Hana reported the replicant incident to Stanislav, and he emailed Logan. Without mentioning details, he said he had an important issue to discuss, too sensitive for the Intelliphone. In his reply, Logan said he would visit the plant to meet with him. He talked to Jody before departing. “How is your infiltration of the New Cali NMS progressing?”
“I’ve successfully taken control of administrator authentication procedures in the various sectors. I left the current username and password data intact so the operators can continue to access the system.”
“But you can lock them out now if desired?”
“Correct.”
“How long would it take?”
“I could lock down the entire system almost instantly. Terminate current sessions and install invincible login criteria within seconds. In a couple of clicks, I can effectively shut down the city government.
“If the New Cali authorities took action to override your influence, how long would it take for them to regain control of the hardware?”
“Weeks to months. They’d need to sanitize the entire system. Manually wipe all hard drives and delete the quantum memory stored in the holographic quartz vaults and DNA banks. Then they’d need to reprogram everything, and much of the stored data, such as surveillance files, would be lost forever and need to be regathered.
“They don’t have auto back-up for the various programs?”
“Yes, they do have back-up software, but it’s all within the NMS and thus under my control. I can easily stop the system from enabling it by simply blocking and then trashing the software itself. There’s a discernable degree of negligence apparent in the administration of the NMS. The New Cali elite are relying on outdated security protocols in a fully automated system. And they’d need to import expert help to find their way out.
“Would it be possible for the imported cyber experts to take control of you, the Jody AI.”
“First, they’d need to locate my home base here at the power plant, a tough job with them locked out of the NMS. And it wouldn’t do them much good, even if they could, because I would lock them out here too…Nothing to worry about there, Logan.
He fed Magic and Juno before departing in the wind lifter. Flying over the farms, he took note of the progress the former grubs were making. A few of them were still hard at work in the afternoon sun, and it looked as if they were ready to start planting crops in a few sections of the freshly graded soil.
Logan checked Lyric’s place as he passed. She’d completed the preliminary work on her gardens and was now waiting for the seeds to sprout vegetables and flowers.
He landed his flying machine on the small airstrip at the hydrogen plant. He saw Hana walking out to escort him as he shut down the electrodes. She wasn’t much for small talk when she was on duty and said little beyond her initial greeting.
Hana walked with him to the administration building and accompanied him on the elevator. When they reached the penthouse level, he passed through the sliding entry panel, and she departed.
Latsko led him into the luxurious sunken living room, and both took seats. “I’m looking forward to seeing Lyric again. Her knowledge of the classics is rather impressive.”
“She knows her stuff when it comes to music. No doubt about it.”
“It’s rare to meet someone with such a thorough education and appreciation for the fine arts.” He waited until Franz had brought the brandy to bring up the replicant. “We had a security incident earlier, but I must say my assistant, Ms. Yamaguchi, handled it quite adeptly.
“What in the world happened, Stanislav?”
“A replicant showed up at the refueling gate on a motorcycle and the automated system alerted Hana. When she interviewed the robot, it began asking intrusive questions, and she immediately disabled it with her pulse baton.”
“Intrusive questions about what?”
“Where we’re acquiring the water necessary for the electrolysis process. And it already had accurate information regarding our source of electricity and mentioned you by name.”
Logan was stunned by the revelation.
Latsko paused to take a sip of brandy and continued: “Hana used a neural bridge device to extract information from its processor array. The replicant was owned by an organized crime figure named Eddie Chao but was sent here by a police investigator named Nic Brooner. The robot’s black-market source most likely indicates an unauthorized investigation. What that means is up for speculation.”
“What did she do with it?”
“She confiscated its laser pistol and Intelliphone, then scrubbed its memory and sent it back to Chao.”
Logan laughed. “Good work.”
“Yes, Hana was on her toes. Lucky, she intercepted it, because its next stop was the Desert Hills water treatment plant. Brooner had programmed it to snoop around there and look for signs of activity.”
“Wow,” said Logan. “Jody discovered a police investigator checking the flow reports recently.”
“Brooner?”
“No, a Japanese name. Fujikawa, I think, from the cyber-crimes unit. Logged in, reviewed Jody’s falsified reports, and then logged back out. I didn’t tell you sooner because I was waiting for Jody to complete defensive action.”
