I’m not content to leave the world as it is, spiraling down into a nightmare police state. I most certainly cannot stop it, not with my resources and skills. But I can make it clear someone knows what’s wrong, and make it painful for evil to grow in at least one place in this world. I want to do what I can do, with whatever help I can get, and make the process costly for someone.”
“Bitterness?”
“No, Burk. It’s a totally different kind of anger, something which has dirtied my soul. I have this vision I can do something to rescue just a few, a handful of innocents, give them hope to hang on. I already know if God wants me alive in the future, He’ll make me hard to kill, as long as I’m not foolish. I’m pretty sure He wasn’t going to protect me facing the Shadow Government directly, but they have servants lower down the scale whose hearts are equally dark, even if they don’t realize they are pawns. I’m just about the level of a pawn in this game, and I want to disrupt the game-plan one time. If ordinary people can see that evil costs something, maybe they can hold on and resist, too. Even if it’s just in small, subtle ways. A rebellion can spread, and I refuse to surrender to evil.” He turned to Burk. “I know I’m just rambling, but does any of it make sense?”
“Sure, sure,” Burk nodded, then leaned back against the baggage in the truck bed, locking his fingers behind his head. “You’ll probably need someone to watch your back. You might not need me to change a tire without a jack now, but I know a whole lot more things like that. I’ve done lots of different work. Hobos don’t avoid work, but avoid being controlled too much.”
Michael also leaned back, moving his stuff around until he had a nice reclined position, his feet propped up. Even as his eyes closed in sleep, Michael reached out a hand and grabbed Burk’s. “Welcome aboard, partner. It won’t necessarily be fun, but it will be very interesting, I promise...” He trailed off into sleep.
The library in this town had a decent parking lot, shaded by huge pines. Michael decided to back into a parking stall against the trees. Grabbing his laptop bag, he let Burk lead the way. The old man at the help desk smiled as he saw Burk approaching. “Does every librarian in the state know you?” Michael asked.
“Most of them,” he said without turning his head. He greeted the elderly man warmly and asked about some kind of DVD.
“Sure,” the man said, his face lighting up even more. “This is the latest update, with some new packages.”
Burk took the plain white optical disk envelope and led Michael to a table with a single terminal and two chairs. “This is the best time to come. With so few users, I don’t have to sign up for a mere half-hour or anything. I get to use this all morning long. Here, put this in your DVD tray.” He handed Michael the disk.
“Is this going to install something I can’t undo later?”
“No,” Burk chuckled as he began typing on the desktop keyboard. “Save your battery and plug into that outlet; just lift the brass plate.” He pointed to a shiny square in the carpet under one edge of the table. As Michael was doing this, he went on, “That’s called a ‘live DVD.’ The entire operating system loads itself in RAM and runs like the CD is a hard drive. You got plenty of RAM?”
“Four-gig. When I bought this it was a high-end machine. I was a hard core gamer in those days.”
“That should be plenty. Now watch,” he said as Michael hurried to insert the CD while the laptop powered up. “You’ll see a screen letting you choose some options and the language.” Michael hesitated, so Burk reached over and hit some keys for him. “There, that should work. Once it gets started, it’ll throw up a cover screen while it checks the hardware and tests a few things.”
It was pretty artwork. “Wow. Somebody really put some work into this.”
“That’s not even the best part,” Burk said, typing and clicking on the desktop machine. “Parts of it will work just like Windows. But underneath, the thing is totally different. It’s so stable it doesn’t crash until the hardware fails.”
The display on the laptop screen indeed bore some similarities to older versions of Windows, Michael decided, but there were
icons the length of a slide out menu bar down one side. “Too much like a smartphone interface, if you ask me.”
Burk had been reading something on the library’s computer monitor. “You can adjust that if you ever install it. Anything you change right now you’ll have to do again if you shutdown, but you can save your changes to a memory stick, and it will load them the next time.”
“And all without writing anything to the hard drive?”
“Only if you want it to. That open window is one of several web browsers, and it shows a copy of their website. Look.” Burk pointed to a similar display on the monitor in front of him.
They studied the options and played with the laptop for the next couple of hours. Everything seemed to just work. Michael checked his email accounts, scanned a couple of weblogs belonging to friends, and became more comfortable with the system. Then he made some more adjustments, saving them to a spare jump drive he fished out of the laptop bag.
“Okay, so we can go war-driving all over the country. And wherever we find an unsecured wireless node, we can logon and do what we like. But, my wireless card has a MAC address and it can be traced. Just like using a bank card at any ATM in the world, anyone trying to track me can see where I’ve been. It’s like electronic fingerprints you can’t wipe away.” Michael went on to explain how several child pornographers and terrorists were caught that way.
Burk sat thinking only a second. Turning quickly back to the desktop system, he said, “I believe there’s a way to change the MAC address...” After a few moments he said, “There. It’s a package offered by the same folks who made the software on the DVD. You can download, and save it to the memory stick, since it’s a pretty small package.”
Michael went to the same site on his laptop, saved the package to his jump drive, then installed it. A small window popped open and asked if he wanted a specific number, or a random choice. He chose random. Almost immediately the window reported his new MAC address, and reminded him he could reload the original, and how. Saving it to his jump drive, he closed the application. Now the library’s wireless server was asking him to login in again, as if he had just tried to connect for the first time. “This is gonna make things much more comfortable.”
Chapter 8
Michael decided this hobo campsite wasn’t too bad. They had driven quite a ways into the forest preserve, crossing a couple of high passes between mountains, and he wondered why this one was so far from the main roads. Most of the campsites they had seen in the past weeks were surprisingly close to some highway, yet he would never have known where to look if Burk hadn’t known they existed.
