Dollar For Your Thoughts, Part 2/14

  

            The audit meeting went on without me. My CO had a couple of minor concerns which he relayed to me through my PA. That was the last set of messages that I got through her. Later that day, I wound up on the side of the road with a wheel up on the curb and the hazard lights blinking. I called meds, and they thought the best thing to do was a sleep study, although the problem I had had nothing to do with sleep. My PA had been quite chipper after these events, and had joked a bit, trying to cheer me up. It turned out to be her last rally. She fielded and relayed a message that I was to head across the river, go northwest to Alliance and ‘await further instructions’. We went across the river, then from interstate to old state road, into the rosy, cold sunset, with my PA singing strains of ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’. She checked with me that my emergency kit was well stocked, and chided me for not harmonizing. She also pointed out horned toads on the side of the road along the way. Over the past few decades, horned toads had ranged far north, although this wasn’t acknowledged by my glom. The old state highway took us cutting through a gargantuan idle bean field, and she piped:

            “Horny toad.”

            She was a rebel. I looked at the screen to see where she was pointing, but it indicated: “Unavailable’. So now I couldn’t depend on her to drive. Not that her autonomous feature had been working well the past few weeks anyway.

            I could have called up music, but I didn’t. I rolled into town, if you’d call it a town. You know the type, at their aesthetic best at twilight, with a yellow light blinking at one end of the main drag, which is short enough for you to see the other yellow blinking at the end. And they’re never in sync.

            So this was where I was to ‘await further instructions’. I would have to receive them directly, since my PA was down. Perhaps gone. I coasted through intersections toward the other blinking yellow, holding myself in readiness. Perhaps my Glom had sent me to the middle of nowhere so I wouldn’t have anything to run into.

            And there she was at the end of the drag, a woman in a pea-green sheen vinyl jacket and thick khaki trousers. She was watching a horned toad skitter past her feet, it having noticed being noticed. Then the woman noticed me. I didn’t want people to think that I was cruising, but then I saw that she wore a laminated badge, and I checked, and yes, she had a brass cluster and dollar pin on her lapel. She was the same position and grade as I.

            I pulled to the curb and waited for her to get in. Then I reached over and pushed the door open. Of course. I didn’t have a PA to do that anymore. The woman got in, already speaking what seemed like another language. Another dialect, perhaps.

            “Sit go-in.”

            She faced forward and nodded down the road, north. I pulled from the curb and proceeded. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that she was attending to something in her inside jacket pocket. Swallowing something? I didn’t know. I didn’t even know what she had just said.

            I guessed, then, that I, that we, were ‘sit going in’ on a highway that headed northwest.

            Her name was Connie. When I told her mine, she smiled. At first I thought she was drunk, drugged, pathological, or all three. Later, I became impressed with the way she held herself in a focused state, like a mellow panther. Even in profile, her eyes were convincing. That’s something that I first noticed as we worked together. I was convinced from the start that she was an economic enforcement officer, but she obviously had an ulterior motive. Connie was aloof. She was, by nature, cagey. For example, when I asked her where we were going, she said:

            “Fort Covington. If you’re so inclined.”

            You see! “Your mission, if you’re so inclined.” Well, at the time I thought that she was being a bit snotty. But Connie had her reasons to work things in such a way as we ‘sit go inned’ north up 65. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. She had her head tilted back a bit, but still stared ahead for a long, silent while.

            The assignment was a bit unusual, it seemed, from what little she told me. We were going to Fort Covington, 300 km away, and just on the other side of the border in Tenger West Region. Being economic enforcement officers had its pluses and minuses. Our rank would get us waved through the border gate, and then they would make a call. If no reason could be determined as to why we were there, we’d be followed closely. I’d been in other gloms, even to spy, but seldom. But I trusted Connie. She had the dollar sign and laminated badge. I assumed that there was an important reason for us to go to Fort Covington, and that I would get more details from her later.

            For all the miles I had gone in a car, I wasn’t used to actually driving. This monotonous ripple of highway stripes and whirring of dark posts aside the car was lulling me. I didn’t want to go to the broadcast radio, or listen to the stream. I guess it would have been another step in the acknowledgement of the death of my PA. I needed conversation to stay awake. I turned to Connie.

            “Dollar for your thoughts.”

            “Hm.” She jerked a bit and sniffed. “I was stitching in that one. And,” she said, sharing, “I rarely pick up a needle.”

            She was going from one non-sequitur to another. Unless it was some sort of slang that I hadn’t heard before. She hadn’t had enough time to dream. I thought she was referring to that. I had begun to notice a kind of rounded accent from further north.

            “Why are we driving?” she asked.

            “Computer died.”

            “Dead-dead?”

            “Yep.”

            “Shame. Bury it already?”

            “I did not bury her.”

            “You should.”

            “I never heard of such a thing.”

            I couldn’t tell whether Connie was joking or not; telling me to put a viva-crystal chip back into the ground.

            “It’s the best thing to do,” she told me. “It was a Tenger 280.”

            “Yes, Tenger.”

            She laughed. “Yes, Tenger. Believe me! I used to route them. I might have even routed this one.”