“Defensive action of what nature?”
“Jody has infiltrated the New Cali NMS and changed administrative login procedures in all sectors. If the situation demands it, Jody can now lockout all human operators and take control of the city government.”
Latsko was staggered and paused for a few moments to take it in. His eyes shifted to the view of the abandoned hotel district and then back to Logan: “That would certainly slow them down…But for how long?”
“According to Jody, it would take weeks to months to wipe the hardware and reprogram everything.”
“Enough time to give us a running start in devising a new strategy, but they surely won’t surrender.”
“Yeah, I’ll agree with you there, Stanislav. Jody thinks it might be possible to negotiate a water use agreement, but something tells me they’d never go for it.”
“Unlikely. Jody has what we might term AI innocence, a naive understanding of human nature and our innate greed and wrath.”
“We’ll need to see what happens next and play it by ear, I suppose.” There wasn’t much else to say. Logan didn’t mention the possibility of Waverly’s involvement in tipping off the police. It was speculation on Jody’s part, and he had no desire to renew the second guessing of the grub liberation scheme. If Myles had made a mistake, there would be no undoing it now. C’est la vie was the final verdict on that one, and he moved on to discussing unrelated subjects before he departed.
□□□
Cribley was looking forward to going back to Los Ríos Gemelos. He’d lost his bad attitude when the Mexicans broke out the food and cerveza, and they’d promised a bigger and better fiesta on the second trip. More fun than hanging out in the guest suite at the Eden Stacks. Eating those lame vegetable sandwiches that Myles made and wondering if someone was watching him on the hidden camera that Lyric had found.
Cribley was bored by the routine around the farms. Harmony kept trying to get him to go out in the fields and work, but like he told her more than once, weeding the potato patch was just not his thing. No way, José. And was it Harmony that told everyone he was gay? Because he was hanging out with Philo?
Fun with the boys may have been part of his thing, but he didn’t consider himself gay. Bisexual yeah, he’d admit to that, but not Adam in his pink hot pants gay. You’d never catch Chance Cribley on the bottom, that much was certain, and it wasn’t that he didn’t like women. He was naturally attracted to females, but the problem was getting them to put out…or even talk to him in the first place. To score hot girls, you needed money, and most of the time Cribley was living off the back of his bike. Not quite in the ditch but sometimes unhoused. Needing a shower and his wallet kinda light. It was much easier with Philo. A bowl of weed was all it took. Philo had charged serious money as a professional prostitute in New Cali, so when he put out for free, it boosted Cribley’s ego. Made him feel like a real stud.
When Cribley ignored Lyric, it wasn’t because he didn’t like her. She certainly was a looker and had that charismatic personality too. What bothered him about the situation was how much Logan and Zyler slobbered over her. He’d taken the new bike as an insult too, though Zyler told him later he was stupid to get sensitive about it. Logan just wanted her to have every advantage because of the danger involved in the job. The girl knew how to ride, too. She wasn’t afraid to open it up, but they’d yet to see how she’d react to meeting a crew of bad hombres on the road.
All in all, his current lifestyle beat hanging out in New Cali dealing drugs. The Tommy Cop surveillance was getting worse all the time, and he’d barely made it out without going to jail. He was on his way to a sale, carrying serious weight. Synthetic purple flake. Pure cocaine made in a lab, and his sixth sense told him things were about to get hinky. He’d noticed more than one Tommy Cop staring him down on the way in, like he was riding into a trap, because the robots were too dumb to hide it, that he was on their radar and about to go down. Lucky he was quick on his feet, and he’d just snorted a couple of king-size rails. He outran the robot heat, hopped on his bike, and left the scene clean. Rode all the way to Vegas and found Cousin Zyler.
So now they were taking another delivery of water to Los Ríos Gemelos. Cribley in his usual position, riding a couple of miles ahead to scout things out before the convoy arrived. They were on the west side of the pipeline, following the route of the defunct Colorado. The dry riverbed was to his left and a series of steep mesas to his right. Close enough that he needed to dodge an occasional landslide. Not big ones, just a few chunks of sandstone that had tumbled down the faces of the mesas. The natural forces of erosion never let up in the desert.
