Double Helix Ch. 01

Tilly's eyes lifted to meet mine for the first time, and I came close to physically recoiling from the pain I saw there. Her gaze quickly lowered again and she pushed away from the table and hurried back to her partition. I watched her go, feeling confused and sick.

"Norm, can I speak to you a moment?" Wendy said, putting her hand on my shoulder.

I stood and followed her. In my mind's eye, I imagined how ridiculous the situation would appear out of context, a literal teacher being taken aside by a ten-year-old for misbehavior. She led me into the stairwell and we sat, side by side.

"Okay," she said with a sigh. "You can probably already tell, Tilly's got problems. When I showed up here, she wouldn't say more than two words to me, or to anyone else. She's been here for close to half a year, which is a long time to stay at a transition house. I hate to say this about any mod, but Tilly isn't sane. I don't know what happened to her before she came here. I don't even know if the agency does."

"Has she ever been violent?" I asked. Coming from a education in medicine, my first impulse was to diagnose the ailment.

"No, never," Wendy said. "Just extreme withdrawal and depression. And I think she has nightmares. You want to be really careful what you say to her. This evening was the first time she's been out of her room in nearly a week. She forgets to eat, so I try to bring her food, but even then, she doesn't always take it."

"Have you tried to get help for her? From the agency, maybe?"

"Miss Gray says she has put in requests, but the agency is either unwilling or unable to help."

That made a kind of sense. The agency was a strange alliance of selfless volunteers like Sasha Gray working alongside career criminals who possessed the know-how to conduct illegal business and pass below the radar of the FBI. They ran off of donations, much of it from expatriate genemods, as well as the movement of black market goods into and out of the country. The agency's first priority would be to get Tilly out of the country. Then she could get help from whatever benevolent government she landed under.

"Any idea what Tilly's model is?"

"No" Wendy said, "She wouldn't tell me when I asked. If she doesn't feel like answering a question, she'll just ignore it. Come on, let's go have that drink."

I sighed. "Alright. Thanks for explaining things to me."

The others seemed to have recovered quickly from what had happened. If anything, they seemed more comfortable to have Tilly gone. I finished my stew and sipped the wine. I had no clue whether it was a good vintage or not. My colleagues at the university liked to tease me for my preference for what they called "girly" drinks: margaritas, sangria, daiquiris, that kind of stuff. In any case, what we had didn't go very far, certainly not enough for anyone to even get tipsy.

We talked for at least an hour. I found out that Stan was a Broncos fan, that Stansy liked historical fiction and that Nissi had once met an elderly John F. Kennedy and a young Kurt Cobain. I talked about my career when asked, though I didn't like to dwell too much on that. I was pretty certain that wherever the agency sent me, my skills would be in demand, but it wouldn't be the same. I had poured my heart and soul into getting that position at UCLA. Now, my best hope was that I might end up in Japan or India, where I could at have modern facilities and the possibility to teach at university level. Near eight o'clock, it looked like things were beginning to wind down, with Nock and Stansy heading for the television to catch an episode of America's Next Pop Star.

"I noticed there's just one terminal," I said to no one in particular. "Am I able to use it?"

Wendy answered me. "Our policy is that you get an hour at a time when someone else is waiting. Most of us have a routine. Nock spends more time on it than anyone, but there's really not much else for him to do in the middle of the night. Stansy and I use it in the mornings, and Stan has a project he works on in the afternoon. Nissi likes to browse evenings sometimes."

"Yeah, I was going to get on there after we clean up," Nissi said. "You want to use it first?"

I shook my head. "No, that's fine. I was just curious."

I helped Stan, Nissi, and Wendy with the dishes, which we rinsed in the sink and put back in the dumbwaiter for Sasha to wash upstairs. I took a bathroom break, a very awkward experience considering that the only thing between me and the rest of the room was a thick sheet. It once again drove home to me how desperate my circumstances had become.

