The Bar Code Prophecy Part 6

"I went home early. The only one I told was Terri, my replacement," Grace recalled.

"Did anyone else see you there?" Katie asked.

"Lots of people work there," Grace replied.

"Who did you talk to?" Kayla asked.

"The tattoo nurse, and Terri," Grace recalled.

"And Dr. Harriman," Mfumbe said.

"Yes - I already told you about him." Grace turned to Kayla, who hadn't been there for her first debriefing. "He's a very strange man. For some reason he was upset that I'd gotten the bar code tattoo."

Grace could tell from the stunned expressions of everyone around her that she'd said something significant. But what was it?

"You spoke to Jonathan Harriman, the inventor of the bar code tattoo?" Allyson reiterated. "Actually spoke to him? Does he know you?"

"He always remembers my name," Grace said. "But it's not like we've ever had a real conversation. Not until today."

"Can you get in to talk to him tonight?" Kayla asked.

"I have clearance," Grace confirmed, unsure of where this was going. "Although they might have cancelled it."

"I wonder if he's still there," Allyson said. "It's already six."

"I could call Terri," Grace suggested. "The front desk is manned until eight and then it goes to voice mail. I trust her to tell me what's going on."

"Here," Jack said, pulling a phone out of his pocket. "This one's secure."

She punched in the number for the GlobalHelix front desk and waited as the phone rang one, two, three, four, five times. "That's odd," Grace told the others. "We never let the phone ring more than three times."

Grace tried the call again, and this time let it sound seven times, still with no success. "Strange," she remarked, giving up.

"Someone should get out there and see what's going on," Katie suggested.

But Grace wasn't through. There were still things she wanted to know.

"What about the prophecy?" Grace asked. "Can you tell me about that now?"

"After we talk to Jonathan Harriman," Katie replied. "He might have information for us about the prophecy, information about your family. If anyone knows, it's him."

"Hey, Eric," Jack said, turning toward the covered vehicle behind him and gripping the edge of the tarp covering it. "This might be a great chance to take the new swing-lo for a test run."

"This is it ... my baby ... the swing-lo," Jack said as Eric and Grace climbed into the craft. "Of course, Allyson has made a lot of improvements since I showed her the first prototype a while ago. What a piece of junk that was, compared to this one."

"And this one is still not the end product, we hope," Allyson added, joining them. "All these dials and switches have to go. I mean, it's so old-fashioned."

"Hey, I was working with sc.r.a.p metal out in the desert," Jack defended his design. "I was using car parts. Give me a break."

Allyson smiled and pushed him playfully. "Just saying, we can get something a little slicker going here."

"We're going to have to hit our mysterious business backer for more money before that can happen," Jack replied.

Grace kept her gaze on them and wouldn't look at Eric, who sat beside her in the swing-lo's driver's seat. Her emotions about him were wavering between disappointment, anger, and feelings of betrayal; she'd been so sure he was paying attention to her solely because he returned her feelings. The idea that she was only his a.s.signment - that otherwise he wouldn't even have noticed her - was humiliating.

When she looked at him, she felt embarra.s.sed and furious. She couldn't bear to meet his eyes. But she'd been told to ride in the swing-lo with him and meet the others at GlobalHelix. She didn't feel she was in a position to say no. If this is what it would take to get her family and her life back, she couldn't say no.

Grace also held mixed emotions about traveling in the shiny metallic disc in front of her. It had no more than a twelve-foot diameter. At its center was a seat well where two people could sit side by side. In front was a very high-tech computer control panel.

"It works on magnetic repulsion, and it's going to be the next big thing," Jack told Grace. "Eric here is my test pilot."

Jack gave her a quick history of the swing-lo. Although magnetic repulsion had been around for a while - high speed trains in j.a.pan ran on it, as did the Bullit-Buses and Bullit-Trains in America and Europe - he had done something no one else had yet managed to do. He had amplified the force so that his swing-lo could actually fly.

"This idea of personal flying vehicles isn't new," Allyson added. "Guys like the physicist Nikola Tesla were working on it back in the early nineteen hundreds. He even had funding from John Jacob Astor and everything. They predicted it was how people would commute, but they never made it work. Now, over a hundred years later, we think we've got it."

"It's just a tiny bit unreliable," Jack admitted with a quick grimace. "But we're almost there."

"In what way unreliable?" Grace asked nervously.