He came upon a straight away, and as he opened the throttle, he felt something hit him in the chest. Like he’d just collided with a bowling ball, and simultaneously, he saw a flash in his peripheral vision and heard the loud boom of a powder burner. A sniper on one of the mesas had tried to kill him, but luckily, he was wearing body armor, and it had stopped the slug.
It him hard though. The velocity of the slug combined with his forward momentum had almost bounced him off the motorcycle. It knocked the wind out of him and he hit the brakes. Thinking fast, he looked for cover and found it. A gigantic boulder on the side of the road. He pulled behind it and stopped the bike. “Logan,” he said before taking off his helmet. “I’m hit.”
Logan had the audio connection open to the mic embedded in Cribley’s helmet. “Hit by what?”
“Someone shot me with a rifle from up on one of the mesas.” He heard more gunfire along with the sounds of slugs ricocheting off nearby rocks. “They’re still shooting. Could be more than one. I took cover behind a boulder.”
“Are you hurt?”
“It hit me in my chest. The body armor stopped it, but it hit me hard. Hurts like hell.”
“Hold on and we’ll be there in a flash.”
Lyric was close to the cruiser and heard the audio feed. She opened the throttle on her bike and raced ahead of the convoy towards Cribley’s location. She activated her hyperspectral imaging cameras, and the program brought up Cribley behind the boulder. She could see his image as a holograph on the right side of her forward view. She raced towards him, and as she was closing in, her phototonic radar issued an audio alert. It had detected the snipers on the mesa and they were still shooting. As she arrived at Cribley’s location, she activated both of her coil guns and bombarded the snipers’ position with fast moving tungsten flechettes.
She pulled in behind the boulder and found Cribley laying on the ground with his body armor suit open and an ugly black and blue welt on his chest, dead center over his heart. She stopped her bike, swiftly climbed off and squatted down in the dirt beside him. She flipped the visor up on her helmet. “Chance, are you okay?”
“Yeah, it knocked the wind out of me, but luckily the armor stopped it…Really stings where it hit.”
“I have a first-aid kit in my pannier. Relax, and I’ll put something on it.”
The shooting stopped momentarily. Lyric’s flechette attack had succeeded in taking out the first two shooters, but reinforcements arrived quickly and the shooting resumed. Lyric and Cribley could hear the slugs ricocheting off nearby rocks, but the boulder gave them cover.
Meanwhile, Logan and Myles were racing towards them in the echo-pulse cruiser. Cribley had pulled off his helmet, but they could still communicate with Lyric. “We’re on our way. Myles is programming the drone.”
The trunk lid popped open, and the attack drone took off, soaring towards the snipers’ location on the mesa. When it arrived, the miniature aircraft bombed the snipers’ position with swarms of self-replicating nanobots. The sub-microscopic bots executed their mission in a flash, invading and devouring the shooters’ bodies. Before long, there was nothing left beyond traces of ash drifting away on the breeze.
The drone was equipped with cameras and before it returned to the cruiser, it sent images of a group of riders on horseback, swiftly evacuating the scene, at least fifteen or twenty of them, disappearing into the badlands to the west. Logan and Myles could see the live video on the dashboard display.
“Should I program the drone to follow them?” said Myles.
“Nah, let them go,” said Logan. “We may need the remaining nanobot cartridges.”
The cruiser arrived at the boulder. They found Lyric working on Cribley with her first-aid kit. She dabbed antiseptic on the ugly hematoma and then covered it with a large-size bandage while Cribley rolled his eyes, embarrassed by the attention.
“You going to make it?” said Myles as he climbed out of the passenger side, relieved to see Cribley wasn’t seriously injured.
“Yeah, I’ll be okay.”
“We can turn back if you’re not up to the trip now,” said Logan as he walked around the front of the coupe.
“No, I’m good. Just give me a couple of minutes to rest and I’ll be fine.”
“Who was that shooting at us?” said Lyric. “Dust bikers?”
“I don’t think so,” said Logan. “The drone sent back video and there was a pack of them on horseback. Never seen a dust biker on a horse yet.”
“Gone now?”
“Yeah, they took off into the desert. But the drone nailed the shooters with bot swarms.”
“Dead?”
“Yeah.”
“How many?”