            Here was where it started, Connie and I disagreeing with, yet understanding one another. I saw that there was a town coming up, and decided that if there would be a burial, she would be the one who did the burying. It was that important to her. She continued to explain as she knew that we were making a stop: bacteria in the soil would replace that which was in the chip, and accelerate abrasion of the silicon. Otherwise, engineered bacteria could be reintroduced and the chip could be accessed, forcing it to give up its thoughts, without volition. I still didn’t believe her entirely, though, although I do now.

            We stopped at a convenience store. Odd, for all Connie knew about the Tenger 280 chip, she didn’t know where it was in an Imno 400. Neither did I, for that matter. We consulted the owner’s manual. I found the chip in a slot in the dashboard, she took an ice scraper, and we both walked over near a power line post. After poking a foot out and patting the ground, in an arc, explaining laconically: “You and your horned toads…” she dug a divot in the sandy soil at the base of the post. She didn’t dig far. She didn’t have to. Popcorn-style snow began to fall. I handed her the chip. She put it in the hole and carefully scraped soil over it. Then she straightened up.

            “What was she like?”

            “She liked funny songs.”

            “Shit.” She opened her jacket and reached inside. It was a small container which dispensed something into her mouth. She offered it to me. All I could see was that the container was colorful. I declined.

            Then we went into the store and she took my lead on the road trip noshes. For me it’s usually the pork tenderloin substitute: the Imno Turkey T, handy brown, hot apple pie and citrus slush. When we got back to the car, she said:

            “I’ll drive. Your turn’s soon.”

            Another non-sequitur. She sat in the driver’s side and shifted around. She was amused with my Betty Boop steering wheel cover; an award I got for ten years at ImnoEco. I had to wait another five for the chance to use it.

            As we headed back north, I asked her if there was anything else she could tell me about the mission, but she only let out a soft ‘oh’. Wrapped up in her Turkey T, with the wrapper in her lap.

            “This pork?”

            Good Lord, I thought. Had she been in a cave for all of her, as I estimated, thirty years? I told her that it was a turkey fritter, designed as a substitute for pork tenderloin.

            “It’s a turkey by-product,” I said.

            “It’s good!”

            I agreed, and munched mine with relish. She declared that great minds think alike, and chewed, and stared ahead, projecting her wonder at the sandwich onto the dark horizon. At times she alternated to her handy brown- a finger accessible fried hash square that we make out of every staple crop but potato.

            I was worried, though, with that bland, featureless road before us. I pressed her for more information. And all Connie said at that time was:

            “We have to get to Fort Covington. I’m certain that’s where the answers are. And I have friends there.”

            Which took first place among all of the odd mission briefings I’d ever heard. She sensed that, and added more:

            “We need to work together on this.”

            Vaguely redundant. I found a plastic tissue packet in my footwell. Back then I didn’t know any better, and didn’t question the must litter laws. And it gave me, I thought, a chance to gesture-comment on Connie’s reticence, her strict adherence to the book. I rolled my window down a crack and set the packet free.

            “Pig.”

            I took her comment as a complement. I’d come to the conclusion that I had to keep a close eye on Connie, with her lone wolf attitude, but can you believe I’d worked with economic officers quirkier than her? But those are other stories. After our service for my PA, which made sense as it happened, I trusted her more. And there was some leeway. Citizens may be crazy, but officials like me were only seen as eccentric. As long as we kept up with the ever-changing policies and edicts, making sure that they were disseminated and applied well. Perhaps our perceived eccentricity came from that. What began that night between Connie and I were argumentative sparks beneath an umbrella of accord. I saw the sheen of curly hair and vinyl jacket as she settled into the miles. The tires hummed and I became a part of that hum. Buttons were placed before me. You know, buttons from clothing. Sorting them was easy, so, I focused on speed. It seemed that all I needed to do was think, and the small ones separated from the large, then primary colors from the complex tones. A little girlie button and a big joke button like that on a clown’s collar plopped to either side as anomalies. Then on to the exemplars. A firm, saturated blue mench of a button and another with a sky blue luster went to the top and bottom. Both were of standard size.

            “What’re you doing?”

            “Dozing off, I guess. I’m sorry. How long was I?”

            “Exactly five minutes. What were you doing in your trance?”

            I was aghast. This was a bit personal. I told her that I really don’t work up the steam to dream in just five minutes, and, either way- “It wasn’t about you.”

            She laughed. And as she laughed, I recalled what I’d been doing.

            “I was sorting buttons.”

            “I’ve had that one. Your turn to drive.”

           We stopped off at an abandoned gas station, completed our extirpations wordlessly, and I found her next to the car, sweeping a toe in an arc again, looking down with wry curiosity at a couple of horned toads she’d stirred up. I’ve never seen someone so obsessed with those lizards. After all, they’re not policy.

            I captained our shiny ship past the ruins of strip malls and farm implement stores which were now being taken by huckleberry and scrub grass.  Through the former American Midwest. Past stolid residences with wheaten victory gardens and the occasional lit oasis plastered inside with sale signs and notices hand-lettered with magic markers, with their misspellings and extraneous apostrophes.