The author wishes to express thanks to anyone who may read his story and encourages them to leave reviews, comments or even flame it hard. As with any who try their hand at publicly expressing an idea or story concept, all feedback is important and welcome.
Disclaimer: I do not own SeaQuest, Star Wars, nor any other sci-fi or fantasy series, movies, comics, cartoons or news items used in this fiction as they belong to the creators or broadcasters or publishers who put them out for consumption by the public.
SeaQuest
Abstract
Lucas knew full well that being sent out of the country on a military boat would only end up with him injured or dead, no matter what lies Lawrence spread around. So Lucas did the logical thing: he packed up and left in the dead of night, leaving behind in public forums incriminating evidence against his bastard father to keep him too busy to hunt him down.
This story takes place before season 1, in the months before the SeaQuest is commissioned out to sea in the period when Lucas was ordered by his father to join the ship without any care for his opinion or general welfare.
This story is Alternate Universe, most characters are OOC and there are several mini-crossovers in the form of cameos and snapshots with the maritime-inspired series NCIS and JAG who are the most relevant to the situations facing Lucas and the casts of MacGyver (2016), NCIS and Bones will make large appearances. There is a lot of CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, Canadian Mounties and Coast Guard and other multi-varied organizations mentioned along the way. As such, given so many crossovers of equal proportions, I am again placing this in the general SeaQuest section of the fandom since it would not fit in a single sub-genre. My thanks for your tolerance of the situation.
Unlike my other story, "Justice for Lucas", this has absolutely no psionics, magicks or time engines involved even if such things were part & parcel of the SeaQuest canon in all three seasons.
PS; I like flames, they're fun to read so don't hesitate to write them.
WARNING; the language level of this one will be almost mild instead of the usual street-trashy when we consider a story based on boats and sailors. However, as I always warn people who read my work: this language was pretty much normal in the school yard 30 years ago when I was a teenager. So, how can you have such a thin skin and be part of the same culture on the same continent if this is really that offensive to you? Where did you spend the last few decades, if you can't take a few hard words from the mouths of kids when these words have been around since before World War I?
WARNING; the travels described in the fic are not necessarily matched to the buildings or services offered by the companies and localities in reality. This is a FF story, hence I write in such way as to make it coherent and believable. Which means that sometimes I will place trains or buses in localities the real companies don't operate. Contact Amtrak, Greyhound or Via Rail to get the real information.
WHAT IF LUCAS SAID 'NO'?
SECOND CHAPTER; BORDER LINES
On the road of life
(SeaQuest – season 1 – opening theme)
Wednesday 16th of December, 2020; 10:01am
Amtrak train, VIP cabin & salon car
Oregon State, USA
The knocking on the thin metal door of the cabin was most unwelcome. Didn't these people know it was ill-mannered to wake someone from such peaceful slumber? The groggy teenager blinked his bleary eyes a few times in a futile effort to find wakefulness as the pounding continued. Another few seconds later and he realized that it wasn't pounding so much as his own head that ached along the rest of his contorted body.
Lucas had folded himself like a demented pretzel's cousin at the foot of the bed, near the only source of living warmth in the cabin and scrunched into the footboard with a pileup of blankets on top of his thin, meatless body. His subconscious effort to keep warm had paid off but left him worried about developing a bad case of lumbago, and wondering where exactly his mind had been when he moved himself that way…
"Normality, thy name is not Lucas, I tell thee…" he mused playfully at his own weirdness.
Pushing his head out from under the beaver lodge look-alike hillock of blankets, the young man frowned at the continuing discreet rapping at his door. Grunting in effort and displeasure as teenagers were most certainly moody and unpleasant when woken up too early, he hoisted himself to stand besides the bed where he stood unsteadily, swaying along the rhythm of the train while still wrapped in a pair of warm comfortable blankets as if he wore a poncho. Not at all certain he could yet move without face-planting into the carpeted floor, Lucas cleared his throat noisily then called out to the steward in the hall.
"It's okay… I'm up now… You can stop knocking on the door."
His weak-voiced words were answered by blessed silence at long last. Not for long though.
"Pardon me, sir; will you be eating in the cabin or the dining car? The brunch service is still ongoing so we can easily bring something for you to enjoy privately." The helpful employee spoke firmly through the door just as if he were actually facing his client.
Lucas pursed his lips in thought and glanced sideways at the wide, plush, warm bed that beckoned so invitingly. "Don't leave me alone" it whispered gently to his sleepy mind. Giving himself a shake like a wet dog, the blond boy frowned, forcing his mind into focus to address the situation. He did need more restful sleep as he was fighting yet another infection but he had never been a lazybones in his life and he still wasn't out of the woods yet. Especially since the train was rolling in a scenic area of Oregon filled with evergreens well beyond human sight. He could sleep once across the borderlines, when it would be safe.
Pointing his blue eyes at the door and the hidden waiter, Lucas called out again "I'll go to the dining car in a few minutes. Just have to get dressed. And properly woken up too. Think I'll put my face in the window to smell the fresh air a while. That'll set me straight. Thanks for your time."
"Yes, sir. You are welcome." The steward answered politely before leaving to his other duties.
Lucas slowly walked, still wrapped in the bed's blankets, towards the small two-person table next to the windows, to sit heavily on the closest chair he could reach. A bit of fumbling with the latch had the window unlocked and raised all the way to the top, allowing him to actually put his head and shoulders out of the frame to see along the track the vehicle followed. Being careful not not fall out, he leaned a bit more outwards, looking both forward and backwards to get a good comprehensive view of the trackway, vegetation and the mountainous skyline in the far off distance.
Yeppp… Oregon State's wild lands alright.
The fresh forest air embalmed him with its coniferous scents, allowing him to close his eyes and calm down from his rude awakening. The background sounds of the train's 'chug-chug-chug' along the rails' joints and warbling birds hidden in the trees all over the dells and hillocks made for a peaceful scene such as Lucas had rarely ever experienced in life. Giving his lanky frame another shake, he sighed deeply in regret as necessities called. Closing down the window pane, he regretfully chugged the warm mass of blankets at the bed as he trudged to the bathroom. Once he had communed with nature in his own way, accompanied by an ultra-hot 10-minute shower to warm up, he would get dressed to make his way towards the restaurant car. Eating aboard a moving salon would be a first time experience for him, which he looked forward to.
{ SQ } - { PiQ } - { SQ }
A half hour later saw Lucas much more awake as he finished buttoning his brown shirt to complete his ensemble. He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, just as he had planned to do until he reached the hotel in Vancouver in Canada. The adolescent made sure his laptop was solidly attached to the table just like last night before grabbing his cellphone, spiked key-chain, tactical pen, wallet, card holder and new mechanical wristwatch. Humming quietly a tune from his collection of epic tracks, he went through the door and then right towards the dining cab.
He nodded at the steward as they crossed in the hallway. The man was from the morning shift; Lucas had only seen him once before at the time of boarding so he took better note of his features and demeanor just in case. Was he paranoid? Yes. But then again, he really did have a coterie of bastards after his pasty hide so it was necessary to be careful and vigilant all around.
The few minutes of slow cane-assisted walk to the restaurant helped to clear his mind of the last wisps of sleepiness, especially when the smells of cooked food reached his nose. Lucas would happily admit that the best way to wake him was to waft the smell of fresh coffee or warm buttery toast under his nose. He wasn't a morning person just by professional needs. Like most computer hackers he worked deep into the night as that was when his clients preferred to allow outside access to their corporate systems during the normally scheduled daily period of non-use.
Finally stepping into the wide open luminous car, Lucas smiled at the large tall windows, deeply cushioned chairs and open drinks counter where a steward gestured at him, silently offering a piping hot coffee straight out of the massive brass machine sitting on the serving surface. Taking a cup with saucer, spoon and napkin, the teenager held it out for fill-up then walked around to choose a table. As soon as he was sat at a small two-seat emplacement with the window at his left side, the female waiter came with a menu. He showed her his boarding pass so she could write the client number on the invoice as his meals and snacks were included in the travel package he had paid for. Less admin and accounting to handle that way. A few words to insure the brunch service was still in action saw him order a large plate of eggs, toast, Belgian waffle, bacon, sausages and spicy potatoes with a side of baked beans. It was a bit bigger than what he ate at 'home' in his office-cum-apartment normally but this was both a vacation and his escape into a new life. It called for a few liberties to celebrate properly his hard-earned freedom.
The young man spent the next fifteen minutes slowly reading through an old paper copy of the 'Glaming the rails of America' magazine dated from June of last year. The monthly publication was funny in its kitschiness. The editor was a fifty seven year old drag-queen from New York that had worked for Amtrak during three decades before a bad divorce and loosing his job in the same year turned his fortunes the wrong way. So the man decided to stop hiding what he was inside, to live what was left of his life the fullest and damn the rest of the lot. It turned out that his knowledge of rail lines and services across Canada, USA and Mexico was valuable. He quickly managed to find three major partners to start up his magazine despite having just come out to the world. As editor and principal reporter, the Queen of Steel gave the periodical an amusing airy tone like a mix of Skymall, Vogue, The World Tourism Guide and Madam De Luxe all in one. The light diva's tone of the articles coupled with the ads about travel gadgets and services made for an easy read. The "faaabulous" pictures of hotels, city scenes, naturescapes and the latest fashions in tourism clothing made it an entertaining little thing to flip the pages of.
The female waiter brought his meal rather quickly as restaurant service went. To date, the cleanliness and decor of the room had been nice but it really was the serving staff that made the experience worth repeating at some point in the future. Slowly working his way through his eggs, waffle and assorted sides, Lucas paid little attention to the open magazine on the far end of the table. He began to actively listen in on the conversations from the other tables while keeping his head and gaze fixated on his own place setting to avoid being seen eavesdropping. It was simple curiosity on his part.
He had never really traveled much in his life aside from the big move when he left Buffalo City in New York State at the age of 10 to go attend Stanford in Silicon Valley in California. That was six years ago and no longer a marking memory. Honestly, at that time what few possessions he had owned were packed by his personal household staff at the Wise Manor and shipped out by UPS ground freight about two weeks ahead of his own move. He had been put on a privately chartered prop-plane with two big engines and a small isolated sleeping cabin at the back of the tail. Lawrence hadn't wanted anybody to see how much difficulty Lucas had to move and react due to the medications he took to help recover from the injuries his felonious parent's latest beating had caused him. The child had slept like a gravestone all flight long and most of the ground transport as well. He had been woken up in the rental car just before entering the hotel he would stay at until Stanford's Young Prodigies Program sent a tutor to take charge of him. Those four days alone in that 3 star room had been the most peaceful of his life to date.
Closing his flint-blue eyes in sorrowful memory, Lucas slowly chewed his waffle bite, savoring the european taste of vanilla mixed with the natural pure maple syrup he had ordered as a treat to celebrate his coming freedom and give himself a little energy boost to tough out the day. He needed to wait until late afternoon when he could take a two hour long nap before disembarking at Seattle City in Washington State for the transfer over to the Via Rail link up to Vancouver in British Columbia inside the Canadian Borders. The trip from Seattle to Vancouver would take a long part of the night so he could sleep some more at that time. Watching through the window at night while trying to identify which type of conifers or deciduous trees they were rolling by just didn't sound that appealing for some reason…
Turning his eyes outwards to the scenic landscapes they were traversing, the teenager sipped some coffee as he discretely listened in on his neighbors. Nothing bad. Nothing to worry about. Nobody voicing low-toned nastiness or bellowing foulness about his going out of the country alone. Letting out a sigh of anxiety that he didn't know he had been bottling up, he pulled back his attention away from the dining car and back to the funny kitsch magazine on his table. He resolved to take out his cellphone and type a memo about a few of the other publications named inside. Some of them looked either very amusing or maybe somewhat practical if he had to travel a lot in the coming months.
