The Smuggler

Danny checked out the street; it looked clear.   Hopefully no one was paying attention down at Pol Central.  Thank god for Eckel’s Virus, the Eckels Virus had wiped out the pols facial algorithm. It was the only crippling of the Signal that had ever happened in years.  Without that Virus Danny’s butt would probably be in prison.  Along with a lot of other people’s butts, Danny only really cared about his own.  Whoever Eckels was he would buy them a beer.

Danny walked out of the doorway doing his best inconspicuous.  Confident was unobtrusive, confident people attracted less attention.  He felt the package shift ever so slightly, he winced thinking about the end delivery.  He stopped asking why a long time ago.  But this trip threatened that self-imposed rule.  The load was the largest he had ever carried. He even got a special rate for the extra size.  Payday was going to be big.  Heck the half advanced to him by Sid was the largest payout ever.  But the load was big, it covered almost his entire back luckily t was also flexible.

Stepping off the curb along with the crowd.  Danny always felt safe in a crowd, he also got a bit of thrill when he had a load, if all these straightlaced uptight bots knew what he was carrying, half of them would faint dead away and only one in a hundred  would even consider calling the pols.  But calling the pols was always bad for everyone including the people who called, they got charged for simply calling unless it was a mandated report, and even then, sometimes you got a charge against your account.  The Signal showed no mercy when it came to charging people for services rendered.

The Paper

The temperature was rising in the warehouse with the third fan now out of commission.  There was no doubt, after this bundle he was going to have to raise the price on the paper, there was simply no way around it.  He had a lead on a replacement motor but just to get it here was going to cost him all his savings.  Luckily the motor would be from a salvage job from a warehouse down the coast that had given up.

Every degree closer to 451 was another chance of him losing it all.  And no one was making any more of this stuff.  The ban on paper had been the second punch that had destroyed Atlanta worse than Sherman, the first being the outlawing of Coca-Cola.  Now the only thing the city had going for it was Equifax which was part of the Signal now.

Jim’s curiosity about the forecast was driving him crazy. What was the high temperatures for the next week? But his self-imposed rule about no Signal use in the warehouse was one he fully enforced.  Not that it would matter if the pols found this place, its very existence would be enough to send him away forever.  His Signal use at the warehouse would be the least of his worries.  But by never using the Signal here was a good way of avoiding detection.

Now where was that collection of big paper.  He turned a corner, here it was. He looked it over, it had not been opened since it was sealed, not much call for it.  He looked over the label that he had placed here, he lifted up his glasses to read the small print a bit better, twenty-seven years ago he had sealed this one up.

He never considered that when he sealed and tagged these pallets all those years ago, he would be wearing bifocals when he opened them again.  Heck he was hoping at the time that this ban on paper s would be over in a year.  Two years into the paper ban he predicted it would be over in five and he would have a goldmine ready to go.  Ten years after the ban he was so deep into the black-market half his income had to be hidden.  He sighed, he never believed he would be a criminal for simply selling paper, what had the world become.

Now most of the small stuff was gone.  Small was easy to use, small was safer to use. First the white was gone, then the off white.  Now he was down to yellows, pinks, greens and a lot of blue.   He finished cutting the plastic wrap of the pallet.   Ooh he saw the markings, white, white, white, white.  All the packages were white paper, granted it was the large size A3, but if he could find a paper cutter, he could cut it up into smaller sizes.

He shook his head. Time enough for those thoughts later.  Now where was the 65-pound weight that the buyer wanted.  Why did Sid want such large sheets?

Smuggler

Danny covered the fifteen blocks in good time, and more importantly in some good crowds.  Sure, there was that one diversion avoiding a pols check point, disguised as “helping station” but he had just followed the crowd one block east and two blocks north and easily bypassed the offered “assistance”.   The pols were trying to rebuild their facial recognition database but for some reason most people were avoiding it.  Danny’s grandfather told stories of how he and his buddies had broken traffic cameras for fun.   Danny had been paid early on to go out at night and destroy cameras, but then the pols had started putting cams up watching the lower cams.  One night the pols did a sweep and a lot of his friends got arrested when they got home that night.  Danny had been tipped off by one of his friend’s mother and he had slept on the street that night.  The next morning, he had and walked into the Marine recruiting office, there being a war on he got sent away post haste before the pols firgured out who he was.  The Marines were good for him, and that is where he met Sid, and now he worked for Sid.