“Three, and I could see the first two you hit with the flechettes.”
“Dead too?”
“Yup.”
She was overwhelmed with remorse and acquired a pained expression. “I’ve never killed anyone before.”
“It was the computer on your bike that killed them, Lyric,” said Logan. “And they could have easily killed you if it hadn’t been activated.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t feel bad, I would have done the same thing.”
The convoy of tankers caught up, and they took an extended break. Myles grabbed cold drinks and snacks out of the cab of the lead truck. Half an hour passed and Cribley said he was feeling better. Before long, they were back on the road.
□□□
Aurelio Zaragoza sat by the town hall entry waiting patiently for the convoy’s arrival. Logan had messaged him that they were inbound. He felt lucky that the yanqui had responded to his ad. The survival of Los Ríos Gemelos hinged on the existence of a dependable water supply and they hadn’t found much in the Salt River Canyon.
The water in Phoenix had gone completely dry over a decade before. That, and the apocalyptic dust storms and darkness of nuclear winter had led to the wholesale abandonment of the once prosperous urban area. Life on Earth must have H2O to survive and without it, everything eventually dies. Even the toughest desert plants must have a drink sooner or later.
They’d drilled numerous boreholes along the dry riverbed on the first expedition, but all had come up dry. Comisario Cortes had the financial backing to establish a military foothold in El Norte, and a reliable water source was the missing ingredient essential for a successful settlement. They could import food and other necessary supplies, but hauling fresh water 2,000 miles from Jalisco was an absurd proposition.
The Mexicans continued their exploration. They travelled upstream until finally, a handful of the boreholes produced water adjacent to the confluence of the Verde and the Salt. The flow was weak, and they didn’t know how long it would hold out, but Cortes said it was enough to make a stand. He was convinced that the weather conditions would eventually change. That the decades long drought would end, and the winter snows and summer monsoon rains would return to the mountains. He’d studied past climate cycles and found evidence of extended droughts that had passed. He thought they should prepare for the possibility of flash floods in the canyons and build the settlement accordingly because sooner or later La Tierra Madre would bring bountiful moisture once again.
“If we tough it out, we’ll be well-positioned to claim the entire desert valley for Mexico,” he’d said to Zaragoza. A big dream, but Cortes had confidence and optimism, and Aurelio believed in his cause.
There were plenty of building materials free for the taking in the abandoned city. Especially in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley where they found houses and commercial buildings constructed from luxury class materials including expensive hardwood and imported marble.
Los Ríos Gemelos rose from the desert dust. The Mexicans built the settlement in less than two years. Water rationing made life difficult. Bathing was not easy when you were only allotted a gallon per session, but Cortes said that austerity builds character, and he treated his soldiers with respect. The pay was better than regular army, and he prided himself on feeding them well. Only the best quality food, imported from Mexico.
The source of his financing was kept confidential, even from Zaragoza. All that Cortes would say was the money came from an association of wealthy Mexicans who saw opportunity in the collapse of the United States. And their ultimate mission, the reconquest of Alta California was something for a true Mexicano to be proud of.
Zaragoza saw the convoy making its way down the dusty main street, and he walked out to meet the yanquis. Logan stopped the cruiser in front of the town hall and Zaragoza greeted him with an outstretched hand when he climbed out. “Welcome back to Los Ríos Gemelos. How was your journey?”
“We ran into some trouble.” said Logan as he shook his hand.
“What happened?”
Myles and Lyric joined him. “Chance was out ahead of the convoy and he was ambushed by snipers.”
Cribley was slow to leave his motorcycle and finally climbed off unsteadily.
“Are you hurt, my friend?” said Zaragoza. “We have a doctor.”
“Nah, I’m okay,” said Cribley dismissively.
“The body armor stopped the slug, but it hit him hard. Left an ugly welt on his chest.”
“I’ll have Ximena take him to the guest quarters,” said Zaragoza to Logan, and then to Cribley: “You should rest. I know you like the cerveza, I’ll ask Ximena to bring you a few cold bottles of Dos Equis.”
“That’s exactly the medicine I need,” responded Cribley smiling now. “Thanks Aurelio.”
Zaragoza messaged Ximena on his Intelliphone, then said: “What happened to the snipers?”