Unspoken even to himself, was the dark, ominous cloud of trouble that he would have to wade through if Lawrence decided to bypass all laws and borders to send people after him for a forcible extraction like some churches did to grab kids and bring them to Jesus-camps for conversion therapies. Lucas would not put it passed his father to embezzle money from WPP to pay his legal fees in a court battle against his son but didn't truly know where the abusive bastard would stop in order to retain control of his favorite victim.
If he had to go off-grid in the depths of winter in the canadian wilderness, he'd need preparation and materials. First off would be an off-road vehicle like a pick-up or station wagon, something that he could lie down inside to sleep sheltered from snow, winds and animals. A large foreman's pickup truck with 4-wheel drive, enlarged tires and a permanently fixed one-man sleep cab could be enough for a long time since he had nobody to take care of. The alternative could be a small short trailer just big enough for a bed, wood stove and dry toilet. He could even get a standard contractor's trailer but have it fully insulated against all seasons. Add some tinted windows for privacy and a retractable chimney pipe to close everything down for travel on the open roads and he would look just like any other jobber going around between clients.
This would need thought and a good search on his laptop back in his cabin. It would also keep him occupied so he didn't let the warm, welcoming bed drag him back to the depths of sleep before his appointed siesta just before dinner. He had plenty of time to plan his off-road disappearance if it became a necessity but he might as well start early. After all, his early preventive planning was what allowed him to be here safely rather than on his way to an invisible motorized military gulag at the bottom of the sea. Yes. Come to think of it, some reading of diverse canadian hunting and fishing zones maps, winter & forest survival booklets and camping expertise guides was in order.
Just in case. With his father being the way he was, better over-prepared than sorry.
Contemplations of hinterlands
(Two Steps From Hell – Casablanca)
Wednesday 16th of December, 2020; 12:25pm (noon)
Amtrak train, VIP cabin
Oregon State, USA
Lucas sat stiffly on the padded wooden foot chest at the end of the bed, distractedly looking into the reddish embers that still glowed softly inside the small wood stove. He had added a log before going for his brunch so the fire didn't go out. The heat wasn't really needed since the cabin's climate control was excellent but he liked using the fire as a meditative aid, something to focus on when his mind wandered off.
Extending his hands towards the living flames that danced merrily inside the glass enclosure, Lucas felt the warmth quickly climb up his thin bony arms, giving back some sensitivity to his thin meatless fingers. As the train rolled northwards, the temperature steadily dropped and there was now a thick blanket of white snow covering most of the landscape they traversed. Up in Washington State it would be worse, especially in Seattle near the wide open harbor where the ocean winds could come deeply into the city unhindered by buildings or hills.
The teenager shivered just at the thought of that much cold, wind and snow all together. Because of his life-long health problems with repeated assaults and the related injuries, infections and medications, his body had never in his 16 years of life been able to store enough nutrients to properly grow and fill out. Sure, he was tall for his age at almost 5 feet 10 inches but he weighed only a measly 130 pounds. Snorting in contempt at his own body and situation, the boy decidedly ignored the fact that he had chosen to let his hair grow out not just to hide the scars on his head but specifically because of the added weight it provided when a doctor measured his stats. When attempting to be normal, every little bit counted. Still, that was just an illusion to willfully blind himself to his bad health.
Rubbing his hands together, he glared angrily at the thin almost invisible scars that ran along his fingers and palms, reminders of the whipping one of the early Lawrence-hired tutors had inflicted. The man had been an old brit bastard who kept pining out loud for the days of the Great Empire Britannia that spanned the globe and kept the niggers, yellows and other coloreds under foot as was the 'proper civilized way' in the Golden Age of European Civilization. He valued the traditional British 'stiff upper lip' stoicism and silent endurance through adversity like the colonial troops of yore were trained.
As many such men of that generation, he was an avid flogger of young boys and while not a pedophile in the sexual sense, he certainly took orgasmic pleasure in beating, breaking and dominating male infants. Beating their hands with an electrical cord hard enough to lacerate the skin and scar for life was his 'thing'; it reminded him of his youth in the Empire's good old 'public schools' of Portsmouth where boys were caned with rattan rods on their hands, backs or even bare ass depending on the 'preference' of the teacher.
Sick twisted bastards, him and the population that spawned him.
The man had been afraid of what an overly intelligent, inventive child motivated by anger against the pain of his punishments could create with such agile digits to retaliate against the adults around him as they tried to forcefully dominate him. So, the elderly man made an agreement with Lawrence for the right to try and break Lucas, specifically his small fragile hands. The geriatric criminal's goal was to inflict enough damages to render Lucas barely able to eat and wash himself without help while no longer being capable of the fine motor control required by chemistry or mechanics so he could no longer build devices to help his resistance against Order and Britannic (White Christian) Discipline.
The geriatric criminal had barely given the six first strokes to each hand when the four year old child realized the danger he faced. The adult told him that he would get 'braces' of six on each hand hard enough to cause lasting bleeding injuries until he learned that "the best and most honest form of respect towards adults was to FEAR them at all times". When the small infant understood that the man meant to mark him for life, possibly at the risk of crippling him beyond medicine's help, he knew he had to defend himself or die trying. His parents certainly wouldn't help, Lawrence might even be depraved enough to hold him down while the other man beat and destroyed his hands.
Lucas had backed away from the angrily yelling man long enough to pull a small glass vial from his pocket which he managed to open despite his bleeding shredded hands. When he threw the liquid at the man's face, it melted away parts of his head and shoulder, paralyzing him with the pain for several hours, long enough for the police to be called and come investigate. Lawrence was enraged beyond all descriptions as he was publicly proven to be a bad parent and accomplice to child-beating. That was why Lucas was sent to live with Cynthia for a few years. It was her boyfriend of the time, a high-flying plastic surgeon for the rich, who repaired the injuries then lasered the scars until they were almost invisible. Boy had his mother made him pay for that… She REALLY hated it when anybody took the center of attention away from her own munificence.
Almost 12 years had passed and still the marks were present. His thin meatless fingers were more agile and flexible than ever but still sensible and prone to seizing or twisting the wrong way if he wasn't careful of his movements. Since he would have some heavy manual labor in his near future once he owned a vehicle and camping gear, he needed to invest in some work gloves and find an exercise plan for hand orthopedics soon.
Turning his head towards the windows, the young man looked without seeing at the scenery, white-clad greenery and rocky hill sides passing by rapidly as the train moved north unrelentingly. While it was beautiful in a wintry way, it was also rather bleak. Everything was whitewashed with powdery snow, asleep under the heavy blanket and helpless to change that until spring thaws came to pass.
Just like his life.
{ SQ } - { PiQ } - { SQ }
Moving from his seat, he grabbed the enameled kettle to fill it up with cold water from the bathroom taps. He would brew some mellow mocha-cream coffee for the rest of the trip. It would give him some warmth inside his chest as he sat by the window, browsing the Internex for several topics he had begun to think about in relation to the nastier "what ifs" that had been swirling around his mind since waking up this morning.
After setting his kettle on the wood stove to boil, he sat at the small table facing towards the front of the train. That way he could see what was coming up along the side of the line as they moved. It was less nauseating than watching from the other side as everything went past without warning. He powered the laptop then immediately entered the complex 24 character login code before the screen lit up. He placed his left thumb on the digital print scanner built into the body of the computer. With the basic OS primed, the higher setup activated; the small camera mounted just above the screen came to life, scanning his visage from collarbones to the top of his hair for a 36-points facial recognition software to process. When the still black screen flashed a small white icon in its middle for three seconds, Lucas spoke out loud in Russian, then Greek, then Hebrew until all three phrases had passed the voice recognition system. Now the CPU was fully unlocked, placing the desktop items and apps visibly for usage.
Lucas had custom built and secured his machine as part of the homework and term assignments he passed to earn his Mastery'Mechanical & Cybernetics engineering for public utilities services' for which he had just received the diploma about 4 years ago while he was still 12 years old. After getting his other cheaper laptops busted and violated by Lawrence, Cynthia, their minions or the young thugs in Stanford, the teenager had learned to lock and code EVERYTHING he owned, even at the cost of being beaten each time a criminal tried and failed to hijack his systems or crack his safety furniture.
With the laptop properly activated, Lucas clicked the apps to connect with the train's WiFi systems. He opened his cellphone to recover the device ID, port # and password needed to get onto the bandwidth as a paying client of the rail line. This unlimited access to the Internex WiFi signal was included in his customized package as a business traveler in the upper class. If he had taken the usual coach type of package, he would have to pay around ten dollars per hour and that with a much slower speed than the 350 megabytes per second he would now be enjoying. It was just a pity that his machine had been conceived, built and programmed with fiber-optics in mind. All the network connectors & chipset could reach 2,25 gigabytes per second but it would be a very rare situation that would allow that much data to stream through the cable or airwaves. In any case, Lucas was happy he didn't have to unfold the two flexible antennae from the sides of the monitor to activate the integrated satellite telephone system to have a working signal since he really wanted to hide that particular capacity for an emergency.
As soon as the machine beeped that the connection was established (and tested, scanned and all protections running on high alert) the teenager tapped the screen of his cellphone to active the automated synchronization apps between the two devices. This also activated the email & social media management suite he had custom built to properly handle his multiple personal, familial, business and judicial affairs that were now presented in four easy to follow side-by-side streams. There was a blithely menacing message from his father. The message from his mother was unexpected but her bitching about his obligated continuing at Stanford because she wanted NOTHING to do with his pasty hide was habitual for her. There was a novelty though; a little piece of floating debris from some noisy menial cur called Lieutenant Denalt over at the UEO Navy yards in New Cape Quest warning him to "be on time at his ship's departure OR ELSE there would be consequences that daddy's money wouldn't protect him from".
Someone obviously had TWO misinformation problems; 1) Lawrence's money had never protected or helped Lucas in any ways and 2) the guy obviously thought that the laws about child labor and imprisonment didn't apply to him and his crew. The demented cad would soon learn differently as Lucas saved the message to over a dozen servers across the planet before sending it to his lawyers both in San Francisco and Buffalo plus the multiple child protection agencies they had put on the case. Let the sailor-boy handle that and see what comes of it!
Now he had before him the daily business of deleting the two-hundred or so trash-mails of multivaried porn, several obscure online pharmacies offering questionable pills, political action committees asking financial support, churches trying to recruit him (probably as a cute cuddly victim for their preachers) and a pair of classic fraudulent 'old lady from Congo' asking for his bank account number so they could use it to store away an inheritance to avoid paying the country's estate taxes (yeah, he was dumb enough to believe THAT! Snort!). With the SPAM and trash properly deleted and erased from his disk, the boy was now able to work from a clean slate.
Activating the small memo app on his cellphone he had used to pile up two dozen or so little ideas over the last three days, Lucas opened the private program he had created to automate and run several web searches (investigations) in parallel while he did something else more intuition-driven than what cybernetics could handle. After setting up several search threads about Lawrence & Cynthia (just updates) he created new ones for SeaQuest, UEO flagship, UEO Navy, US Naval Intelligence, World Power Plant Project and a couple more related loosely to the first batch.