Printer

Sid was crazy.   That’s all there was to it, Sid was fruit loopy.  Four colors.  Four damn colors.  No one here had printed four colors in, he had to think, well it had to be before the ban.  But his dad had kept the press in running order.  His Dad had gotten a historical exemption, the printing press was deemed an educational artifact, he had even gotten money from the state and the federal government to keep it running, showing bored school kids and the occasional hyper interested academic the historical artifact.  In the beginning there had been inspections by the pols, checking their paper supply, their inventory or ink and such, but that had slowly tapered off and gotten less intrusive until it had not happened now in ten or eleven months.  The last time a pol inspector came by he simply walked through the plant looking bored out oh his mind.

Dad had passed last year soon after the inspection.  Too bad he would have been ecstatic to do a four-color job.

But the skills his father had passed on did not match the experience his father had.  His father had the feel for the press, it’s hums, it’s hisses, and it’s hiccups.  His father had done five, six color printings on a regular basis when he was a young man, hitting the registration marks with loving care and precision.  Sid had lined up the plates himself, and this was the third run through, the first two had been so far off it was not even funny.  He walked the thirty-foot length of press and pulled the sheet off the final hopper.  His eyes immediately went to the registration marks, almost dead on, then he held out the paper and looked at the sheet.  It looked dead on.  Maybe not perfect but it looked like the original locked up in the safe upstairs.

Now to do the run on the first sheet, then do it again thirty more times and then he would have to look in some of the old books to remember how to do the binding and the covers.  Luckily those old books were considered historical artifacts and the inspectors never had an interest in them.  But the knowledge was still there, at his fingertips with no controls or oversight from The Signal.

He looked again at page one again; pretty impressive if he did say so himself.

Smuggler

A classic car dealership?  No one could even operate these anymore, why would anyone want one? Burning fossil fuels? Danny looked around at the street numbers, yes this was the place.  He walked through the big glass doors into the old showroom.  The load taped to his back was causing him to sweat something awful.  Now where was the guy with the pink shirt?   Why did Sid always tell the receiver to wear a pink shirt?

Editor

Chuck leaned back in his chair pulling up the magnification lenses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Damn those things were heavy.

The sheet was perfect as far as he could tell.  Doing a square-by-square comparison was the only way to be sure.  Now he was sure the print matched up exactly with the rare, highly illegal orginal.

Time to tell the printer who was waiting patiently outside the door.  The printer was proud as a peacock when he had brought the first “good” run to him.  The printer was still waiting outside for his go ahead to do the entire run.

Sid would be happy to hear that the first page was done correctly.  Sid had stressed it to him time and time again how important it was for the colors to be right.  Working with paper, doing this paper-to-paper comparison was so strange, he had been working with screens for so long, but working with paper brought him back to his childhood riding in the car with his mom, planning where to turn, where to stop on their way cross country.  Even in imagery school they had hardly used paper, mostly due to the initial environmental laws, but some of the older teachers still insisted they conduct training exercises with the seemingly ancient paper products the school still had.  Something about power failures and Signal loss they had preached over and over again.

The younger instructions had passed it off as paranoia and age induced fear.  The Signal never failed, the Signal was always there, the Signal was above and below and all encompassing.   There was not a spot on the globe the Signal did not reach, Chuck had seen the reports, heck he had helped map the Signal around the globe, complying the reports from the field with the imagery he saw.

Faced towards the door. “Its good.  Print them.”  Chuck heard a muted yell.  Sure, the guy was happy now, but if the Pols ever got a hold of a copy of this he wondered if he the printer would be so happy.  Chuck saw guys like this before, Techs.  They loved the machinery, they did not care what the machines made, they did not think about the bigger picture, they just loved that the machine was doing what it was made for with all its complexity and intricacies.  The printing press downstairs was a marvel of a bygone engineering and applied knowledge.  But it’s final product, now that was something else entirely, it represented something dangerous and world altering.