“We had them out gunned. Took care of them with flechettes and nanobots.”
“You have advanced weaponry.”
“Yup, and I’m buying more now too,” said Myles. “After that one, I’m putting a drone loaded with nanobot swarm cartridges on the roof of every truck.”
“Not sure who they were,” said Logan. “They were above the roadway on a mesa. The drone camera caught about twenty of them riding away on horseback.”
“On horses, eh?”
“Yeah, that part of it was unexpected. We’re accustomed to seeing dust bikers, but this crew was different.”
“Our supply trucks have had encounters with bandits in the Sonora outback. Like you described, on horseback. Mostly Mexicans, but some may be Chiricahua Apache. We’ve always managed to fight them off, though.”
“What type of weapons do you use?” said Myles.
“Mixed. Plenty of traditional rifles and pistols, but we also have directed laser weapons and particle beam cannons mounted on jeeps.”
“On jeeps?” said Myles. “Wicked! Harmony and I have a particle beam cannon on the roof of our house at the farm. Did a number on three dust bikers not too long ago.”
“Yes, they’re very effective.”
“I can get you nanobot swarm ejectors if you’re interested,” said Logan.
“Possibly,” said Zaragoza. “I’ll discuss it with Comisario Cortes later.” He held out his hand indicating they should walk with him inside. “He’s looking forward to seeing you again.”
Ximena took Cribley to the guest quarters while Logan, Myles and Lyric walked inside the town hall building with Zaragoza. They met with Cortes in his office. He said he had something to show them and led them into a spacious study that adjoined his office. A large, detailed map of the Southwest was pinned up on one of the walls, and the route of the Colorado River Pipeline was highlighted with a red marker. From its origin on the western slopes of the Rockies all the way to New Cali.
He stood before the map and pointed out the branch line that had once brought water to Phoenix. It was highlighted in red too, along with the much shorter Vegas branch line south of the Big Abandonado.
“When the City of Los Angeles demolished the dams and built the pipeline, they said it would be used to properly manage the water. That it would stop evaporation as well as theft and they used the extreme drought to justify their actions. They made a formal agreement with Phoenix and Las Vegas that allotted specific flows to each city and said that L.A. would take the rest. But when the national economy collapsed, the Angelenos’ memory proved quite short.”
“Yeah, we lived through it Leandro,” said Myles. “They cut us off with no warning.”
“And that was the last straw. When the vast majority of the people, beyond the hardy survivors such as yourselves, fled both Las Vegas and Phoenix.
Cortes pointed out the spot where the Phoenix branch line joined the main line. “The infrastructure is still in place. We’ve scouted the junction and the apparatus is still there. They simply shut off the valve that allows water to flow this way. The reason why I bring this up with you, my friends, is because it occurs to me that it’s possible the valve could be opened once again. Surreptitiously, with what you call a cyber hack, and in a way that might not be detected by the New Cali system.”
Myles half-covered his face with his hand and suppressed laughter. Logan remained poker-faced.
Cortes noticed Myles’s reaction and nodded with a sly grin. “Uh huh. I’m on to something, aren’t I? And maybe someone with the proper amount of cyber expertise might be able to do the same thing here.” He pointed at the Vegas branch line and looked to Logan with a questioning expression and the same sly grin on his face.
“Yeah, I suppose it’s within reason,” said Logan. Then he quickly changed the subject.
After completing the transaction, Logan, Lyric and Myles walked to the guest quarters to settle in. They found Cribley stretched out under the swamp cooler vent. He was halfway through his third beer.
“How are you feeling, Chance?” said Logan.
“Much better.” He showed them the lead slug he’d dug out of his body armor. “I’ll keep this for good luck. That suit saved my life.”
Lyric scanned the inside of the building with her Bug Sensor app. “No surveillance detected,” she said as she returned to the living room and took a seat next to Logan.
“Sounds like Cortes figured out our water source,” said Myles.
“I think we can trust him,” said Logan. “I’m more concerned with that New Cali investigator.”
Cortes had ordered his cooks to roast a whole pig for the second fiesta. Logan and his crew ate their fill, and they became better acquainted with their new friends. They left Los Ríos Gemelos the next morning, and the return trip proved trouble-free.
To be continued…