In an effort to get as much directly relevant first-degree information as possible, Lucas browsed the official website that the UEO Navy had created to boast about their newly rebuilt and re-purposed flagship. Just as he thought, the navy had wanted to drum up corporate support so they had two different pages on the site about shipboard personnel: one for the military crew and another for the civilians which were further divided between permanent crew and external company reps. This allowed Lucas to grab the names, pictures, stats and basic biography of each person to feed into his surveillance matrix for long-term overwatch. Should any of these people start moving physically towards his location or broadcast any type of message that traveled over the wires or airwaves, his program would eavesdrop it, scan it and report it with even a sonic alarm if the comments contained certain key words or concepts that were symptoms of hostile intent towards the young man.
To make certain that the remote electronic surveillance continued even when the laptop was closed or broken, Lucas activated the synch function that transferred all of the program's settings, queries and data updates to the 'master cloud' which was spread between about three hundred zombie-bots that the teenager had illegally penetrated, cleaned up, optimized and then thoroughly infected to serve as his invisible automated listening posts around the planet. These people didn't even realize that old servers, automated security monitors and backup vaults were now sharing their storage and bandwidth with a rather nasty cyberspy platform answering to Lucas only. This meant that even if several of the ghost systems were damaged, reformatted or scrapped off, Lucas could not lose control of his phantom VPI (virtual private network) due to its decentralized nature and management methodology. This also meant that if his personal CPU's were stolen or damaged, he just needed to find an Internex access point of any kind, open the proper invisible & unlisted website, type in the access codes and voila! Back in business as if it never stopped for even a second. Unless the teenager wanted to destroy his multi-shelled operations and shutter his remote surveillance, nobody could force it to happen.
Well, not true…
The FBI cyber-crimes division and the US military's Intel branches had the tech and willpower to make it happen. They just didn't have enough truly competent people operating at his level nor the budgets to waste on finding and shutting down his phantom activities. It behooved him to keep on making certain they never got the incentive to put people and money on his trail by staying a low profile player who bothered nobody. As long as he simply did overwatch and surveillance without causing damages or data theft, the cops and soldiers couldn't care less about him. If he did do damages or stole data for corporate use… The warhounds would come and he wouldn't be able to hide for long.
Ergh! Enough of those thoughts…
Now that the basic long-range watchtowers were set-up, Lucas stood from his chair, stretching out his arms and back to work out the kinks before going to the wood stove. He placed another pair of small logs in the stove to bank the flames then poured himself a piping hot coffee in a quaint enameled mug that matched the kettle. It made the gentle souled boy smile as he gazed at the camping-style mug, his thoughts far away to a time when he would be able to sit on his porch with a small hibachi and his own kit of stovewares to work, read or just enjoy the open breeze of Nature. Closing his eyes while he wrapped his thin fingers around the warm metallic mug, Lucas dared to daydream about a better time and place in the near future, when he would be able to stand still in one place, unafraid and unhurried.
Opening his flint-blue eyes again to the dreary world that menaced his well-being, the adolescent quickly fixed his coffee to his taste with long practiced ease before sitting at his computer for another go at cyberspace. With almost eleven minutes of search time accrued, the military-grade surveillance software he had created and sold to his preferred paying client, the World Bank, was bound to have already found something for him to manually analyze. The boy couldn't help the audible snort of disbelief when he read the basic outline of the SeaQuest's readiness assessment. It was pitifully symptomatic of the mismanagement styles of the USA's Trump administration and the decide-by-crisis dis-order of the Dre cabinet at the UEO Treaty Council building.
As he sipped his warm mocha-cream drink, Lucas could only shake his head in disapproval of the idiocies he witnessed. He was only fifteen years old right now and for a few more days, without any military experience or training to boot, but still… He owned and ran many multi-million dollar companies with around 2,000 employees and almost 5,000 established clients. He KNEW what had to be DONE or AVOIDED to keep a business running smoothly and profitably. How in tarnation did anybody worth the rank patches on their shoulder boards justify this sort of thing? Fully HALF of the ship's military postings were not filled! Not because they lacked competent commissioned officers or enlisted men, either! NO! It was the bloody money! They had not finished filling the postings because they didn't have the BUDGET as the leasable laboratories and workshops set aside for outside corporations to rent were not all leased yet. This created a nasty shortfall in the budget which meant that the ship was stuck in dock until it was actually self-financing its crew salaries, fuel and services expenditures.
"WHAT a load of tepid liquid crap!"
The adolescent wearily passed a hand though his long blond hair, scratching interrogatively at his scarred scalp as he looked at the AI-generated reports. The military situation was near-disastrous but the civilians made him cringe in worry. NONE had been verified or vetted passed the Level-3 clearance. On a ship tasked with nuclear engines and munitions that required even the deck sweeping janitors to have at least Level-2 just to get onboard and Level-3 to actually enter the conference rooms or the command areas to clean, it was a piss-poor decision. Some of the chemicals and bio-active products in the laboratories were rated above the minimal clearances asked of the company reps but without any clearly declared protocol for the background checks and vetting of the scientists who would need higher security grades to work these labs and materials. It was almost as if the decision was based more…
"MONEY!" Lucas exclaimed aloud in disbelief.
The damned fools! They were planning to assign the security access and right-of-use of the restricted quarantine zones according to whom payed the most! The USA and UEO cabinets had truly fallen on their heads if they didn't realize the dangers inherent to such a decisional process! How many times in history had rich bastards decided to pay mercenaries to go into a government building or competitor's campus to cause sabotage and steal confidential data? The whole thing seemed from an outside perspective as if it was optimized to facilitate the theft of scientific and military data by poorly vetted and badly watched 'civilians' who could in fact be mercs, traitors or even professional spies like what Russia and China, as members of the UEO Treaty, were bound to place aboard.
Damn! What a shit-pit that was! Lucas was now incredibly happy to have, quite literally in fact, jumped ship before the thing set sail out of harbor. There was truly nothing but misery, incompetence and backstabbing waiting for him inside that floating coffin.
{ SQ } - { PiQ } - { SQ }
The teenager sat leaning against the frame of the opened window, his right side a bit chilly from contact with the cool metal but the warmth of the coffee wafting up from his freshly refilled mug kept his hands, face and innards nicely tempered. The forcible cool breeze generated by the train's motion helped to cleanse his lungs and mind with its embalming snowy pine scents. Taking a deep breath, the youth smiled widely at the gentle rocking of the train car, the rhythmic 'chug' of metal wheels along the rails lulling him into a calm, meditative state.
Opening his eyes, the boy checked the time on his watch, 13:32pm, before letting out a weary groan of displeasure. The huge warm bed was calling his name again but it was much too early for a nap or he would be out of sorts for the line transfer and border crossing tonight. Making a moue that could very well be described as a pout (if young men actually did such a thing) Lucas closed the window and began typing away at his keyboard again.
This time, his focus was on the 'supposedly' secured 'military grade' network of the World Power Plant. He had already hacked into his father's personal apartment but the man never kept anything of any value in the CPU over there. Neither did he ever let any critical data accumulate inside his cellphone. For an engineer, architect and geophysics expert carrying three PhD's, the man was rather severely limited in his day-to-day usage of communications technologies. Lucas knew full well that his parent had always been weary of leaving traces of his multiple dastardly deeds long before his much beleaguered son recorded and played back the events from two years ago. THAT particular event must simply have driven the older male to even harsher distrust and disuse of any electronics outside of his immediate purview inside the WPP construction campus.
Grabbing a classic twisted pretzel from the plastic bag he had found inside the snack cupboard besides the mini-fridge, Lucas hummed as the salty taste mixed and balanced the creamy sugary taste of his last sip of coffee. Letting his mind roam a bit as his eyes gazed boredly at the rows of algorithms and codes, the unwillingly displaced migrant wondered why exactly it was taking so much time to connect to WPP servers from the route he had chosen. Getting frustrated at the delay, over three minutes yet, Lucas mumbled nastily under his breath as he shrunk the window, setting it among the background processes. A new window was quickly active, the basic pre-coded template for another hack into Level-6 clearance and above servers scrolling down as fast as the boy could type in the blank spaces the required device ID, port #, username and passwords that he had ill-gotten from trolling around the darker sectors of the web's basement levels.
The unlawful data had cost him a few coins at the time but had proven well worth the investment.
Good! Now the host server was connecting, giving access to some low security local services inside its building and, more importantly, a far less protected US Navy intranet passerelle between that server (Level-3) and the one that was the actual target (Level-6). The cyber-road was normally used by DARPA to either do remote maintenance on the network or establish software links between people who collaborated in the many high-security projects in a discrete manner. In an even more restricted way, the varied US Armed services' Intelligence Departments also employed exactly that level of the server backbone to route the spywares used to watch and investigate suspected spies, traitors and potential terrorism conspirators that hid amongst the ranks of the US military and contractors.
Chewing another pretzel, Lucas refined his connection parameters whilst also adjusting the hack's usage of bandwidth to a lesser streaming speed. He absolutely needed to do this with finesse and subtlety to stay undiscovered else he would be found out and arrested publicly for sabotage which would then be held against him at the trial between his father and himself. The goal here was to slow down and diminish his signal to make it look as if it were simply an innocuous automated signal from the inventory tag or door-opening sensor of some inane thingie in a building well away from where the hacked server was located.
Lucas was guiding his hacking techniques along what he knew of peoples' habits from his own experiences at working with others on large-system maintenance sweeps. Humans had a habit of mentally 'disconnecting' from the task when they saw a wide, long list of little colored codes that each signified the status of a remotely managed device. Since the only way to check on such was to click each item of each line to blow-up the report to visible size, most server maintenance crews NEVER bothered doing that. In essence, unless the technician knew by heart WHAT exactly the little light of item 24 on line 4,057,390 meant, it would not even make it passed the eyes of the poor man as he checked to see if the server was performing its tasks properly. This natural basic weakness inbuilt into the human psyche and behavior made the playing field naturally favorable to hackers, but only IF they knew how to exploit it and had the discipline to not get arrogant or full of their own exploits.
Now, Lucas lived and breathed the machine languages, codes and mathematical complexities that were the equivalent to atoms and molecules in the material world and fortunately there were very few people with similar capacities. Also, the spectrum covering those actual capacities was rather wide. While he may not be the penultimate top of the list, Lucas was quite comfortably in the top 1% of the most competent, knowledgeable cybernetics' engineers active this day and he knew it. Without bragging, boasting or thumping his chest either! However, that would mean nothing if he became careless with his work ethics, security and healthy dose of functional paranoia that had kept him invisible and free up to date.
Lucas was quite unlike the current generation of hackers, born passed year 2000, that were almost mentally defective in their endemic need to film and broadcast on social media platforms absolutely everything they did, even criminal or socially forbidden stuff. That particular brand of retardedness would never strike Lucas as he had the opposite problem of being morbidly secretive about his personal privacy and data archive confidentiality. Making a spectacle of himself in public would be necessary for the trial against Lawrence and the immigration hearings and stuff, but that was it. If the Canadian government could be convinced to do all that in private behind closed doors, he would order his lawyers to make it happen that way.
