Three Days in April by Edward Ashton

Author:Edward Ashton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

11. TERRY

Elise is gone.

She’s not dead. If she were, I’d be able to contact her phone, and an avatar would say “Sorry, Elise can’t speak with you at the moment. She’s dead.” She has a cloud avatar, of course, but it has no more idea of where she is than I do.

The only thing I can think of that would cause every trace of her to drop off the networks would be if she, her phone, her house, and all her other networked gear were completely vaporized.

Which she told me very clearly two days ago is not, in fact, what happened.

Tariq said yesterday morning that they were going somewhere safe. It didn’t occur to me to ask whether “safe” actually meant “on the surface of Mars.”

“House,” I say. “How many locations within sixty miles of Baltimore are completely inaccessible to any public networks?”

House has to think about that for a minute. She pops up on my kitchen wallscreen with one finger pressed to her lips. Her silver forehead wrinkles in concentration.

“Two known locations,” she says finally. “One suspected.”

“Where are they?”

“Known locations are the interiors of containment units one and two at the Chesapeake Fusion Facility. Suspected location is within the NatSec facility in Chantilly, Virginia.”

“Seriously?” I ask. “That’s the best you can do?”

She shrugs.

“You asked for locations that are completely inaccessible. There aren’t too many of those around these days.”

Okay. Elise is probably not in either of the known locations, and I somehow doubt that Tariq would have taken her to the suspected one. So where does that leave me?

“Fine,” I say. “Get me a connection to Dimitri. Vid to the wallscreen.”

She disappears while she pings Dimitri’s system, then pops back up long enough to say, “Sorry. No luck. Here’s one of his avatars, though.”

It’s the bear.

“Terry,” it says. “So good to hear from you. Dimitri would very much like to speak with you, but he is sleeping at the moment. Can I help you?”

I glance at my chronometer. It reads 10:45:15.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “When do you expect Dimitri to wake up?”

It shrugs apologetically.

“I do not know. Dimitri has not slept well for the past three days. I have no interest in waking him any sooner than I must.”

“Can you have him contact me when he wakes?”

“I will. Good-­bye, Terry.”

“Disconnect.”

I walk into the living room, and drop onto the couch. I have some design work that I could be doing—­that I should be doing, honestly. My client is expecting a first pass for review at the end of the week. There’s no possible way I’m going to be able to concentrate on color palettes and furniture layouts and placement of objets d’art right now, though. There’s not much point in worrying whether or not you’ve got the Renoir placed in ideal lighting when the world is swirling the drain.

“House,” I say. “Vids. News. Local. Centrist.”

The wallscreen cuts to two men on low couches facing each other across a coffee table. The overlay identifies the clip as an interview with NatSec Acting Director Dey, livecast today at 09:00.

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