Amped by Daniel H. Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

a whisper. “I’m saying you held me hostage.”
    “Fair enough,” I say.
    The dash flickers and goes dark.
    Then, the lights power up and the dash returns to normal. The engine rumbles, starts. A smile spreads across Cortez’s bearded face. I take a deep breath and collapse back into my seat. We’re safe.
    Cortez pulls back onto the highway. We roll together toward the western horizon for about ten minutes before he speaks.
    “What people been saying about amps,” he says, “I heard all that shit before. If they’re not calling you a monkey, then they’re calling you a superman.”
    “So … are we good?” I ask.
    “We be all right,” says Cortez, never taking his eyes off the road. “Cuz,” he adds, breaking into a wide grin. He playfully shoves me in the shoulder. “You know I gotta shave my head now, right?”
    After eight hours in the truck we pull in for gas outside Sallisaw, Oklahoma. I grab my pack, lean over, and shake hands with Cortez. When I crack open the hermetically sealed door, a razor’s edge of dusk sunlight briefly stripes his face.
    “You pretty close to where you going. Motel is over there. Should be an okay one for you—guy who owns it is blind.”
    His amused chuckle is lost in the low bass line and profanity-laced lyrics. I thank Cortez and leave him in his rolling den. Step around the gas station’s automatic fueler, avoiding the patterned light that it sprays as it blindly searches for a gas cap. Cortez never has to leave the truck, not even to fuel it.
    Taking the blame is a full-time job.
    Walking toward the motel, I hear a chime from the idling truck as it acknowledges the pump. I pretend to scratch my forehead, blocking the sight of my face from the two subtle lumps on that hulking hood as they twinkle with laser light, scanning the environment and matching the truck’s local map with what’s up there in the satellite. Even way out here, the world is thick with cameras.
    Just another link in the supply chain of human civilization.
    It used to be people who drove the trucks and airplanes and boats. Things still look the same from the outside, but the core is always changing, always being upgraded. And the role of technology is under constant renegotiation.
    As the big rig hauls itself out of the parking lot, engine hissing, I keep my head down and wonder what would happen if we rolled everything back ten years. The computers would go a little slower, I guess. The factories would make a little less, and the farms wouldn’t produce as much. These seem like such small things, but we depend on each new advance.
    Millions would die. Because once we have the tech, we can’t let it go.
    Fwish, fwish, fwish
goes the implant in my head. It is inscrutable and mute and God knows what it does. But it doesn’t seem like a clock ticking down anymore. More like a heartbeat. Steady and dependable.
    At least, I hope so.

I have seen
The old gods go
And the new gods come.
    Day by day
And year by year
The idols fall
And the idols rise.
    Today
I worship the hammer.
    —CARL SANDBURG (1914)
    ----
    Disbanded Echo Squad Vets Under Investigation
    FORT COLLINS—This morning a spokesman for the US Army confirmed that members of the so-called Echo Squad, made up entirely of “amped” soldiers outfitted with prototype neural implants, were under federal investigation for plotting terrorist crimes. Four federal warrants were issued, although records indicate there were twelve original members.
    Echo Squad was dissolved a decade ago in the wake of a scandal. Documents exposing the existence of the squad were leaked by an online coalition of hackers known as Archos, and published simultaneously by three collaborating newspapers.
    An Army spokesman said, “In the interest of national security we cannot comment. These men are walking weapons. People’s lives are at stake here.”
    Army officials have come under criticism for failing to track the soldiers after Echo Squad was decommissioned. Head