THEY were out to get him after all, Lawrence and his paid church minions, and he was presently in the process of committing espionage with, if the chance was presented to him, a good dose of sabotage and virtual vandalism as well. Opportunism was not a bad thing, be it in entrepreneurship or electronic warfare, and the young man was quite good at both in his own unique ways.
"Yeah… Better not get caught doing this…" Lucas thought glibly as he munched another salted bread treat while scrutinizing the rows and rows of code that scrolled down madly before his squinted eyes.
Another three hours of silent arduous mental work saw a first glimmer of results on the horizon as his surreptitious stroll around the back-ways of the USA's military backbone finally brought him to a zone where communications between private company bigwigs and navy officials were archived 'securely' in case an investigation was needed at some further time. This was a policy started many decades ago when the first magnetic tapes capable of recording data had been created; the government wiretapped itself systematically in order to catch corruption, sabotage and traitors selling secrets to the enemy (or other political parties). This surveillance was dense, omnipresent, but also very well buried into the back of every machine or program in use by the US management services. On top of that, it never showed up in public unless there was an investigation or public trial so the vast majority of people, even in the Intelligence Services, tended to forget its existence and the massive trove of archived calls, faxes and emails it contained. There was even an accumulation of scans of paper mail since several departments had established the policy of scanning and archiving every piece of solid contact they received from citizens, corporations or foreign entities. Also, every piece of judicial evidence in every level of court in the USA was since 2007 to be scanned or filmed for archiving in case the evidence warehouses caught fire or flooded as happened every now and then.
Lucas, however, never forgot this dragon's hoard of secrets and communiques as this was his most efficient and prolific source of privileged information when he wanted to keep an eye on his father's contacts and activities. His personal and corporate survival depended a lot on his access to the system and prompt updates of his search queries, so he logged on at least twice a week, even when he was ill or dead tired. Needs must and all that rot…
And so it was that dear beloved (hem, hem…) Lawrence had gotten into bed with some two-bit bastard called 'William Allard Boyd Noyce' who worked in US Naval Intelligence until his recent move to loftier perches inside the UEO Treaty cabinet as 'Chief of Fleet Assets'. The man was an admiral for several years already, incestuously close to three of the Joint-Chiefs-of-Staff in the Pentagon and now placed as the 'dark horse' candidate from America. He somehow managed to hijack the job which was practically in the hands of French admiral Philibert 'swampy' Dumarais who was set aside rather savagely after he had specially traveled to NCQ from Marseilles for the final interview and swearing in of the position.
The whole thing smelt of a setup between the Trump White House and Andrea Dre's cabinet. There were apparently seven other cases of mismanaged nominations, all of them going to American nominees despite the Treaty Members' Council having voted to place European, Chinese or Canadian people in those jobs. The amount of political goodwill Andrea Dre lost then turned to enmity by those moves while making it look as if the whole UEO administration was just the USA's plaything was mindboggling. It was as if the woman had no political acumen whatsoever despite the fact that she had managed to climb up to the top of the UEO Council from what most people thought of as a dead village lost in backwaters. Okay, New Zealand was neither a ghost town nor a backwater, but try telling that to the people who lived in North America or Europe… Bigotry and nationalism aside, the woman had little political activity to her name in her own country, no military service and her corporate experiences to date had been somewhat ordinary.
How the Hell did she manage to climb so high? Why was she now sacrificing very large troves of political capital that she would need when the Council reunited to vote again for a secretary-general and new cabinet members in about six months this year? She had a nomination process to survive but she had been placing patsies and straw men around like there was no tomorrow in sight…
"Oh, fuck me hard with a phone pole, why don't you!" Lucas exclaimed as his mind went to overdrive as the patterns began to converge before his mind's eye. It was so bloody evident it was surprising nobody in Europe had realized yet. Andrea Dre had never been meant to survive the coming nomination cycle; she had been placed on the cabinet as a throw-away, an easily replaceable patsy that would accept bribes to place the people the Trump Team and campaign advisers wanted put in place then take the fall publicly as SHE was the corrupt one, not them. They simply proposed some names which were then defended by the PAC's in Washington DC the usual way (bribes) but it would be Dre who was guilty of accepting the gifts and favors, not the PAC's themselves as the Trumpists would see to their defense under 'First Amendment' arguments.
That meant that Andrea Dre could therefore accept dirty money in peace while people screamed and wailed, knowing full well that she would endure a token sham of a trial with maybe a few months of public services and financial penalties if anything came of it. The traitorous bitch was both the hatchet woman and the fall-gal, all rolled into one.
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At that very moment Lucas's overly bright mind finally caught up with a small bit of minutiae that he had jumped over in his speed-read of the updates about his father's activities.
It wasn't a good event.
THAT was how William Noyce wound up so high in both the US military and UEO Fleet despite several complaints against him pending before the US Navy's Judge Advocate General and two civil litigations for attempts at creating a religiously indoctrinating environment inside his department whilst he was ADMIRAL 2-stars… 'DIRECTOR'… of… US Naval Intelligence…
"FUUUUUCK!" Lucas screamed in wide-eyed fear as he finally hit some paydirt about his father's newest ally in committing depravities against his poor son.
Dropping the empty enameled mug from his shaking hands, the teenager grabbed the sides of his monitor to steady himself as he read the public biography and service excerpts about the ADMIRAL that were on the UEO's official website where all the position holders were listed along with their job description, immediate supervisor and the two levels of immediate subordinates under them. Lucas shook in raw visceral fear as he gazed at the long list of accomplishments accrued over four decades in the US Naval Services since the man left high school. He enlisted at 17 with his diploma barely signed by the institution, went to the Naval Academy with the clear goal of becoming an officer ASAP and was breveted inside the standard 3 years. He joined active ranks where he opted right from the start to join the Navy Intel operations into which he disappeared for most of his service.
Most of what Noyce did in his life was classified thus unavailable to the public except to state that he had been instrumental in the conduct of several successful black-ops and he had spent 9 years running the department before transferring to the UEO 2 years ago. His biggest achievement was supposedly in developing the US Navy's cyber-defense capacities to the point where they could now launch preemptive electronic strikes at the systems of 'rogue' nations before they committed seriously egregious acts against US assets by the same method. Noyce's induction statement when he took the UEO job was about "…Augmenting the remote surveillance and retaliation capacities of the Free World Nations against the Rogue elements of the Globe without putting human lives at risk by favoring cyberwar and drone vehicles…"
NOYCE had wanted Lucas from the get-go.
Lawrence might think that the idea to set him off aboard a military battleship for 'disciplinary redressment' was his idea but Lucas would bet his life and soul that it had been proposed by Noyce as an aside during a generic conversation about family, school, public service and whatnot…
Fear; atrocious, gut churning fear…
Sliding the laptop away from him, Lucas leaned backwards in his chair, tilting his head back until he looked at the ceiling, unfocused eyes gazing at nothing for several minutes while his mind tried to reboot from the severe shock it had just endured. Slowly resetting his mental faculties, the boy stood up then hobbled unsteadily to the bathroom where he turned the faucet to run the hot water in the sink whilst he hunted down a smaller towel than the bath throw. Having found a medium sized towel in the linen shelf besides the window, he rolled up his shirt sleeves then cupped his hands under the faucet to gather water to splash into his bone-cold face. As he committed his ablutions, the healing warmth of the flowing liquid seeped through his fingers, palms, jaw and cheeks, lending him strength and rejuvenation to face the new, very potent threat.
Sitting on the pivoting stool, his right arm resting on top of the vanity to steady him, Lucas gazed pensively at the flames in the woodstove as he finished drying his visage and forearms. A look at the bath had him thinking that another long soak would do him a world of good and he scheduled just that before going to the dining car for a long hearty evening meal. A bit of hydrotherapy would soothe his aching leg joints and maybe even help calm his emotional turmoil so he could think straight to plot a course through this morass of shadows, politics, religion, Alt-Right paranoia and White Racism that defined the USA society since the first Obama election in 2008. The teenager began to undo the buttons on his shirt, pulling it out of his pants at the same time, as he decided that he really needed a nap then and there to rebuild his forces and give his poor mind some time to refill the battery. Something like two hours aught to be enough for now to tide him over through dinner and the line change afterwards. Completely taking off everything but his shorts and t-shirt, he bundled everything together, dumped it on the chair besides the table and laptop then closed every source of light and sound that wasn't the wood stove. Sliding under the bed sheets, the teen yawned loudly before turning around, eyes closed and already out of it before his head hit the pillow.
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Forgotten by its master, the laptop continued its diligent efforts at connecting with WPP's management server through some forgotten conceptor's private backdoor, repeatedly trying its automated hacking tools until a positive response came. Since Lucas had only one such connection active and he had not set any real apps or tools to work on it, the computer's efforts were rather menial. Unfortunately, that did mean that the machine was emitting a signal and a port was open in its cybernetic defenses. Someone with enough time, tools and desire could backtrack it, locate the source and try to do something about it. Since the only indicator of the connection being active was shrunk down to a miniature icon in the bottom of the task bar, it would take time for the adolescent to see it and remember what he had forgotten when it should have been closed long ago.
Evening meal and thoughts
(SeaQuest – season 1 – opening theme)
Wednesday 16th of December, 2020; 19:01pm
Amtrak train, VIP cabin & salon car
Washington State, USA
The metallic bell of the old-style travel alarm clock on the bedside table woke up Lucas in an annoyed mood like nothing else had in at least six months. Giving the analog brass wind-up device some TLC with his left hand (a resounding smack) soon had blessed silence reestablished in the dark cabin with only the crackling of the burning wood in the stove as background noise. Grumbling nasty imprecations in seven tongues about the evils of technology unchecked, a disheveled mop of unruly blond hair emerged ponderously from beneath the mound of blankets covering the wide comfortable bed. Like a Krachen rising from the abyssal depths seeking hapless victims, the second most voracious beast known to this world arose to disgrace reality with its unholy presence: the Hungry Teenager had woken and would not rest again until satisfied.
"Grrruuumble!" roared the stomach of the beast in the silent shadows of the room.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the mattress still swathed in blankets, Lucas blinked his sleepy blue eyes blearily, trying to use the lively dancing flames in the stove as a landmark to orient his distorted perceptions.
"Grrruuumble!" was heard again, tearing the peaceful silence asunder like the shriek of devils at war.
"Ooooh! That was me! Eh, eh, eh…" The teenager muttered sheepishly as he wrapped both arms around his midsection, embarrassed by the expressive noise his tummy made. "Well, it's seven in the evening like I planned. I can take about 45-odd minutes in the tub to warm up and get cleaned before going for dinner in the salon car. A nice warm meal served by a friendly face should help set things on pace for the evening before the line transfer around eleven tonight.
"Roooaaarrr!" protested the empty stomach, not liking THAT plan one bit. It was completely void and wanted filled right away, not in the near future.
Lucas poked his belly with an interrogative index, not completely awake yet, and asked quite amused at his own silliness "Are you trying to veto my plan? You're just a minor organ, you know? Not like the brain or important stuff that matters…" He quipped while blinking his eyes in a vain attempt to clear out the sleep-crud and get some bearings before moving out of the bed.
"Aaaar rrgg ghhh!" protested the stomach, voicing the teenaged rebellion that Lucas never allowed himself to show in public. "Roowr." It completed its elaborate argument in favor of sustenance as the stunned adolescent decided then and there that he obviously wasn't an evening person any more than a morning person. In fact, he just now realized that anytime he just woke up from more than a 30 minute cat-nap was always going to end up weird for him and the people around.