Stan and Wendy had gone over to join Nock and Stansy at the TV. I did the same, but I quickly grew bored and restless. Reality TV had never interested me much, so before the show was half over, I gathered my luggage and excused myself to my "bedroom". The partitions lined both walls of the back half of the basement, with a space running down the middle as a kind of hallway. The curtain was pulled back for my area, the third of four partitioned areas on the right. Along the wall was a twin, single mattress bed with the top sheet and quilt turned down. A table lamp sat on a nightstand at the head of the bed. At the foot of the bed was a small dresser, and above that, a rope draped from two points on the ceiling with several coat hangers attached. A canvas laundry sack also hung there.

I unpacked everything I had and spread it onto the bed. Two suits, two pairs of jeans, a pair of shorts, some polo shirts, a pair of dress shoes and a week's worth of socks and underwear, besides the jeans and t-shirt I was wearing. I frowned at the designer suits, guessing they would probably never be worn again unless the agency let me take them overseas with me. Still, I packed the suits away carefully in the bottom drawer of the dresser and hung up or folded the rest.

From the sounds outside, it seemed that Pop Star was over and most were heading for bed. I pulled the curtain across for privacy, stripped to my underwear and lay on the bed without bothering to pull up the covers. I reached above my head and snapped the lamp off. Plenty of light still reflected off the ceiling from lights elsewhere in the basement, and my sight quickly adjusted to the reduced light. I closed my eyes, willing sleep to come, but it was a futile exercise. Though I was physically exhausted from travel and the day's events, my mind still raced. I lay there, listening as, one by one, the others headed off to bed. The volume of the TV reduced to a faint murmur.

I was just beginning to drift off when I heard a voice murmuring in the dark. I waited, listening, and it spoke again. "No, not again. Don't make...again." It was coming from the partition next to mine.

"Tilly?" I whispered.

"No, please!" she said more urgently.

"Tilly," I said, louder, and rapped my knuckles on the nightstand. "Wake up. You're having a nightmare."

Her voice cut off suddenly. I could hear her breathing, quick and shallow.

I lay in the dark for a few moments, listening to her calm down. "I wanted to tell you, I'm sorry for upsetting you at dinner."

She inhaled sharply once more and then went quiet. I thought she had heard me. That was something at least. I turned to face the wall and burrowed deeper under the covers. Tilly's breathing slowed and the sound grew more faint. Soon, I too, fell asleep.

Nock woke us with breakfast, already set out on the table. I wasn't terribly excited to see that it was oatmeal, but the fresh fruit that Sasha had given us helped to liven it up considerably. That, and the coffee, which was making my mouth water. I took a sip and was pleasantly surprised by how smooth and rich it was. "This isn't coffee ration, is it?" I said aloud.

"Nope," Stan said, grinning. "We get the good stuff, imported. The agency delivers food for us once a week, and most of that has to be smuggled in from offshore. It's one of the perks of being on the run, I guess. This comes from Indonesia. Miss Gray keeps us well stocked with it."

"What does she do for a living?" I asked.

"Business analyst," Wendy said, "as far as we can tell. She telecommutes most days, but on days where she has to go in to the office, she prepares meals in advance and leaves them in the fridge."

I finished my food quickly and stood up. "Is it okay if I use the terminal?" I asked.

"I've already been on it," Stansy said.

Wendy shrugged. "Go ahead, I'll use it after."

I sat behind the terminal and let out a long breath. Where to start? I connected to Wikipedia and typed "Tilly" into the search box. There were a number of people with a last name of Tilly, several locations in France with that name, and the short form name of the plant Tillandsia. I tried a Markov search and came up with dozens of examples to match the results Wikipedia had given me. I thought of a dozen different ways I could narrow down my search, adding terms like "genemod" or "model", but doing so was risky. The FBI and FCC monitored internet traffic, and the former had subpoenaed search services like AskMarkov and various computing service providers countless times over the last decade to track down genemods when their monitoring turned up suspicious activity. I sighed and leaned back in my chair.

"Anything I can help with?" Stan said, coming over.

"I don't think so," I said, but he pulled the second chair up next to me anyway and looked over my most recent search.

"Hmm, looking for info on our housemate, huh?" he said, quietly enough that I guessed that no one but possibly Nock would hear. "Here, let me show you how to connect to a proxy computing server."

"What will that do?" I asked, moving back to give him room.

"It will allow us to make your session private. We route through the local CSP, but use a secure, encrypted connection from the terminal to the proxy. The terminal has just enough power to decrypt in real time with a moderately long key if you know how to hack the kernel. That way, anyone trying to snoop at the CSP gets a face full of encryption."

