Freedom Incorporated by Peter Tylee Read Free Book Online Page B

caught
Jen’s attention and a smile tugged on her lips despite their
predicament. It depicted a gagged student sweating in frustration
at the cloth stuffed in his mouth. An evil-looking computer lurked
in the background, and underneath in nightmare-green were the
words, “Would you trust your education to a Global Integrated
Silence?” The jammed images would change every five minutes. Cookie
had said his alterations were so complex that it would take a technician half a day to
fix. That was half a day for students to sit in the quadrangle and
read the truth. Global Integrated Systems had knotted their own
noose by attempting to make their circuit hack-proof. They couldn’t
switch off an individual screen without affecting the network, and
they weren’t likely to shut down the entire system just to
disengage one jammed screen.
    “ Let’s get out
of here,” Samantha said, stirring Jen from her reverie.
    “ Okay.” She
felt pleased with herself. “Let’s go.”
    They hurried around the
edge of the quadrangle, staying low and hunched over in case
security personnel were nearby, which seemed likely.
    Five minutes
later they were clear of the University and had a leisurely stroll
to the nearest portal station . As usual, Samantha was
beaming. “We did it!”
    Also as usual, Jen was
more subdued, though the thrill was burning inside her like an
intense flame. “I just hope they can’t undo it easily.”
    “ I hope they
shut the system down! But even if they don’t, we’ve still
won.”
    “ This round.”
Jen’s smile dissolved as she thought about the long-term
ramifications of their actions and about what they still had to do.
“It hasn’t even begun yet.”
    Samantha disagreed. “Sure
it has. It began decades ago. It just slowed down recently, that’s
all. But we’re helping to speed it back up again.”
    Jen shook her
head and said, “No we aren’t.” The thought punched her in the
stomach, knocking the wind from her. She knew they were barely more
than vandals. So far. But her grandfather’s vision had n’ t rotted with his corpse; it lived
on, skipping a generation to saturate Jennifer Cameron with a sense
of purpose. “We haven’t started yet.” She turned to face her friend
– her only friend, aside from Cookie. The other people in her life
were mere acquaintances. How could she call them friends if they
knew nothing about her secret life as a jammer? And she couldn’t
tell them, they wouldn’t understand. Nobody understood. Nobody
except Samantha and Cookie.
    Samantha stopped,
returned the look, and said, “Why do you say that? We’ve been
jamming for two years.”
    “ And
what ha ve we
achieved?” It came out harsher than she intended and Jen
immediately regretted her tone. She bit her lip and reminded
herself that Samantha was n’ t the enemy. “I don’t want to be
just a jammer.”
    “ Then what do
you want?”
    Jen clenched
her jaw and absently brushed her hair back over her shoulder where it belonged.
“I want to be an activist. A real one.”
    Samantha narrowed her
eyes and studied Jen’s pensive expression. “Like your
grandfather?”
    Jen nodded, “Yes. I’ve
given this a lot of thought.”
    “ How?”
    Jen frowned. “I don’t
honestly know...”
    Silence.
    “… but this is
something I have to do.”
    Samantha nodded,
understanding perfectly. “Okay, what do you want me to
do?”
    Jen shrugged and started
walking again. “I don’t know that either. We’ll think of something
though.”
    They walked in silence
for a few minutes before returning to the somewhat less threatening
subject of men, which provided plenty of entertainment to fill
their journey back to Tweed Heads.
    *

    Wednesday, September 15,
2066
    04:27 Andamooka, South
Australia

    Dan stretched lazily
toward the ceiling and perversely enjoyed the pain that shot from
his bruised back. The nightmares were back, haunting his sleep with
memories he would have gladly erased. The night was