"Maaawwrr." Agreed the empty organ in his belly, quite satisfied that its point had been conceded.
As he made his way to the bathroom for a quick do-over of his face and hair, the young man honestly wondered about the amount of RPG's, fantasy and Sci-Fi that he went through in the last year. He had heard about people listening to their 'gut feeling' but, seriously people, having a conversation with your abdomen like it had an alien larvae or ghost inside surely wasn't indicative of a healthy mind.
"Nooorr?" queried the over-active stomach.
"Shut up, you… I'm trying to do some deep thinking here…" Lucas answered automatically without actually thinking anything since he was still half-asleep as he sat on the toilet to relieve himself.
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After a short ten minute wash-up, Lucas was now fully dressed again and opening his carry-on luggage to pull out the business-casual style jacket he had bought to match his present brown-toned outer clothing. It even had some youthful leather details at the rims of the pockets, collar, lower hem, and sleeve cuffs that fit nicely with his brown leather hiking boots and accessories. Clothes shopping wasn't his favorite activity in life but it was nice once in a while to spend some money on his appearance. Especially since he wasn't much to look at to begin with; he was too young, too thin, too light-weight and too bony / wiry and so on…
Yeah, his therapist did say he had body-image problems, with severe self-loathing and relationship avoidance issues due to all the violence he had endured from so many diverse parties. He really needed to find another shrink on the northern side of things. Too much time without help in human form would lead to other episodes of gut-talk, and not all when he just woke up.
Shrugging on the jacket, he filled his pockets with his necessities then went out in search of a hot meal and humanoid interaction. At this point, he'd even take a smarmy little prepubescent 12 year old with a severe case of 'me-ism' over the silence bouncing around in his head. Plus, he needed to do something to take his mind off the information from the UEO queries he had running on his multiple bots. The results of THOSE would not be happy circumstances, he could feel it. Which meant of course that he would have to devote a few more hours to the Internex searches before switching trains in Seattle, no matter how tired he was after his meal.
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As the young man left the cabin, he didn't see the flashing icon on the desktop of his laptop because the thing was blacked out in secured sleep-mode. If he had set an alarm or reminder signal of some sorts, he would realize that he had forgotten something important like the open web channel. Instead, he would discover it when he reactivated the station after his evening meal during his small bit of work time before preparations for the scheduled layover and train switch. By that time, it would be too late to rectify his mistake in full.
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Ten minutes of slow careful walk had him entering the dining car again, although it was much fuller this time around as people preferred the evening meal for socializing rather than morning. The first sensation that he felt as he entered the dining compartment was peace. The lights were glowing softly from inside decorative brackets set on the outer walls between the tall windows, giving a discrete calmness to the atmosphere instead of the harsh neon lights usually favored by restaurants. Each table had a small candle lit in a colored glass jar as a centerpiece and the boy could see that all empty places had their placemats, flatware and linen napkins set; ready to welcome any walk-in guests without delay.
Giving the steward at the drinks bar a shy friendly smile, he accepted the offered glass of cool lemonade with lime slice and mint leaves before walking around to find a table for himself. As luck would have it, there was a nice little two-seater next to the shelving rack holding all the paper magazines and newspapers for the guests to use during their stay. Setting his glass down to mark his seat, Lucas browsed the collection of periodicals and newsprint's until he settled on a pair of newspapers from five days ago: the National Post (Canada) and The Seattle Times (USA). Sitting down with the window on his left so he faced forward into the movement of the train, he spread out the Times to glean at the front page curiously. Normally, the teenager got his news via television or the Internex, in both cases CNN, Bloomberg News and Washington Post were his basic go-to along with the local media outlets around Stanford so he could be alert to any situations in his immediate vicinity.
Slowly sipping the ice-chilled lemonade as he idly read the pages, Lucas didn't feel any hurry to signal the wait-staff just yet. Honestly, he was still a bit drowsy from waking up and it happened that his nap had been far too short for his liking. Back at his office / home he would actually still be asleep until around nine in the evening when he would become active for a long night of remotely fixing people's network problems. This traveling around at weird hours of the day was bothersome for him as he was discovering himself to be a creature of very strongly entrenched habits that didn't like those habits changed. Meh! He'd get used to it. Maybe if he lived by day a bit more and walked away from his keyboard every now and then, he could see more people than some cheesy IM avatars on screen.
The adolescent's ruminations were interrupted by the friendly male waiter who offered him a clean leather-bound paper menu with photos and descriptions of the meals available tonight. After showing the young adult his boarding pass to identify which travel package he had paid for, the teenager perused the menu calmly. The hunter's choice for meat was diverse cuts of Vermont wild boar and the fisherman's catch of the day was Canadian Pacific salmon with the usual alternate options of pan-seared chicken breast or a well garnished vegan meal. Feeling adventurous, he ordered a piece of boar in the King's roast style with peppercorn sauce and trimmings along an extra oven baked garlic bread to accompany his soup. The waiter chatted a bit with him, asking if he liked his trip to date, what he thought about the way the salon car was set up and such. After a few minutes of quiet small talk, the man went to place the order, leaving Lucas to his newspapers.
Halfway through an interesting article about precious maple wood theft from public forests and private properties in the northern reaches of Washington State (Who knew there was such thing?) the waiter brought the first service. Lucas folded the paper so as to be able to keep reading, tucking it on the far side of the table and placing the extra knife and fork of the unused place-set to keep it in position. The soup was a slow-cooked peasant style composed of thick hearty beef chunks, rice, barley and vegetables that went incredibly well with the just-baked garlic bread's melted cheese. Savoring each spoonful, the adolescent kept reading the article at a slow pace, mostly out of idle curiosity than any real sense of usefulness. It was weird that people were willing to cut down (it's a form of poaching?) trees they didn't own but going as far as being armed while doing so and shooting at people to get away when caught was several milestones past where he could understand the situation.
Yes, he knew that artists paid a heavy premium to get just the right type of wood roundel, branch, root or burr to make their creations and a good piece of fresh tree could bring in several thousand dollars, but to shoot and kill people over it? Apparently it was a bad situation that had festered for years since the late 1980's and now there had been a shootout two weeks ago that resulted in two perpetrators dead, two more grievously injured, one state trooper dead with another losing use of the right arm for the rest of his life. All over about 20,000$ of big-leaf maple cut into a dozen blocks barely the size of shoe boxes. The sheer idiocy of living off such petty crime didn't compute in Lucas's head since he was used to working with Wise Apothecary & Chemists, Wolenbahn, Stanford University Development Corporation, multiple municipal councils and the monstrously huge thingie called 'The World Bank' from an early age and the money amounts he saw flash before his eyes every day were in the millions and billions with the odd trillion when inter-governmental transactions were at stake. Such bloody strife over mere hundreds was just too foreign, too far removed from his lived experience for his usually gentle, altruistic nature to comprehend.
Having finished his appetizers, he folded the financial section and moved to the arts & culture. The Seattle area was quite active all year long and several nice theater groups were advertising performances. Even the community college students' charitable recital of the much lauded 'The Barber of Seville' sung in actual Italian as the original script looked inviting with its complimentary cup of chilled eggnog and slice of huge Yule log cake made by the students of the cooking, restauration and hospitality department. Lucas was always attracted to live performances since he had so few human interactions at all in his life. For television and films he could stay at home in front of his monitor and surf channels at will but a stage-play or acrobatic performance had the benefits of humanity without the risks of close contact with anybody in the crowd so he could go there safely.
Yes, the teenager though blithely morose, he really needed that therapist in a hurry and a trial date for his immigration status ASAP to finally put those damned depressive mood swings and paranoid nightmares behind him. Thankfully, the waiter arrived with his main course, the large covered plate helping to keep the delicacy warm from the kitchen to the table. After switching out the soiled dishes for the meal, the young adult offered Lucas the usual options of sea-salt, coarse black pepper or parmesan cheese to sprinkle over his side dish of chef's salad. The teenager accepted all three since the balsamic reduction vinaigrette was good but not his preferred taste; a bit of condiments would help that. Taking the time to smell the delicious aromas, he inspected the meal in detail. The principal element was three thick slices of meat taken from the boar's forward flank and roasted in the oven before a good pass on live flames with small forest mushrooms and pickled pearl onions. Next to that were a handful of skinless boiled baby potatoes, a nice little trio of green asparagus grilled with herbed olive oil and a ladle of pilaf rice with the aforementioned chef's salad presented in a separate bowl to keep it cold and crisp.
Taking up the classy sculpted deer antler handled meat knife, the young man dug into his roast meat with gusto such as only a starving teen could accomplish. Given how rarely he ever indulged in large heavy meals of this sort, he planned on enjoying all of it without shame or afterthoughts. He just hoped he had enough space for dessert after it all. The tenderly roasted meat was heavenly and the peppercorn sauce was just spicy enough to elevate the boar without getting overly savory or salty. The small quantities of sides were just fine given the size of the soup and salad given along the main element. In reality, the whole thing was balanced so that the diner would in fact have enough space left to taste one of the exquisite custom desserts accompanied by a specialty coffee or alcoholic liquor to help digestion.
As the main course progressed well, and without interruptions or problems from other guests, Lucas finished the Seattle Times and switched over to the canadian paper National Post. The thing was touted as the expression of nationalist, federalist, business-minded and often right-of-center economic movers and shakers of Canada from coast-to-coast. The tone of articles tried for an elevated cultured approach to imitate the New York Times but there was an undertone of snottiness, self-satisfaction and self-adulation that felt like a watered down version of Fox News Online or more closely USA Today which Lucas read a few times here and there.
As the youth made a valiant effort to process his meal (yeah, snort!) he read through the paper's political columns about the lasting effects of the Trump trade embargo on - what else in the north? – the lumber trade and the exports of processed construction softwood to the USA and other countries around the Pacific area. Scratching at his head in wonder, the boy could only marvel at just how much a fuss people above a certain parallel made about trees and woods and lumber. Had he lived under a blasted rock all these years to not be aware of this? Even when he had been a child in Buffalo in New York State, which had some pretty nice forests of its own to brag about, the subject of lumber and wood products had rarely gone beyond how many logs to put in the oven to warm up the pot of hot chocolate.
The waiter came by to make certain, for the fourth time in fact, that his young guest was tended to properly and satisfied about his food. He also refilled the glass of iced water, picked up the empty salad bowl right away and asked Lucas if he wanted to order his dessert and drink now or later after he was done. Making a big show of his own weirdness, Lucas answered gamely that he would consult his boss, to whit he patted his belly and responded "Yuppp, gimme another half-hour and I'll order the last course then. Thanks." The waiter chuckled in amusement commenting that his granddad, father and two uncles had the same decisional process about their meals as well, so he was well aware of how that usually went: with extra portions!
Concentrating back on his meal and paper, the adolescent slowly polished off every last little bit of meat and vegetable left despite it being a bit on the tepid side. He spent a good ten more minutes just to finish the last pages of the newspaper before placing his utensils in the plate to signify he was done with the course then waited for the waiter to pass by. A quick chat about dessert options had Lucas choose a confectionery indulgence of great luxury: a five-fruit curd pie with meringue and whipped cream along a nice irish coffee. The hot drink was made with a specialty non-alcoholic liquor much beloved of people who could not be served alcohol like teens or had medical conditions that meant cutting off any alcohol they might have drunk in the past.
