Velvet Dogma

chapter 13



Maria lived in a stack of CONEXs nearest the Tsunami Wall. Cold poured from the great concrete wall, but within the steel of the CONEXs the temperature was much worse, as if each one was a box within which nothing occurred but the refinement of the cold into absolute frigidity. To combat this, stones were heated in large fires, then transferred to cloth-swaddled baskets to warm the interiors just enough to counteract the effects of the cold. Rebecca found that she liked to press her hands against the stones after they'd been in with her awhile, reveling in the comfort of heat rising through her hands, up her arms and into her chest.

She was in the third of five stacked CONEXs. The back wall held a bed, the left wall held a wardrobe and the wall in front of her held what she'd been told was a rarity in the underground city: an old-fashioned vanity.

Rebecca had cleaned herself before she'd entered, almost bathing in the bowl of warm water they'd provided, soaping away the dirt away that had accumulated during her escape into the alley and trek through the underground tunnels. Maria had taken her clothes to the wash and provided Rebecca with lengths of gaudily colored and patterned fabric with little to no instruction about how to wear them.

Looking in the mirror, Rebecca couldn't help feeling like a gypsy. She wore yellows and blues, with a hint of red, which she thought complimented her blue eyes and blonde hair. She'd figured out how to wrap her head so that only her eyes were uncovered, but preferred her head unfettered. She applied some of Maria's make-up. It'd been so long since she'd been able to sit like this. She applied too much rouge and had to wipe it away. When she was done, she sat back and appraised herself. To her surprise she didn't look entirely bad. She'd applied the kohl like Maria, the result making her eyes seem larger. She dabbed at the corners and smoothed an edge before she was satisfied. Once done, she liked the whole ensemble.

"Rebecca?" Andy stood poised on the ladder outside her CONEX. "Can I talk to you?"

"I'm not ready to talk about it yet," she said.

"I'd rather not wait."

"I'm really not ready to talk about it, Andy. I need some more time." The only thing worse than having to talk about something she didn't want to talk about, was being forced to talk about it. If Andy knew what was good for him, if he had any sense at all, he'd shimmy down the ladder and high-tail it to the other side of the city.

He seemed about to leave, then changed his mind. He stepped off the ladder and into her CONEX. His mass immediately shrunk the ten-by-ten foot square room to the point where she couldn't ignore the fact that he was there. Even when she didn't look at him, she could feel him.

"Maybe if I explain," he began, his hands shoved in his back pockets.

She didn't let him continue. She'd been holding things inside, prepared to deal with them, but wanting to relax a bit more first. He clearly didn't want her to relax, so he would get what he deserved.

"No. You better let me explain, Andy. You really made me angry, angrier than I'd been in twenty years."

He opened his mouth to say something, but she stood, pointed at her chest and began to rant. "I am not some school girl to be coddled. I don't know who you thought you were dealing with, but I am a grown woman, my own person and perfectly capable of making informed decisions. But to make informed decisions, I need to be informed. If you keep information from me, then informed I am not." Every time she said you she pointed at him, every time she said I, she thumped herself in the chest.

"I am so damned angry with you right now. Just because you have a few extra ounces between your legs doesn't mean that you can order me around and make decisions about what I can know and not know."

"But things were happening," he finally managed to say. "Things were dangerous."

"So what! If there's danger, inform me. Give me the specifics. Don't let me walk into something that I'm not prepared to handle."

"You handled the D-pens pretty well."

"What, we're depending on luck now? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to depend on preparation? You knew everything we'd encounter in there, but didn't give me any warning."

"You're being unreasonable."

Words she hated beyond measure. "That's your opinion. Right now, I don't like your opinion. This is the bottom line. If you don't begin respecting me, then I might as well walk up to the first policeman I see, stick out my hand and say Hello. My name is Rebecca Mines. I think if you'll check you'll see that I'm wanted by God, the police and the boy scouts. I'm sure I'd make his day."

"But I do respect you."

She shook her head. "Maybe in word, but not in deed."

"But I—"

"If you respected me, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Respect means that you let me make my own decisions about myself. Jesus, but you are the same as the Global Allocation System."

His jaw dropped. "What? How can you say that?"

"You decide what I should do with my body. How about if I decide? Huh? How about if you let me decide whether I want to live or die."