"Isn't that illegal?" I asked. The Domestic Information Security and Transparency Act of 2007 had given broad surveillance and police power to the FBI. It had also outlawed the use of encryption by private citizens, leading to the immediate demise of all but very short-ranged wireless data communication.

"Technically, yes, but we get around that because Corporate inter networks need to keep customer data private, so ordinary non-citizens like us can get away with using the same encryption standards that they do. For all the FBI knows, our traffic to the proxy is no different than Sasha logging in to work." He leaned closer. "Don't tell her we're doing this, by the way."

I followed what Stan did. Apparently he had some kind of script stored on the terminal's memory cache already set up to run when needed. "Now you can search for whatever you want."

Stan slid backwards so that I could try again. I tried AskMarkov again with "Tilly genemod", "Tilly genetic model" and "Tilly gene line". The results were far more esoteric, but I still came up with nothing promising.

"You have to realize," Stan said. "The nicknames usually showed up after a model was in production for a while, and some of them weren't invented until after the Ban. It could even be that the agency didn't know what to call her and just picked a name at random."

"Yeah, you might be right," I grudgingly agreed. I gave up after a few more tries and let Wendy use the terminal.

Later that morning, Sasha came down to see us. She asked how I was adjusting to my new home, and I was gracious and told her that everything was fine. "Would you like to go out shopping with me this morning?" she asked. "My mother will be at the doctor's office for a few hours and I took the day off from work."

"I—can I do that?" I stammered.

"Sure," she said, with a faint smile. "I checked with the agency to be sure. You're safe as long as you don't break any laws or say the wrong thing in public. No one is going to be looking for you here."

"Okay," I said. "I'd like that." At the same time, I felt oddly guilty about it, knowing that the others were trapped down here, able to leave only once the agency managed to smuggle them out.

I dressed in the closest thing I had to winter clothes and then followed Sasha upstairs and out to the garage. "I need to pick up food rations and toiletries," she said as we got into her SUV. "Have you ever been to Seattle before?"

"No, never," I said.

She started the car and it's automated systems flashed ready after a moment. The garage door automatically began to rise. "Well, now you have. Your name for the time being is Jeff Kimmler. You attended college at U-dub, but you moved out east for a job after graduation."

I smiled. "Wow. I never knew that about myself."

Sasha's eyebrows went up. "This isn't a joke."

"Sorry," I said, chastened by her tone.

"Now repeat it back to me."

"I'm Jeff Kimmler. I went to the University of Washington and moved back here from the east coast."

"Good," she said. "Car, set destination: North Seattle FEMA Food Bank." The screen on the dash plotted our map to the destination and the car backed smoothly down to the street to merge with traffic.

Sasha let go of the steering wheel and shifted in her seat to face me. "Let me do most of the talking if anyone stops to engage us, but go ahead and answer any direct question posed to you as long as there is a innocent and obvious answer you can give. I'll get a fake ID for you in a day or two."

I tried to absorb everything she told me. I realized that, despite the casual manner in which she had invited me along, that she was taking a risk and placing great trust in me. I was as much a fugitive as the others. The only difference was that I could pass a DNA test where they couldn't.

"Have you told the others yet why you're here?" Sasha asked.

The question took me by surprise. "The agency told you?"

"It's my position as a host," she said. "It's more dangerous for me not to know the risks I'm taking on. So, did you?"

I sighed. "No."

"Good," she said. "I thought about it a lot last night. I think it's better that you keep it to yourself. Those people have enough to worry about."

"I won't tell anyone," I promised. I felt relieved that the choice had been taken from me. We passed the next minute or so in silence. "Miss Gray?"

"Oh, you picked up on that, did you? Wendy started that. You can call me Sasha if you prefer. What's your question, Mr. Kimmler?"

"Do you trust me, Sasha?" I made it a point to try out her first name.

Now it was her turn to sigh. "Honestly, I don't know, but I'm sort of stuck with you. You can tell me your side of things if you think it will help."

I thought about all the ways I could spin it, to make myself look better. But that would be a lie. "I screwed up," I said. "I broke the rules and a lot of good people got hurt."