The young man asked the waiter to mark his spot while he excused himself to the washroom as he didn't want to move emplacements for his dessert when he returned. The older male took out a small black plastic rectangle from his vest pocket which was then set up leaning against the candle bowl centerpiece. The phrase "I will return soon" was written in bold white characters, clearly visible to any who walked by the table thus settling the problem. Satisfied, Lucas used his cane and carefully walked off to the bathroom after checking that he had all his pocket fillers well in place and accounted for.
In reality, other than the quick trip to the urinal, he really wanted to take a walk to stretch his legs to restore circulation and flexibility. If he'd been in his office, he would have done a short quarter hour routine of exercises just after waking up from his night's regular sleep but the moving, swaying motions of the train car had made his eyes lose focus after a miserable little quad of push-ups. Since he wasn't the best athlete alive and had no desire to enter competitions of any sorts, he had quite naturally taken the excuse and aborted his minimalist routine for some screen time. Some sitting down on a well cushioned, warm and welcoming chair type of time. Hence why he felt a small bit of antsiness after a long day of almost nil physical movement other than bringing food to his mouth. That the short walk would give him the opportunity to wash his hands and splash his face with warm water again was a decent incentive to stand up for some movements of his own.
He had not needed to use the public washroom of the dining hall this morning and was a bit curious as to how it was laid out. As it happened, the setup consisted of three small completely separate rooms accessed from the corridor just outside the exit on the near side of the car, close to the drinks bar where he normally entered the salon. Two rooms were 'normal' sized but the third was double-spaced for access to wheelchairs, walkers, baby strollers or persons with crutches needing assistance. And still, the smaller stalls had nice clean stainless steel help handlebars bolted to the walls around the toilet and vanity to give people, like himself, with unsteady balance or lacking dexterity some easy steady support all over the room.
After finishing his business and wash-up in the relaxing privacy of the cozy wood-paneled little room, he adjusted his hair by giving his head a good shake to let the blond locks fall into place then carded both hands through to untangle the mass of golden strings. Now satisfied both physically and mentally, he made his way back to his semi-isolated little table. He came back just in time to see the waiter bring his slice of chilled pie and steaming hot drink. As he sat back in his chair, the boy could only marvel at the fluorescent coloration of the five clearly different layers of the fruit curd. The thing was about two inches and a half thick including the golden sable pastry and the sixth layer on top of ivory white meringue. The whipped cream was in a small shallow but wide bowl on the side of the pie slice. Thinking this dessert was invented by a hippie of the 1960's that enjoyed his retirement in Hawaii way too much, Lucas forked up a large bite which he chewed with vigor, especially when the multiple refreshing fruit flavors hit his tongue. With a sip of coffee every now and then, it was truly a magnificent combination.
After polishing off his plate like a boy who hadn't eaten anything all day, Lucas leaned backwards into his chair, holding the cup of warm coffee between both hands to absorb some of the warmth to soothe his poor meatless fingers. Eyes closed, he allowed himself to rest a bit, enjoying the noises of humanity over the background of rolling and swaying that were constant companions in the massive vehicle. The movement of a person nearby made him open his eyes and focus while reflexively preparing to throw the almost empty cup and saucer at the intruder. Bitterly painful experience of this type had taught him to strike first and apologize only if needed. It was only the waiter, back with the small wooden tray holding the invoice for his meal. Just as he had that morning, Lucas looked over the items and prices indolently as it was all included in his arrangement. He took out his boarding pass to manually write the client number and sign the papers with his heavy titanium tactical pen which caught the eye of the server who kept quiet despite his curiosity. After closing the transaction, the young man left to retreat back to his cabin where he still had some work to process through before the train change at around 11:00pm.
Evening dreariness
(SeaQuest – season 1 – opening theme)
Wednesday 16th of December, 2020; 21:12pm
Amtrak train, VIP cabin
Washington State, USA
Walking into his cabin, the first thing Lucas did was to check that his luggage and laptop were as they had been placed when he left. Now completely assured nobody had rifled through his possessions in his absence, he lifted the computer's monitor and began the activation sequence. Allowing the CPU to wake up, the teen went to his baggage to take off his jacket and unneeded accessories to store them securely for the coming transfer. He also needed to take out his brand new winterized long trenchcoat in preparation for the snowy mess of a climate he would face in Seattle and then Vancouver a dozen hours after. Since the linkup to Canada was offered only as regular coach class without any private seating option, he wanted everything stowed and tight before the move in just two hours.
His mellow thoughts were interrupted by the low toned pinging sound of an alarm coming from his laptop on the other side of the room. Frowning interrogatively, he moved around the bed, tracking a lazy hand over the bed covers as he walked towards the new mess that he needed to deal with. Now seated in his chair, facing towards the front of the train, he concentrated on the monitor to figure out what exactly had caused the bell to sound off. It took a minute to find the culprit; the reduced little icon stashed away in the activity bar at the bottom of the screen.
Clicking on the icon to enlarge the app window to full size, Lucas swore roundly and loudly when he saw that it was the secret direct connection to WPP's archival server that he had forgotten about closing. The damned program had been running for almost nine hours straight, leaving an open port through his outer defenses that a hacker could backtrack to locate him. Thankfully, Lucas had set his communications software so that any outgoing Internex channel went through four inner firewalls, a seven-chambered dump and four outer firewalls before leaving the laptop's network controller for a merry bounce-around running through five thousand anonymous zombie-bots spread in ninety countries before it finally reached the entry point of WPP's private secured intranet through the old and forgotten service backdoor built into the main management server.
Finding his actual location in real time would be both onerous and lengthy. Only someone with time, equipment and know-how would have any chance at all of retracing his hack back to the mobile workstation he used. Given the quality of the infiltration programs and quantity of subterfuges and decoys he employed during any illicit activity, those difficulties exponentialized. Still; he made a mistake due to his stress, anxieties and the fear he felt when he saw the data about William Noyce and US Naval Intel being in bed with Lawrence. Anybody could be excused for having a bad reaction to finding out that they had the most secretive and most criminally inclined of all the military intel branches of the US armed services running after them.
As he silently berated himself for five kinds of fool, Lucas put himself to the task of fully powering the outgoing connection then selecting and queuing the analytics apps needed to diagnosticate what had happened to his wayward signal during his absence. The first results returned were not good. Since he had only done the initiation phase of the link, most of the protection and defenses he normally applied had been dormant. On the plus side, since all the connection did was 'ping' the WPP server to see if it was present and active for a remotely requested job, nothing really big in the sense of detection and firewall had triggered in response. Not from them, anyways.
What was worrisome was that somebody had managed to tag his link-up effort and send back a tracer bug along with a small AVI (animated video imagery) file that was obviously a message of some sorts destined to whoever had hacked WPP's administrative server's backdoor. Amusingly enough, the tracer and message were both stuck between the first and second outer firewalls of his defensive scheme. The teenager took about a half hour to paralyze, disable and decrypt the tracer before huffing out in irritation.
"I got tagged by a friggin' Skript Kiddie! Oh, the shame!" Snort! "Well, no, not truly…"
Shaking his head in amusement at his bad luck, as well as the ineptitude of his would-be attacker, Lucas pouted playfully in mock offense at being tracked by such a low-level amateur using some of the cheapest, and oldest, bugging software available as open-source code on the dark web. The thing had been selling for around 20$ USD since before Lucas even touched his first keyboard! Talk about 'retro' engineering a problem! Eh!
A bit more fiddling with the bug had it reveal its secrets; it had none! The program in its current configuration was essentially 99% the original source with only the parameters of the client/user and a ghost bot-net routing scheme to send the data from Lucas's machine to the spy at the other end. Whoever was attempting to hack him had done the most minimal job and practically no effort about it so that meant it was either a very young beginner or a rather old amateur trying a few tricks out of curiosity. Grabbing a pretzel from the bag on the table, the boy chewed pensively as he contemplated the rows of codes that spoke only to those truly gifted with programming and networking tech.
Sighing, he cracked his fingers on both hands then began to type commands for a series of back-tracking apps and activated separately a suite of server diagnostics and maintenance tools that he had created and customized during the last six years of his life as he attended Stanford. The tools would be even more useful than with other systems as he had already infiltrated and set in place the 'watcher' part of the apps to do silent surveillance over WPP's comms traffic, bandwidth, signal strength, data streams and logging user & visitor activities for his own perusal when needed.
And now he needed access to all that aggregated maintenance data.
Just a few minutes of patience saw the WPP server kindly dump to his secondary remote receiver-bot all the overwatch data he wanted, up-to-date as of 32 seconds ago. A short command saw the receiving bot begin to process the data through a series of preset filters and analytics then send forward to Lucas only the report of the results through a few bounces around the VPN of bots to lose any tails or bugs the raw data may have carried into the reception machine. Since the report arrived much faster than the back-trace he was running on the 'bug' trapped in his defensive layers, he opened it and figured out quickly what had happened.
He got 'spoofed' – meaning his signal was hijacked for use by somebody else.
Some little bastard placed right on the doorway to WPP server's communications links a trap-app that emulates the actual entry portal of the system thus everything in or out gets copied back to its boss while also tagged and followed to its point of origin. At that point the hacker decides what to do with the contact; infiltration, data theft, sabotage, extortion, etc…
A stupid Skript Kiddie had managed to tag & ping his connection with almost no effort or tech to speak of! Groaning in actual embarrassment, Lucas rubbed his forehead with a weary hand. If he had been static in his office with all his machines and connections at full strength there wouldn't be any problems with cleaning the systems and then going after the little wannabe spoofer. Since he was actually mobile and most of his important devices and signal amplifiers were all packed up in a UPS truck over the borderline already, the situation was less than optimal. That didn't mean it was irreparable, though. It would simply take more time and effort to get the result then back-trace the little thug back to his lair to lay a cybernetic beating on his systems.
The adolescent decided to give himself a pause in the bathroom to use the facilities before taking up what would be his last cup of coffee aboard the train. Soon, he would have to complete his departure preps and wait peacefully by his window for the vehicle to stop then sound the bell that signaled the all-clear to disembark passengers. After relieving his needs, the young man tried to blank his mind as he washed his hands and splashed a little bit of warm water in his face to help wake himself up for the layover but it didn't seem to be happening.
When he stood by the wood stove while fixing his last mug, the teen wondered if this minuscule trouble was worth the waste of his last minutes of luxurious travel. Exhaling a loud sigh, he decided that yes, the little retard on the other end of the tracer was worth impacting his life and emotional balance so much. Sitting down again by the window for a last bit of programming, Lucas set up automatisms in his laptop's comms suite and then in his bot-net's managers to recognize and send to a chosen chamber of his 'dump' any connections, links or files emanating from the URL's, email addresses and smartphone ID's that were listed in the bug's MASTER/user configuration module. This meant that Lucas could now spend the next few days in peace as any junk sent by the minion on the other end of the line would automatically be sent into his virtual seven-chambered dumping buffer and vegetate there until picked up for analysis and disposal.