“There’s a major rail line running down along the valley,” Burk pointed down slope to the east. “Lots of zigzagging in the track makes the trains slow down, and provides easy jumping on and off without being seen. I don’t much care for hopping freight trains, but I’ve done it a few times.”
They both lay back against an earthen berm, covered thickly with pine needles. The weather was still rather warm in this valley, now early in the fall. “I also don’t much care for hurting people, if I can avoid it,” Burk finally added to the conversation.
“Nor I.” Michael thought for a moment, running through his mind the bits and pieces of philosophy and political theory they had read on numerous oddball websites. The overdone graphics on some gave them an air of idiocy, like screaming madmen on the street warning of black helicopters, dodging non-existent “hidden cameras” which could see through your clothes. It occurred to him, “But somebody is going to die, one way or another. It’s never clear and simple, I know, but the way the system is turning... Sometimes it’s pretty obvious. If nothing is done to stop the thugs with badges, more innocent people will die. Or their lives will be destroyed, at the very least. And it tarnishes the badges worn by folks who aren’t thugs.”
Burk’s sad face turned to a grimace at the memory. “It’s not so bad when the city cops hassle me, because I know how to handle it. Hobos have lived with that forever. But I couldn’t help it when they roughed up the old ladies and men, or tried to take kids away from parents who just don’t want to live the middle-class dream... Yeah, I roughed up a few cops; I admit it. When I first learned police forces were created to uphold just one narrow idea of public order, and had nothing to do with real safety or stopping actual crimes, it made me cry.”
Musing almost to himself, Michael said quietly, “The gangs in one barrio I visited said the local police were just the government’s gang. When there was a big federal official visiting in the city, the officials pulled all the extra policemen in to provide security. With their presence in the barrio reduced, violent crime actually went down. The major gang in that neighborhood provided order better than the police.” Turning to face Burk, he went on in stronger voice, “I never understood it at the time. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could easily put in a newspaper article, but the gang there was the real government. Residents trusted and supported them, and it was simply a handful of pretenders involved in the neighborhood council sponsored by the city government.”
They mused awhile longer before Michael sat up. “Burk, we have to be very careful. We can’t undo Western history. There will always be some sort of police force, but what are they really supposed to do? What are they for?”
Still lying back with his eyes closed, Burk ventured, “Seems to me I saw on some police cars, ‘to protect and to serve.’ I suppose that means they are supposed to protect and serve citizens.”
“And when they don’t?” Michael pressed. “Sometimes they protect and serve only those in power. Like the Shadow Government, they only allow their side of things to be published, so most of the sheeple keep voting for them. But regardless of the party affiliation, it’s the same bunch.”
“Two uniforms, same team,” Burk mumbled.
“Burk, do those tracks down there run back to my city?”
Chapter 9
This being the wet season on the West Coast, the three day ride was definitely not fun, Michael decided. Hiding under the piggy-backed trailers while moving was only partial protection from the weather. The three mile hike to the barrio was a welcome relief for cold and cramped muscles.
“I’m going to show you some of the best breakfast burritos this side of the Border,” Michael promised as the sun rose behind them.
Not much had changed, just some faces. The little convenience store still made great food. Michael was careful to observe the protocols and approached the young men whose duty was to watch for trouble from rival gangs. Using the rapid and slurred version of Spanish he learned when writing about gangs, he discovered the same man was still in charge. He waited for the guardians to make a couple of calls on cell phones, and then went precisely the path they advised. It was not the same abandoned garage where he last met the leader. Now it was a much larger place, probably a former department store of some kind.
The guards near the back door were older, larger than the lookouts. They watched without expression as Michael and Burk went through the freight entrance in the alleyway. Passing a couple more men playing dominoes in the back room, they went into some sort of office suite. Sitting in a recliner, watching a Spanish soap opera on an old TV, was a rather well-dressed Latino. He looked up as they came in, and smiled. Pointing the remote to kill the TV, he stood to greet Michael.
Burk had trouble following the conversation. His knowledge of Spanish was very limited. At least he could understand more of the words now, because it was less of the street dialect he had heard on the way. Obviously the man liked Michael, and there was an air of mutual respect. Motioning for them to sit on the big, overstuffed couch along one wall, the man returned to his recliner, but remained sitting upright.
At one point, Michael asked a question Burk knew involved wireless access. Apparently the answer was yes, because Michael reached into his backpack and pulled out the laptop. This time he booted into Windows from the hard drive. After a moment, he showed the screen to their host. Th
e man got up and grabbed a chair from the side of a table, and placed it next to the couch near Michael, who had turned so they both could see. After much discussion and pointing, during which the man became more animated, they shook hands. The man took out a cellphone from his shirt pocket, returned to his recliner and leaned back to chatter for awhile.
Michael turned to Burk, and spoke rather quietly, “I’m making a deal. I set up a website for him, and help him get the right kind of publicity. I’ve convinced him he can fight the official neighborhood council this way, too. He’s got a niece who can run the site for him; she’s been learning about this some. Turns out he had already asked her, but she didn’t know about publicity and where to find free hosting. We’re going to setup a couple of free blog accounts on the same hosting outfit as the city council so he can post on the their blog. Then he’s going to purchase some cheap webspace and create a forum in Spanish. Once it’s all set up and running, he plans to start contacting the local Hispanic news organizations.”
Michael paused for a moment to answer a question from the man in the recliner, who shouted back into the phone a single word like a slogan, punctuated with his index finger pointing in the air. Then in one motion he snapped the cell phone shut, folded down the leg rest and stood up. He shook hands with Michael, smiled briefly at Burk, and then led them out into the back room. There was a rapid exchange in the street dialect, and Burk caught none of it. Then one of the men slapped his dominoes face down and walked out the back door. Michael pulled Burk behind him and waved one last time to their host as he went the same way as the domino player.