He shook his head. She'd passed him and shifted into fifth gear, leaving him somewhere back where he was trying to defend his actions.

"You don't seem to understand what I'm saying about respect," she continued. "Try this. If I decide to walk into the street and get hit by a car, then I expect you to let me do it. Who are you to stop me? Who are you to pretend to know what's best for me? Maybe I have a plan. Maybe I know the driver and am absolutely certain he'll miss me. To not allow me to do what I want to is to disrespect me. I am an adult. I am my own person. Respect that."

His face scrunched into a look of disbelief. "But you might get hurt! You might die!"

"Then let me," she said simply.

"But what if I want you around?"

She'd found a calmness within her. She'd done her shouting. Now he needed to understand. "That's a nice sentiment, Andy, but it's a selfish one."

"Selfish?" He spread is arms to show his incredulity. "How can caring for you be selfish?"

"What if I decide to become be a Day Eater? It's my choice."

Andy shook his head. "To be a Day Eater isn't why I brought you here. I brought you here to save you."

"And I've discovered a people who are more deserving of respect than any I know. For this I thank you."

He stared at her. "Do you really want to be a Day Eater?"

She shook her head and sat back down. "No. But thanks for asking. That is the kind of respect I was looking for."

He opened his mouth a few times, but nothing came out. Finally, he managed an apology. "Damn, Bec. I've screwed this all up. David and I had plans to tell you about all of this, but when he died, the plans got scrambled."

"What's Velvet Dogma?"

Andy sighed. He let his arms fall to his sides as he stepped over to the bed and sat down. "Velvet Dogma is the reason for everything, Bec. It's why I'm here. It's why you're here." He added, "And it's why you're so pissed at me."

"So what is it? It seems like everyone knows about it. Panchet knew. The gravBoarders knew. Maria knew, which means that the Day Eaters also know, or at least their council does."

"Velvet Dogma is you," he told her. "Or rather the program you created back before you went to prison. Do you remember Becka-309?"

She hadn't thought about the specifics of that program in ages. Even the name showed its history. She hadn't been called Becka since college. But she did remember. Becka-309 was the reason she'd been arrested. She'd been a leader of the chaos hacker phenomenon. Utilizing Bit-Torrent technologies, she'd been able to create a set of programs that could attack a server from multiple locations, remove minute pieces of inconsequential information and place them in open servers throughout the world available to be repieced together by anyone with Bit-torrent shareware. When the United States government discovered that their defense contractors' servers were indefensible to this new form of attack, they tracked her down, arrested her, and threw her in prison under the Patriot Act. Her one big try at protest and it had failed miserably, which was one reason the Day Eaters impressed her so.

"Yeah. I remember."

"Then you also remember that they couldn't find the program."

"Yeah. But they didn't need it. They were still able to convict and sentence me without the actual program. They had a smoking gun from my ISP trail, but no actual bullets. So much for habeas corpus."

"But the program continued working anyway."

"It should have." She shrugged. "I'd programmed it to be self replicating and self-sustaining. Bit-Torrent technology helped me immensely, but that's probably an obsolete technology by now."

"Not at all. PODs work on Bit Torrent. Almost everything does. It's more convenient to have information stored in small amounts in many places, than all of it in one place. Do you remember how the Internet used to lag?"

"Oh do I. That damned hourglass would spin and spin and spin, I'd swear I could feel my hair turning gray."

"No lag now. Bit Torrent solved that." He paused. "But back to Becka-309. It took a few years, but David found it."

"He did not."

"He did. You would have been so proud of him. He'd become quite the programmer. He didn't have your flair, but he was the most tenacious man I'd ever known."

"He really found it?"

"Oh did he. And when he found it, he discovered that all the time he'd been looking for it, the program had been in continuous operation."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that Becka-309 did as you told it. The damn thing went out, gathered secrets, and is just waiting to be recalled." He looked her in the eye. "All it needs is for you to tell us the retrieval protocol and we can save the world." He moved towards her and got down on one knee. He put his hands on her thighs. "Do you remember why you launched the program in the first place?"

"I wanted the world to have the secrets laid bare. I wanted the people to know what their governments were doing."

"Do you still want to do that?"

"Can we?"

"Sure we can. You won't believe what we've done."