Cracking the knuckles of both hands, the teenager decided to give an hour of time to this problem before completing his layover preparations. After decompiling the monitoring data gathered by the surveillance apps he had surreptitiously implanted into WPP so many years ago, Lucas was able to start the trace, following the virtual spoor back along a barely protected channel composed of amateurishly programmed bots serving as listening posts and data storage checkpoints. Whoever had configured these had very limited skills and comprehension of what was possible with computer equipments. That meant the hacker was only a programmer, not a circuitry or network engineer, which meant that he was severely disadvantaged compared to Lucas who understood every aspect from the metal in the chipsets to the motherboards in the servers to the types of cable connections to the protocols running the whole system. His fundamental knowledge and experience at manipulating the parts in his own hands would give him a long edge over this little wannabe. It took only 5 minutes to backtrack the signal to the rough area of the Houston metropolitan zone in Texas.
The Houston city public networks infrastructures were badly damaged by a series of successive tornadoes and catastrophic floodings in 2017, 2018, 2019 and just this passed August 2020 again. The city's wide metropolitan area local climate patterns had begun changing towards wetter, windier and stormier ecosystems but nobody in either their capital Austin or Washington DC wanted to admit it. That meant that they were stupidly trying to repair public utilities that would just get destroyed year after year, no matter they did the job well or cheaply. The disorganized situation had given some enterprising little weasel the opportunity to exploit the multiple systemic failures (holes) caused by the storm damages that were then worsened when so many contractors working with little central coordination created further weaknesses with technology & protocol disparities between the systems they repaired with poorly compatible parts and programs.
These openings, old and new, were the roadway that had allowed the amateur hacker to worm into the wires and access the deeper sectors of the networks without getting caught by the governmental broadcasting authority or the private cyber-cops working for big companies like Symantec or Google among others. In regular conditions, like New York city for example, such an individual with limited skills and formation would never have managed to bypass the network watchdogs well enough to dodge the NYPD'S computer crimes task force nor the FBI's cyber-terrorism division. In Houston though, even the cops at all levels and localities were calling out for help and materials to rebuild. Since all their able-bodied officers were patrolling the streets, that left precious few to survey the networks, hence the exponential rise in identity theft and malicious hacking in their zone.
Now that he had circled the approximate origin of his hacker on the map, Lucas realized he needed to watch the dumb video to figure out who or what he was dealing with. He was 95% certain in advance that it would be some sort of extortion scheme like telling the listener he had caught a 'crypto-locker' virus of some sort and needed to pay a one-time fee in coins on the Dark Web to get the key to reactivate his system. The chances of it being something else was there but small. Looking at the clock, the teenager realized though that he was out of time. He had a half hour left to set his baggage in order for the train switch, he would have to exorcise this vermin from his life later during the overnight or morning portions of the northern ride.
With the final defensive processes in place to hold off any further attacks or spying for the next three days easily, Lucas did one last sweep of his social media management suite, purged another batch of crap from his email boxes and then did a complete shut-down of the machine. After verifying that every comm line and port was properly closed off and inert, this time around.
Charging ahead
(SeaQuest – season 1 – opening theme)
Wednesday 16th of December, 2020; 23:04pm
Amtrak train, VIP cabin
Seattle City, Washington State, USA
Worried flint-blue eyes scanned the crowds through the clear glass of the window. There was a fair few people assembled on the quay, waiting for the vehicle to immobilize so they could come aboard, welcome passengers coming off or exchange fresh cargo for empty crates and sacks. The entire scene seemed ordinary but Lucas had never really traveled before and only experienced the one boarding event back in California.
Exhaling a breath of worry, he tested the belt around the waist of his trenchcoat and placed the also brand new fedora style hat on his head, giving himself the appearance of an upscale young man from a well endowed family who was traveling through the Christmas season on familial affairs. He checked again that his new calf skin winter gloves were in the deep side-pockets of the coat then he fluffed and readjusted the new thick merino felt scarf at his neck. The steady fall of white powdery stuff outside the train didn't seem all that welcoming to him.
When he left Stanford the thermometer indicated a comfortable 80-something Fahrenheit. Now it was close to -5, well below freezing. Why again did he think traveling up north in winter was a good idea?
Oh, yeah… Desperation!
"Sucks to be me!" the boy grumped good-naturedly as he blew on his thin meatless fingers to warm them up a bit. Just looking out the window was making him shiver in dread at the waiting cold.
The sound of the train's traditional metallic bell startled him out of his reverie as the vehicle completed its parking routine in dock at the Seattle Station. Barely a minute later the conductor's voice emitted from the speakers spread around to warn all passengers to disembark and make their connections as the train would spend several hours in maintenance before switching rails for its return trip down the West Coast back to the Mexican Border. As he had almost two hours to reach his new train, Lucas decided to give the other passengers some time to walk around and leave before making his own way to the baggage claims.
Ten minutes later, a steward knocked on the door, asking for permission to enter. Calling out to the man that he could come in, the teenaged migrant looked around one last time then trudged to the door, assisted by his cane, as the panel opened from outside. Giving the servant a nod of the head and some soft words of thanks for the easy, luxurious trip, Lucas began the laborious process of changing vehicles in the middle of holiday rush.
Finding his checked baggage near the box cars was easy. He just activated the tracking RF tags he had placed long ago in all his affairs so he could chase them via a web-based app accessed through any Internex connection. Now having on his phone screen the five small compasses showing where each was, he clicked off the pointers for the over-night bag, briefcase, laptop and smartphone as he had them already. He only had to find his one big wheeled trunk, then the new train. That was easy, especially with the big golden logo of his company Wolenbahn Electronics Inc on both sides of the large aluminum trunk. He showed his boarding pass and passport to the porter in charge of handing out the bags to their proper owners and took hold of the wheeled contraption for his trek around the station. A quick aside out of pedestrian traffic saw his heavy over-night bag sitting on top of the horizontal trunk, attached to the case by extension ropes through the metallic brackets specifically built onto the trunk for this purpose to keep the piled-up bags from falling off during movement.
With his heavy baggage now set for prolonged walking, Lucas checked again that his briefcase was securely resting on his right hip with the strap across his chest to avoid grab-&-run attacks that so often plagued these sorts of public places. He had to fight off such attempts on his laptop and briefcase about once a month back at Stanford whenever he left his office to attend exams, do class presentations or meet with clients in restaurants. The problem with American society at this date was the quantity of endemically, miserably poor people who had no hopes for a better future. They were rendered jobless due to permanent health issues or worse, the country's habit of jailing its poorest citizens with barely-valid reasons. That stupidity of abusively sending the cops when social services should be deployed had the result of killing off the futures of many who suffered this at critical junctures of their lives, sometimes before they even left high school. With so much poverty and necessity, many were driven to the unthinkable to survive. This meant that small weak people like Lucas had to be extra careful when moving alone around public places lest he be scoped as a potential victim that couldn't fight back.
Grunting at the effort of dragging his luggage around and once again castigating himself for his sedentary, nonathletic lifestyle which he promised to change soon (Snort! Yeah, buddy! When?) the youth trudged his miserably cold way through the snow accumulated on the quays and the milling crowds that just didn't seem to thin out despite the hour. Pulling his luggage with his left hand, he used his most ordinary cane with the right hand to lean on and give himself some help when straining against the snow patches. He really wished he could at least have his real armament cane in hand instead of keeping it stowed in the trunk until passed the border lines. It would make him feel more secure about trekking through this rushing, eclectic chaos if he could grip the sharp steel as he walked about the unknown train station. It was coming to 23:45pm, damn it all! Didn't all these odd folk have places to be other than in his way? Lucas was not normally this grumpy and aggressive but the weather, late hour and low-grade lancing pains in both legs ever since he had left the Amtrak wagon were not helping to keep his mood stable or nice.
Finally, he managed to emerge from the massive mess of travelers long enough to see that the foot traffic was directed mainly towards the exits leading to the parking lots and bus lines. The quantity of people aiming for the northern train line was quite lesser than he would have thought. Then again, in this day of rushing everything, trains were seen as fit only for cargo or vacations, not speedy movement towards your business meetings or family Christmas party. People ignorantly preferred airplanes for those relatively non-critical, non-rush activities, not realizing just how long the waiting lines were at the customs counters and security checkpoints in airports since the New York attacks tumbled the Towers in 2001. Honestly, for anything not a medical, rescue or police transport, airplanes were not necessary and trains were a much better option; they had more leg room, sleeping cabins and restaurant cars so you weren't stuck in your seat during 14 to 24 hours at the risk of developing skin sores and cramps in dormant limbs.
Happy now that he wouldn't drown in the rushing crowds anymore, and feeling a little less anxious too, Lucas took in a deep fortifying breath of cold air and started up his walk again, the tension in his left arm and shoulder annoying him as he dragged the dead weight of his luggage. He cheered silently as he managed to reach the enclosed portion of the station as it meant he would no longer be fighting against the piled-up snow for each step he marched and his aching frozen legs would strain a lot less to keep him upright. Once in, he looked above the heads of the crowds, searching for the information boards to confirm he was headed the right way.
Yes! To the right! Marching again on his 3-legged hobbling gait, but much more freely this time, he processed through the long lines of thickly dressed travelers who were all similarly burdened with luggage, sacks, purses and several pets in carriers except for a few dogs held solidly on leash. Because of all the holiday overcrowding and a pause midway to assuage his paranoid anxiety about his luggage, it took almost twenty minutes to reach the Via Rail service counter where he would register and check in his heavy trunk before boarding the link up north.
Thankfully, the high class package he had paid allowed him to go into the "VIP-Express" line which was much shorter and was processed faster by the railway personnel. He showed his USA passport and Blue Cross insurance card at the counter as an extra ID since it had a photo. Once the paperwork done, he received the Via Rail boarding pass with the information for the WiFi client access and the seat he had specifically paid extra to obtain as it was the next best alternative to an enclosed cabin that the coach class could offer.
{ SQ } - { PiQ } - { SQ }
Despite now having an hour to wait, Lucas chose to make for the train already, deciding that he would rather wait in the warm wagon rather than the not frigid but definitely not hot train station. Since he would have barely fifty minutes if he chose the option, going into the VIP lounge to order a hot snack then speed-eating it just wasn't appealing. With the rich, heavy meal from the Amtrak salon still well in mind, there wasn't any real desire to eat or drink either. If he was going to wait, he might as well go straight to his assigned seat and set himself up with a video game on his laptop or even just get to sleep right away so he could be awakened easily for the border check-up in four hours.
Lugging his carry-on and aluminum briefcase, the teen marched at medium pace towards the new vehicle, thankful he wouldn't be exposed to the cold and snow for more than a few minutes while he got aboard his wagon. The porters actually asked him to board by the nearest access then search for his seat from the inside as the stewards would guide him faster that way. It only took five minutes to walk, find and claim his seat.
In coach style, most of the wagons were filled with forward-looking large thickly padded seats that had only limited reclining space. However, if you asked the travel agent or the train line pros, you would be told of the small sector at the very back of the wagon near the bathrooms and emergency supplies closet that was composed of two booths, one on each side of the center aisle, with the utilities between them and the door going off to the next wagon.
These booths were composed of an adjustable, fully folding table and four seats facing inside to the table for group activities like meals and games. It was rare for somebody to demand to be specifically reserved a seat at those tables because of the traffic with the washrooms and the fact they were usually kept free for general usage during the voyage to allow people with mobility problems to eat in comfort instead of being stuck in their assigned seat with the small folding table hidden in the armrest like in a cinema chair. Also, those booths were the only spot in each wagon that had physical network cable and electricity sockets for business travelers to connect their mobile devices on the move.