"You'll be safe," Allyson a.s.sured her. "We're just playing around with the alt.i.tude."

"Put this on and make sure you're belted in," Eric said when they sat side by side in the vehicle. He handed her the same helmet she'd worn on the motorcycle.

Kayla, Mfumbe, and Katie headed back to their own motorcycles, but Allyson and Jack remained, watching as Eric switched on a series of b.u.t.tons and toggles. "This is prototype five," Eric told Grace, speaking in a friendly tone, as though nothing was strained between them. "You should have seen the first one; it looked like a hunk of junk because Jack had only sc.r.a.p metal to work with. Now with the funding, he can buy some decent lightweight materials."

"I should be out looking for my family, not fooling around with some s.p.a.ceship," Grace fretted. She knew there was supposed to be an element of fun in all this. But what right did she have to be on an adventure like this when they were missing?

"We are searching for them," Eric said. "We're going to see what Jonathan Harriman can tell us. He said he would contact you, right? Well, there's no way for him to do that now. So we have to do it for him. You'll get around a lot faster with us than on your own. And if you relied on the Global-1 cops ... believe me, you'd get nowhere."

Eric pushed another b.u.t.ton and the swing-lo elevated abruptly to about five feet off the ground. Jack and Allyson came alongside. "We've made some big innovations, Eric. You can put the roof bubble up now and she goes a lot higher. There's a gauge to the right that will tell your elevation above sea level. If you get the chance, see how high she'll go."

"How high is too high?" Eric asked as he strapped on his helmet.

"We don't know," Allyson admitted. "But the craft will start to shake when you're too high."

"Oh, swell," Eric quipped sarcastically.

"Just bring it back down and the shimmying will stop," Jack a.s.sured him. "But don't keep it shaking too long."

"Why? What will happen?" Eric asked.

"Just don't do it and everything will be fine," Jack insisted.

With a nod to Jack and Allyson, Eric pushed the throttle forward and the swing-lo whirred forward, traveling toward the wide garage door from which they had entered. Grace gripped her seat anxiously. She found it strange to be traveling so close to the ground, and yet not be touching the earth.

The garage door had been opened, and now the craft entered. Immediately the doors shut and the elevator car began traveling upward. When it b.u.mped to a stop, the door on the opposite side opened. Eric turned on headlights that illuminated the area around them. Instead of using the narrow alley the motorcycle had come down on the trip in, Eric steered to the left and came out into a gated children's playground.

"Going up," Eric warned as the swing-lo lifted above the fence and sailed over it. "Jack's big invention is a mechanism that amplifies the magnetic repulsion coming from the earth many times over," he explained. "It's a totally clean fuel, and the thing can really fly."

Grace nodded as she peered over the side. As long as they were talking about the machine, she could bear the sound of his voice. But that was about it. They were flying at about ten feet in the air, still needing to stay to the roadways rather than flying above buildings. "We're heading down again," Eric reported. "If I stay close to the road, people just think this a funky new car, some kind of experimental hybrid. They don't even notice that the thing isn't actually on the ground, especially now that it's dark."

They traveled toward GlobalHelix without talking any further. At one point Grace spied Mfumbe, Kayla, and Katie riding ahead of them. Eric flew up and buzzed them from above before speeding past.

After twenty minutes, they turned the corner toward GlobalHelix. Grace looked at Eric directly for the first time since learning the truth about their relationship.

"What?" he asked.

"I didn't say anything," she pointed out.

"That scowl on your face did, though," Eric countered. "What's wrong? Is my driving making you sick?"

"No," Grace replied. "You lied to me. Why didn't you tell me what was going on?"

"I wanted to, Grace, but I couldn't. I wouldn't have been doing my job if I had. You can understand that, can't you?"

"Yes. You were just doing your job. How could I not understand that?" Grace replied. "Still ... I thought we were friends."

"We are friends," Eric insisted as he slowed the swing-lo in front of the Global-1 headquarters. "I'm going over this gate so I can park the swing-lo inside, then your code will get us in the front door."

"If it works," Grace said.

"Yeah. If it works."

Once more the swing-lo rose and easily sailed over the wall before descending on the lawn outside the headquarters. Low amber lights glowed from the lobby. There was no sign of activity inside. They left the craft stashed behind some forsythia bushes and headed for the front entrance.

Grace ran her new bar code tattoo across the front door scanner.