Smuggler

Danny laid on the table, this one was wood.  He thought about it, how many times was the table wood.  Wood composite was normal, plastic was very common, he had even laid on a few metal tables.  Metal was always cool, and no one ever thought about his comfort, no blanket on top of those metal tables, just his bare skin next to cold impersonal metal.

But this wood table, while not warm, the tabletop was not cold.  He looked down at the real wood grain again, fascinating.

He felt more of the solvent being applied to his skin dripping down from the tape holding the load in place.  He looked at the grain again.  Which was all he could see the bright lights were blinding him from seeing the fellows with the solvent.  He never carried a watch on these jobs, just more metal to be tracked.  He knew the solvent was only supposed to take a few minutes, and it seemed like it had been three already.  The rip off was coming soon.  He told the people removing it to surprise him, he did not want to know when the pain was coming.  Especially this time, since the load was so big some of the skin that it was tapped to had never been taped before, virgin skin.  Newby pain receptors experiencing the burning sensation again.  He was glad they gave him a towel to hold, his back was incredibly sweaty after carrying this load.  He knew there were more similar loads as this one coming up, Sid had said at least three more in this city.

Why were these things so big though?  It was just printed material, what kind of crazy things was Sid running.  Weird picture books?

Reader

Sid’s map was spot on.  There was the turn up ahead. Everything was spot on.   Sid had put this all together perfectly.  Nothing like these maps had existed in twenty years.

Sid

“And so, nothing has changed about the security posture at Facility Seventy-Three.  The Signal reports no interest in that location.  No downloads, no views, no searches of areas around Facility Seventy-Three  in five quarters.   And as we all know the first step in threatening anything is prior knowledge, information or intelligence is the key.”

Sid gave her calculated half smile and noted the nods around the room.

“With that certainty that no one has any knowledge of the area, I would suggest we reduce  our manpower at the facility and disperse it to Facilities Fifty-Five, Sixty-Two and Twenty-Four which are in greater traffic areas.”

One of the generals knocked his West Point ring on the table.  Getting everyone’s attention. “That would mean reducing the patrols.  Decreasing the manning of the towers.”   The statements just had a bit of questioning tone to them.

“Yes, sir it would.”  Sid answered promptly.  The man was her commanding officer and was playing his role.

“And this facility is on your list of high significance.”

“Yes, sir it is.”  Sid answered again just as promptly with no emotion.

“And you are okay with this?” The West Point General asked.

“It is just a suggestion, weighing our manning issues, with threat levels that have been raised at other facilities and the continuing and decreased threat to Facility Seventy-Three and four other.”  Sid paused and spoke while looking around the room. “While the Signal is easily monitored, tracked and checked we cannot simply copy and create security operators.”  Sid stated flatly.  “The final decision of course will be made by this commission.”

The Chairperson looked around the room.  “All in favor of decreasing personnel at the recommended facilities and moving those resources to other locations, please press the yes button on your screen.”  The Chairperson noted the votes.  “The new staffing recommendations will be implemented on all facilities immediately.”

The meeting concluded a few minutes later and Sid secured her pad as she made her way to the door.  Her West Point trained Commanding Officer motioned to her and she waited patiently while he finished a conversation with another commission member. “You managed yourself well.  A good showing on your first of what I am sure will be many more presentations.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I understand you are going on leave tomorrow, going anywhere fun?”

“No sir, just a small cabin in the Appalachians for some rest, reading and relaxation.”

“Well, you deserve it, no need to check your messages every day, every other day will be just fine.”

“What did your generation call it sir, ‘unplugging’? Sid asked innocently.

The general laughed with a chuckle in his voice. “We used to.  My father tells me of a time he went a whole week without talking to anyone on the phone.”  He chuckled again.  “Now no one can unplug anymore; the Signal is everywhere we have seen to that.”

“Yes sir.” Sid nodded and as she walked away.  “And the Titanic was unsinkable.”

Categories: Fantasy & Political, Outrageous Lies and Tales, Short Stories

Tags: dystopian short story, illegal, paper, plat, short story, smuggler