While the power and network setup was important to Lucas, the option to unfold the table and work manually on paper while eating a snack or having his coffee at hand had helped him to decide for one of those rarely asked booth reservations. Plus, he would meet a few people as they moved around and used the free portions of the table. Traveling the 11 hours or so between Seattle and Vancouver in coach would be hard on everybody; it would certainly be a drain on his stamina and patience. Thankfully, coach-class on a train was a lot better than a Greyhound bus since they wouldn't have the annoying start-and-stop motions of heavy traffic roads or the sudden dips and climbs that followed the landscape. Trains ran a much smoother tempo on relatively flat runs thus making it easy to sleep away the distance or concentrate on your monitor or food, ignoring the outside and the wagon's innards too.
The steward standing in the wagon's access point guided him directly to the booth on the quay side of the car, just on the right hand of the aisle. Lucas placed his carry-on and briefcase in the overhead bin then worked on taking off his hat, gloves and trenchcoat while watching attentively as a few other passengers walked in and did their own preparations for the long night. He kept the cane besides himself, lodged in the small space between the seat's armrest and the wagon's outer wall. Once freed of his heavy constrictive winter clothing, the young male sat in the window-side chair which was the one he paid for. All he had left to do was find something to do for the next hour until departure or just let himself fall to sleep right away.
The steward took a minute to come place a small wooden plaque saying "reserved seat" on the table next to Lucas while explaining it would keep more boisterous individuals from trying to strong-arm him out of his chair as had happened in the past when big families or vacation groups came aboard and absolutely refused to separate for meal times. Such hostile events were rare but better be safe, especially since the adolescent planned to sleep through the night without issue.
The going gets tough
(SeaQuest – season 1 – opening theme)
Wednesday 16th of December, 2020; 23:42pm
VIA Rail train, coach class
Seattle City, Washington State, USA
The boarding had been slow but then again, it gave Lucas plenty of quiet time to let himself drift into a more restive state. He was already deeply asleep in his reclined chair, covered by his trenchcoat with his fedora over his face to blot out the lights when the warning bell calling for final boarding sounded along the calls of the porters but neither managed to waken the exhausted youth from his oblivion.
The train left the station exactly on time without any complications to report. The steward walked up and down the aisle, offering warm drinks and premade sandwiches or salads to the travelers, many of which were too awake from the boarding rush to fall to sleep already. Some played on their smartphones or held a book to pass the time. A few others who voyaged as couples or small families held conversations at not so low tones but nobody was shouting or making a mess yet.
{ SQ } - { PiQ } - { SQ }
Thursday 17th of December, 2020; 03:09am
USA / Canada border crossing
The first three hours of rail were blessedly quiet, without vehicular incidents or passengers acting out in the train somewhere. The canadian crews were old hands at getting this machine from Vancouver to Seattle and back, doing the trip every other day. With doubled tracks along the entire link, there was a train departing from Vancouver at about the same time as they left Seattle, they would cross mid-point then start over the next day and so on. There was a departure every day on this stretch of the tracks given just how many people and cargo moved between the two countries and airplanes could not manage the volume whilst the choppy seas made for hard sailing even for larger commercial ships. The only truly reliable method of transport in the northern corridor really was the train as it couldn't get jammed in a ditch, fall out of the sky from iced engines or get sunk by an iceberg or massive storm like waterborne craft.
With such steady management and reliable mechanics, the train made good progress northwards despite the relentless fall of snow through the night. The interruption at the border crossing was barely fifteen minutes long, as the US customs agents walked down the aisle with sniffer dogs, checking on the passports and boarding passes of the travelers, warning them that the Canadians would do the same on their side less than 200 yards across the actual border line. All passengers were warned yet again over the public address speakers to keep their papers in hand, and also to not have any firearms on themselves or their carry-on baggages as they could be detained for a more thorough inspection due to several types of guns and munitions being actually illegal in Canada. Also, since the Canadians had very severe laws concerning the owning and carrying of any firearm type and several knife models, having them anywhere but the checked bags could get you either pushed back to the US or even arrested and jailed.
The American side of the checkpoint was breezed through quickly as the agents were well trained and used to walking the trains daily in each direction. With nothing to hold them back, the vehicle was waved passed the raised barriers and up to the waiting northerners on the other side of the wide empty lane of cleared land that marked the physical borderline between the two giant countries.
The Canadian checkpoint had only a few differences from the US one. The agents had more color on their uniforms as the Americans wore all black & dark blue whilst here the red & white maple leaf flag was visible on shoulder pads and caps, the tops of gloves and even on the harnesses of the drug sniffing dogs. The truly glaring detail was the way the officers spoke to the passengers. The US guys had been all gruff and raw power in their presentation with just a hand held out and harsh "Papers!" but here the agents all wished the travelers "Welcome to Canada, may I see your documents? Bienvenu au Canada, puis-je voir vos documents?" with at least a neutral face rather than the bullish closed-off expression the guys south had worn. Several of the agents even spoke a chinese dialect to help the many elderly asian voyagers who were visiting relatives up north during the holiday season.
Lucas had been glad for the brusqueness of the american guards, it meant less interest in his person or business as the men were in a hurry to process them through the gates. The canadian customs agents were doing things slowly and methodically, taking time to open the passports and look at the face of the person handing up the documents. In at least a quarter of cases they also asked to see the boarding pass for reasons that the teen could not divine or hear.
As the officer and dog came to his emplacement, he noted the reserved sign on the table and well ensconced position of the passenger for prolonged sleep through the night. Becoming more polite with a small encouraging smile when he saw it was a kid, the male agent, white in his late thirties, asked gently to see the passport, boarding pass and if he had an extra piece of ID with photo like driver's license or insurance client card. Lucas frowned a bit at being singled out for extra attention since in his lived experience that never ended up good for his health.
The border guard took the documents offered and actually took the time to open and read each one, going so far as to scan them with a dedicated device that served to read bar codes, inventory RF tags and also capture still shots of any document of interest for a potential investigation. The man was frowning a bit as he checked the train line's ticket and boarding pass, seeing that Lucas was an unaccompanied minor traveling alone.
"Excuse me sir, I'm going to need complementary information to allow your passage." he asked politely as he saw the high quality clothes and coat the kid owned instead of the usual casual wear of vacationers and street rags a lot of teens seemed to favor even for school or family affairs.
The officer's instincts were telling him to tread carefully with a rich, well connected kid while the german sheppard was quietly sitting on the floor right next to the young person, his chin on the kid's knees while looking up at the boy's deep flint-blue eyes in canine curiosity. The policeman noticed right away that the young male wasn't even phased by the animal crowding into his personal space; if anything he seemed amused and a bit curious himself. The fact he actually smiled at the dog and extended his bare hand to let the canine sniff him to determine if he was friendly made a good impression on the adult. Usually passengers either waved off his four-legged companion or griped about getting fleas from a mutt. You could tell a lot of a person's general temper and character by how they react to a dog's attitude towards them and this kid seemed okay. He did however have a smell around him like he had applied some athletic ointment for muscle cramps recently; the odor of the wintermint used in the cream was rather distinctive.
With a great sigh of long suffering patience, the younger male asked in neutral polite tones 'What do you need? I don't have anything prohibited in my bags or on me, and I have all the proper papers to clear the crossing as was confirmed to me by both the US Department of Tourism and the Canadian Consulate in San Francisco where my booking was done. In fact, may I be informed as to why I need to hand out more when nobody else in the wagon was asked for such extensively detailed paperwork?"
The boy had been unfailingly polite and spoke in low non-threatening tones but the menace was there nonetheless; he knew he was being singled out and would not just let it happen quietly. The fact he had already began to pull out from under his legs a heavy armored briefcase to root out his other papers showed he was cooperating with the officer while also showing off, accidentally the agent was sure, the manila folders with the name and office logo of a lawyer in SF. Then another from lawyers in Buffalo. And a third from another law firm in New York city. Yeah, the message was clear.
With his case now open on the tabletop before him, Lucas began showing the custom's agent the documents that were prepared for such an eventuality. His travel agent had warned him that the border crossing was normally more intense at the country that you entered rather than the one you left so he had to be ready to explain all his travel arrangements as he was a kid traveling alone.
"Well officer, here is what I have to offer. These are my forms that were filed with the Canadian government in Ottawa to date. This is to petition for bi-national citizenship. This is for the obtention of 'investor migrant' status along with the World Bank's confirmation of opening new personal and corporate accounts carrying the mandated minimal balance of 500,000$ in cash to prove that I indeed have enough funds to qualify as a real corporate investor. These are the files to finalize the incorporation of the Canadian division of my existing company as well as the list of existing clients in each province and what they bought. This last one here is my medical file, put up to date two days ago before I left Stanford. You get to see that one only with a court warrant in hand, or proved due cause of concern before witnesses who will sign an affidavit to prove it. The RCMP cyber-crimes division is aware of my coming up and I have an appointment with them in the first week of January to offer further products and services as soon as I build my new offices and production facilities in BC."
The teenager's tone and manners had gone cold and refractive on mentioning is medical history. There were still many other files imprinted with both the Canadian flag and lawyer's ID in the case, but tied together and separated from the rest of the pile. The logos for the Ministry of Justice and Department of Immigration & Naturalization were on them, as well as markers of confidentiality and 'case under review'. Another pair of folders carrying UEO identifications and numbering from their department of finance and revenue was intriguing but clearly off limits. The batch of files with the World Bank logo marked 'web-2 protocols security committee' and 'inter-bank transactions surveillance' were ignored studiously by the policeman.
The border agent guessed that this passenger was well above his pay-grade and did only a cursory check of the proffered files. At a glance, both migration forms checked out as genuine and valid, if dated only in the last week, showing this to be a very recent spate of actions that led the boy here. On a hunch the agent snapped pictures of the forms' lead pages since they contained all the identities and occupations of the people concerned and which government departments were being called upon to act. After this he called his dog to follow him and left the wagon entirely as he was done with his search.
Lucas was left with an interrogative mien on his face as he put everything back in proper order so he could lock up the briefcase securely. He checked the papers, the laptop and travel brochures he had decided to keep on hand for when he reached Vancouver proper then closed up for the rest of the trip.
{ SQ } - { PiQ } - { SQ }
The long vehicle sounded its bell, telling the last people who needed off to clear out then a minute later the usual rumbling of the wheels on snowy metal rails was heard as the forward motion was felt through the carriage despite the suspensions and padded chairs. As the train pulled northward again, the blond teen was happy to have finally reached a country where he would be physically safer than anywhere on the vast majority of the Earth but he wondered what other problems he would encounter just because he was young and looked like an easy victim for people with badges or big arms to abuse without consequences against them.
Putting his vague overly anxious worries to rest, the boy covered up again to go back to sleep. When he woke up from the much needed slumber he'd be in a new city, in a new world and would process the situation as it was presented. No need to borrow trouble when things were going great for a change.
{ SQ } - { PREVIEW ch.3 } - { SQ }
Cheap train ride up to Vancouver, dealing with the spoofer, thoughts about Canadian weapons laws and general cultures. Lucas does some private thinking about his ancestors, inherited wealth and the companies he built. Introduction to several of the weapons and cybernetic devices upon which Lucas has based his defense and sciences. Touring Vancouver a bit and the hotel complex. There's a boat load of money sloshing around and setting up remote warning systems while preparing for a long war of attrition. Discovering some of Lucas' higher learning and capacities. Lawrence attempts a transparent ploy to hurt his son and destroy any future or life he has.