ACCESS DENIED.

"Maybe it's too soon. I'll try the eye scan."

ACCESS DENIED.

"You've been wiped clean. They're not admitting you anymore. Can you think of another way in?"

"There's a door on the roof that isn't scanner protected, but it's usually locked."

Eric's eyes darted to the swing-lo and back to Grace. "Want to try it?"

"Can it go that high?"

"We'll find out."

Grace gazed up at the huge spiral sculpture on the roof. Looking up was vastly preferable to looking down. She had never been frightened of heights, but as the aircraft rose, it began to shimmy, first just slightly. But the higher they went, the more violent the shaking became.

"Don't worry, Jack has landed on this roof before," Eric said, though his expression was not confident. "And that was with the first swing-lo."

Grace kept her eyes fixed on the twisting sculpture and remembered what she'd learned in biology: the double helix represented a spiral polymer of nucleic acids held together by nucleotides that base-paired together. It was how genetic information was stored and copied. Genetics was what Global-1 was all about. It had started as a company that made hybrid food and grew to one that made animal clones for meat production. Now it was trying to make hybrid people. And it was doing everything in its power to control the population, just as they had cornered the market on the world's food supply. We're just a product to them, like cattle, Grace had seen Ambrose Young quoted as saying in a recent article - the image had stuck with her, even though she'd thought at the time it was overblown. Now she considered it in a different light as the swing-lo rose ever higher.

What's Genetics Got to Do with It?

Article by Allyson Minor Reporting from the California Inst.i.tute of Technology GMO: genetically modified organism. All your fruits and vegetables are genetically modified. As far back as the early 2000s Global-1, acting under the company names of its subsidiaries, was granted patents on its hybridized foods. In the 2010s, it filed for and received patents for its cloned sheep, cattle, and pigs. These were then used not only as meat for consumption but also as living tissue for its organ cloning programs. Maybe you've seen the famous photo of the rat with a human ear growing from its spine. And then Global-1 turned its attention to you.

That's right: you. And all your human friends and family. How would it be if you could fly? Or see in the dark? It might be cool. It might save lives.

The problem is that Global-1 thinks that since it is going to such huge expense to develop these technologies that could improve you - just as they believe they've improved the tomato and the pig - they should also have a patent on you.

Put simply, Global-1 wants to own you.

And it practically does.

It has already branded almost all of us who are seventeen and over with its bar code tattoo. I resisted for a while but gave in so I could enter college. I was suspicious but even I didn't know that my genetic information was being studied and stored within the lines of the Bar Code or that nan.o.bots introduced into my bloodstream during the tattooing process were adding a machine component that could be manipulated by Global-1 at will.

The brave individuals who have been able to resist the bar code tattoo and who have exposed these outrages to the public are not convinced that the danger has been resolved. Despite calls for his resignation, Loudon Waters, the Global-1 p.a.w.n, is still our president. The bar code tattoo continues to be the law of the land.

"We're just a product to them, like cattle," Ambrose Young has told the Senate.

But why would the government listen to resistors? If we are cattle to Global-1, then the government is a herd of sheep.

Decode remains committed to guarding your freedom. Support them in any way you can. When you meet a Postman - the Decode organization that works to keep you communicating off the grid - ask how you can help.

Eric and Grace sped lightly down the dimly lit top floor of the GlobalHelix offices. The roof door had been locked, but luckily it was an old-fashioned lock, and among the few items Eric carried in a backpack was a lock-picking kit.

Once they were inside, they headed down a flight of stairs to an executive suite of offices. It was strange for Grace to think that just this morning, she worked here. She pointed at the line of light emanating from under the door of Dr. Harriman's office. She'd never been inside it, but she knew where it was.

"He's still here," she whispered to Eric.

Or at least she hoped so. It could also be a trap.

There was only one way to find out.

"Dr. Harriman?" Grace inquired as she opened the door.

Dr. Harriman looked up sharply from the laptop on his desk.

He did not look happy to see her.

"Grace! What are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to you. You're the inventor of the bar code tattoo. Do you know why there is a priority file on me?"

"Well, you're certainly a direct young woman."

"I have to be. My family is missing. I'm trying to find them and I can't afford to wait."

It was as if Grace could see his scientific mind weighing the options. "Maybe I do know something about it," he hedged. "Who is your friend?"

Eric stepped forward. "My name is Eric Chaca."