Sleeper Protocol Read online

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  Across the tent, Berkeley sat reading a holobook. I made a wall transparent and looked outside. The snow was now nearly a foot deep around the hexhab, but more importantly, the sky was beginning to clear to the west.

  “I think the storm is over.”

  Berkeley didn’t look up. “Yeah.”

  “I’m ready to get out of this tent.” I yawned and stretched. It was more than that. Being patient sounded good in theory, but I needed information. I wasn’t getting it here. “We’re leaving in the morning.”

  Berkeley winked at me. “Okay.”

  “I have to get to Tennessee.”

  She smiled. “I said it was okay.”

  I cued the tent material back to its normal burnt orange, sat down next to Berkeley, and pulled a blanket over our legs. She was doing a decent job of pretending she was reading instead of editing footage of our time together. The discussion we’d eventually have would not end well.

  Her hand found the top of my leg and paused. She did not share my feelings at all. I was playing a role in her mind. She cared for me but in a fleeting manner, as though she’d helped me board a train or find my way in an airport. Specifically, she was helping, but she wanted more. I was a cog in that decision wheel, and when the time came for her to choose between whatever she wanted and me, I would be left in a cloud of dust. Three hundred years ago, there was a five-year hole in my life during which I choked out of a very similar cloud.

  The next morning, we broke camp. The hexhab discharged its unused organic mass and deflated in a matter of minutes. I stuffed it back into my pack and exhaled a cloud of steam. The snow-capped mountains stabbed the clear indigo sky like the points of sharpened white pencils. “Where are we headed?”

  “North.” Berkeley shrugged into her backpack. “When we get to the TransCon, we can hitch a ride over the Continental Divide and avoid the front-range area.”

  “Why?”

  Berkeley smiled. “Sorry, I keep forgetting you’re new to all of this.”

  Bullshit, I thought. “So?”

  “The TransCon is a thoroughfare. A free-trade shipping lane.” She shrugged.

  “Like an interstate highway?”

  “Yes!” Berkeley winked. “That’s what it used to be. Now it’s a TransCon with four levels of magnetic levitation. The trucks on the top levels push the sonic barrier. It’s really something to see.”

  “Why not just head east from here? The front range can’t be more than a couple of hundred miles.” Tennessee seemed farther and farther away.

  Berkeley squinted at me. “Not after this much snow. Many of the old roadbeds would be avalanche zones now.”

  Trusting her seemed so natural and, at the same time, so wrong. I shrugged good-naturedly. “We’ll need snowshoes.”

  “Touch the knobs on the back of your boots. Now twist them clockwise.” I did, and sure enough, a hexagonal webbing formed around my foot. I’d like to say I took to snowshoes naturally, but even enhanced physiology and reflexes couldn’t overcome gravity. I fell to the ground like a baby deer on ice from a movie I’d once seen. How can I remember that and not my own name? Standing again, I took five full strides and relaxed into what had to be the right rhythm. My feet ensnared each other, and I slammed face-first into the icy powder again.

  “Dammit.” I smacked my hand on the snow.

  Mally spoke in my ear. <>

  I snorted and worked my way to my feet. “You ready to get going?”

  Berkeley was already walking through the trees. “Leaving you behind as usual,” she chirped, and I slogged along the top of the snow to catch up.

  We made the Continental Divide at Stony Pass by nightfall two days later. Heading north in the clearest of weather, we’d walked something like forty kilometers that day and said a total of ten words to each other before we lay down for the night. She cuddled against me and kissed my neck, but I brushed off her intentions.

  “Are you okay, Sleepy?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, knowing fully well she would know I was not. I hoped like hell she would drop the whole thing. I wanted to get home, and all she wanted to do was wait and be patient. I could not take it much longer.

  I lay in the dark, my mind whirring like a top. The world outside the hexhab was quiet, without even a breath of wind against the tent’s sides.

  After I’d stared at the ceiling for an hour, Mally asked quietly, <>

  No, thanks. I’ll be okay. Will you connect to the hab and make the ceiling transparent?

  <>

  I’d had A Field Guide to the Stars when I was a kid. Damned near had it memorized. My father gave it to me for a birthday present, but it was late. Other kids in my class were busy watching MTV, and I was sneaking out into the backyard on clear nights. Twin cedar trees dominated the eastern edge of the yard. The grass was cool and moist against my back. I remembered tracing the line from the Big Dipper to Arcturus. In the summer, I’d trace the line farther to Spica in Virgo. Winter brought Orion to the night sky, and I would trace his belt into Taurus the bull. I saw myself straining on bright nights to see the Pleiades, lying flat against the hillside in dark clothing so my parents wouldn’t see me in a chance glance out the kitchen window.

  They wouldn’t have cared except for the nights it was too cold to stay out longer than a few minutes. I could have asked permission, but they’d have said no. That wasn’t the point. I wasn’t out drinking or experimenting with drugs like my classmates were. I was staring up into the night sky for hours on end and wondering when I could go there, when I could look down on the planet and not see lines. I wanted to see only possibilities, not boundaries. I dreamed of a time when the snickering and taunting would end, a point in the future when I’d not be ridiculed for thinking about something bigger than me.

  Berkeley made noises in her sleep that made me want to laugh. She snuggled closer, snaking an arm across my chest, and I relished her warmth. I wished more of my past, my identity, would float to the surface. The desire to know was there, and it helped me get past the times when doubt and confusion swept in to drag my thoughts down. The memories were not all pleasant, and fortunately, they were short lived. Flashes of feelings, raw emotions tinged with regret, would appear and disappear quickly before I could put a name to a face. All of them were part of who I was, but they were baggage I wanted desperately to leave behind so I could create something new. Whatever I did in this future world had to be my choice.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As far as Mally could tell me, Berkeley wasn’t uploading anything. That she was still filming our time together in some fashion was likely, but I had no way of knowing. As good as I felt, my trust in her was low. I couldn’t bring myself to ask her about the bandwidth and her movie. Mally was right—she had to be filming me. I was the star of her show and likely the butt of her joke. As much as it bothered me, I did nothing. The sex was too good to throw away.

  We hiked out of Stony Pass on a warm day and continued up the Continental Divide. By the time the sun reached its zenith, we were walking in shirtsleeves. Snow melted quickly, leaving puddles in our footprints as we marched.

  Berkeley glanced over her shoulder. “How are you doing with things?”

  “Things?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled.

  “I know that I was a soldier. I see lots of faces and bits of memories that are starting to knit themselves together. Beyond that, I’m hiking with you and hoping like hell it doesn’t snow again for a few days. That good enough?”

  The trail descended a small peak into an aspen-covered saddle. In between the two hills, Mally came to life in my ears.

  <.>>

  How far away? I looked at the snow-covered forest floor and white-flecked trunks of aspen trees and could not find them.

  <>

  A large tree stump sat a couple of meters off our path to the east side. After another fifty meters, I stopped and acted as if there was something wrong with my boot. Berkeley paused as well, just as I’d hoped. In that moment of silence, I closed my eyes and listened. I lowered my head for a second and heard them come out of the brush. Berkeley startled, and I brushed her back with my left arm.

  <>

  I pushed Berkeley toward the way we’d come. “Run. Go!”

  To her credit, Berkeley sprinted off like the wind, never looking back. The men screamed and charged, their rebel yell echoing off the aspens in the wide clearing. They watched Berkeley flee and turned their attention to me. She’d get away from them, and that was what I wanted. With any luck, she’d be calling for help any second. I dropped my pack on the ground and stepped back from it, my hands in the air. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  A mangy-bearded man, missing most of his teeth, sneered at me. “Don’t care much what you want, boy.”

  <