"I appreciate your honesty. And it will not happen again," Sasha said. Her voice was steel. "You understand?"

"I understand."

We waited for over nearly an hour in line at the food bank. Sasha assured me that it was pretty light for a Saturday. We left with a large bag of rice, two containers of tofu, a somewhat wilted cabbage, four oranges, four cans of tuna, powdered milk and powdered eggs. It was supposed to be enough food for Sasha and her mother for one week. FEMA's food banks provided 1500 calories to every man, woman, and child each day, by executive order and at enormous cost, about $2 trillion annually. If that was a little lean for some people, well, you just learned to cope, or you built a greenhouse like Sasha had done. Of course, that brought with it its own set of challenges to overcome.

We picked up toothpaste, toilet paper, soap and laundry detergent at the market. "You have privileges the others don't, so I expect you to help with the chores," Sasha told me as we headed for the checkout. "I will still wash clothes on the weekend, but I want you to take over for me on Tuesday and Friday. I'll get today though, since you're still settling in."

"That's only fair," I agreed.

"And you can do your own laundry whenever I'm not using the machine. Just remember to check the monitor at the top of the stairs on your way up. I set a warning message to flash on the screen if I have visitors, planned or otherwise."

We climbed back into into the car and it started the moment the doors closed. "Oh, we're running late for lunch," Sasha said. "Car, send an alert to the house, please."

"Can I ask you something?" I said, as the car started away towards home.

"Oh, the old asking permission to ask a question bit," she said, smirking. "That usually means the question is a either rude or personal. Sure, I will bite."

"Why do you do this?"

"You mean, why do I open up my home to fugitives? Risk prison just so that I can cook and do laundry for a bunch of non-citizens?"

"Well...yes."

Sasha shrugged. "You should know as well as I. It is the right thing to do. They're human beings too, no matter what the government says. Am I scared of what will happen if I'm found out? You're damned right I am. But at least I'm doing something to try to make a few lives better, you know?"

I rode in silence for a time, lost in my own thoughts and what Sasha had told me. "I meant what I said earlier, by the way. I won't let you down."

"That's good to know," Sasha said, sounding distracted. "And oddly relevant. Looks like we have a checkpoint."

I realized that we were coming up to a line of cars. I could see military vehicles up ahead, barricading the road.

"What is your name?" Sasha asked.

"Jeff Kimmler," I said without hesitation.

"Good. You left your wallet back at my house. Apologize for that and be polite. Act as if you're meeting your girlfriend's parents for the first time. We'll be fine." Despite her words, her voice had a tense edge. She took control back from the car, probably to give her something to do with her hands.

We rolled slowly forward as the line inched along. As the car in front of us cleared the barricade, a pair of national guard moved in on either side of the vehicle and motioned for us to roll down our windows.

"Sir," the female guard on my side said crisply. "Can I see some identification?"

I pretended to fish in my pockets for a moment, my heart racing. "I'm sorry, ma'am," I said. "I, uh, I guess I left it at home."

"Full name, sir?" she said. I gave her my alias. "Open your mouth, please, sir."

The woman ran a swab quickly along the inside of my mouth and brushed it across a test kit. She watched the kit's face for a moment. "No markers. He's clean," she announced. She made her way along the side of the SUV, peering in the windows. "No passengers," she said.

"This one's clean too," the male guard on Sasha's side said. "Thank you ma'am, sir. You have a nice day."

I waved as the car started forward and the windows rolled up. "God, I hate those," Sasha said. She let the car take control again and leaned back, closing her eyes. "I used to shake for an hour after every time I went through one. You did good."

I smiled wanly and took a deep breath to quell the roiling in my stomach. Fortunately, we didn't have much further to go. I had suddenly grown impatient to get back to the relative safety of the house.

"Do you cook, Norm?" Sasha asked when we were back in the house and putting the meager foodstuffs away.

"Yes, but I'm not very good at it," I admitted. "I usually only make food for myself."

"I'll teach you how to make some large, easy meals," she said. "That way you can cook if I have to be out of the house. The fridge and pantry downstairs are stocked with some basics, but the perishable stuff gets used up steadily and I like to save the non-perishables for emergencies."