Morgan Dash Unbound

Blue States Highway/Red States Run

Of course he knew not to even think about cruising into a red state. He wasn't that innocent. But CalTech Johnny didn't yet appreciate the subtleties. That was probably good, or he might never have agreed to go with us.


by Morgan Dash

CalTech Johnny was in the back seat, asking a lot of questions. Dorie Dorie was driving, the Lemon Kid rode shotgun, and I was left to babysit Johnny. I'm Alice the Borg.

We have these colorful names because we are the Blue Blaze. Sometimes we're known as Blue Berets, especially in the Red Zone. It doesn't matter what we're called. What matters is what we do to keep the Blue States safe. Johnny was new to the gig though, so we had to clue him in.

"You're locked up in that lab, Johnny," the Lemon Kid explained. "You don't know."

"But don't worry," I said quickly. "We've done this before."

"As long as we don't take unnecessary chances," Dorie said calmly, "we'll be fine. Just stick to the plan."

We were heading north up the 5, with LA behind us, just starting a long and dangerous journey.

"I don't get it," Johnny said again. "They need me in Boston. Why can't we just fly?"

"Cause we'd have to cross the Red Zone, and we can't anymore," I said, trying not to sound like I was talking to a child. "We're all on No Flyover lists."

"But don't you guys have your own jets?"

"That's classified," I said.

"On this mission," Lemon Kid explained, "we have to stay under the radar."

"We're getting out of commuting range," Dorie said. "Everybody stay sharp."

Poor Johnny. We needed his computer geek expertise but he'd been so sheltered he didn't realize that nobody traveled in the states more than an hour's drive from home anymore. It could get just too weird, and maybe lethal.

Of course he knew not to even think about cruising into a red state. He wasn't that innocent. But CalTech Johnny didn't yet appreciate the subtleties. That was probably good, or he might never have agreed to go with us.

Fortunately Johnny couldn't keep his eyes off a screen for more than two minutes straight, so he was already scrolling data on his laptop when Dorie spoke.

About a minute later I noticed Johnny's face was all scrunched up.

"What's the matter?"

He frowned over his laptop, fingers whirling. "I can't get on the Bluenet."

"I know."

He looked over at me. "Inhibitors in the car?" He sneered and hit his keyboard again. "I can get around that."

"I'm sure you can," I said. "But don't."

"Why not?" he said. "This is a Blue highway, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but the skies have ears," I said. "We don't want to get marked on some Red Zone security screen. They hone in on those signals. You know the old saying, every downlink---"

"---is an uplink, yeah I had parents, too. It's an obsolete notion."

"Not really. Trust me."

"Well, what I am supposed to do?"

"Look out the window. Count the cars. Live in the moment."

"Well, I can work on the intermix ratio. I've got the data. "

"Whatever makes you blue."

Ten hours out and we were in full space capsule mode. We carried food and water rations, and we had our tube and bag systems for waste. Most of us would wind up constipated but that goes with the tour. We had to make a minimum of pit stops to avoid local suspicion, on account of our Red States haircuts. Unfortunately it was getting to be the same in the Blue States as in the Red: the safest place was the highway, as long as you kept moving.

Now it was getting dark. Time to make the switch.

"Listen up everybody," I said from the driver's seat. "We're stopping and getting out of the vehicle. Take your gear because we're not coming back."

I'd given them a few minutes warning to gather their stuff, and their wits.

"We're still in the Blue Zone," I reminded them, "but we're strangers, so don't make anybody nervous. Think blue."

A minute later I pulled the Prius into to a Starbuck's lot. "Okay," I said, "here's the drill. When I tell you, go in the front door. We've got twenty minutes for lattes and whatever else you need to do. Then when I get up, you follow me. We'll be exiting through the side door, into our new vehicle. But sit tight for now. I'll make sure our agent is inside and everything's cool. Dorie Dorie, you're with me."

"Don't forget to hold hands," Lemon Kid reminded us.

It went smoothly, although prying CalTech Johnny from the Starbuck's satellite link was a task. I exchanged keys with our contact working there ("our behind-the-counter intelligence agent," the Kid called him), and soon we were in the minivan and back on the 5. Now we really couldn't stop again until we were out of the Blue Zone. Being seen getting out of a non-hybrid could get you in a nasty confrontation real quick.

After we'd all taken our turns in the back, changing into our Red Zone outfits, complete with bullet-proof vests under the short-sleeved white shirts Johnny and the Kid wore, and the frilly white blouses Dorie Dorie and I wore with our stretch pants, we settled down for a lot of droning highway.

I checked out our full array of sensing and jamming devices. We even had a rotating series of license plate numbers on the vehicle's radio signature. Under Patriot Act X these signatures were monitored, along with the frequency the radio was playing, everywhere in the Red Zone. We had a list of acceptable talk stations for each location---keeping the radio set correctly was the responsibility of whoever was riding shotgun. Nobody actually listened, of course. The speakers were switched off, and we all had our personal devices if we wanted to listen to anything.

Not that we were planning to spend a lot of time in the Red Zone. If we were lucky, almost none at all. But it was a treacherous trip, we had to be ready. And we had a schedule. Everything depended on meeting it.

It was a long trip, too. We were trained for it, though. All of us except Johnny. So it wasn't too surprising that after 17 hours or so, he started fussing.

"I don't get it," Johnny was whining again. "Why do we have to go way up to Washington. Why can't we just cut across. We don't look that different."

I guess the rest of us felt really old at that moment. We knew what could happen, all those hundreds of miles. We'd heard too many stories, and lived a few. We'd all lost too many friends.

"Well, maybe if you're successful in Boston," I said to Johnny softly, "someday we will be able to go that way again."

"You mean the Star Wars thing?" Johnny asked.

I drew in a breath. Even referring to the project was classified. The Lemon Kid whipped his head around and he glared at Johnny, hard.

"Sorry," Johnny said, and meant it.

He was only half right anyway. Sure, when Red Command moved the White House to Terre Haute and took over the missile system---they called the whole thing missile "defense" now--- it was enough to make a blue stater's blood curdle. And whether CalTech Johnny knew it or not, that's why we were on this mission to take him to Boston. They wanted him on the team to develop a virus or something that could neutralize control of those missiles and whatever else Red Command was cooking up. So that made this trip dangerous for sure.

But riding in the Red States had been perilous long before now. They didn't need guided missiles; a mobile mob listening to talk radio giving out suspicious license numbers could make things hot all on its own.

We were all the way through Washington, just about to run out of Blue State highways. California and the other bordering Blue States still had a good relationship with Canada, but just to be on the safe side, we had to arrive at the border station for a particular shift, when we knew the particular border guards on both sides would let us through without a hassle. They weren't Blue agents or Blue Blaze operatives or anything, just sympathetic. The kind who acted tough but looked the other way during the retinal scans .

Thanks to some of the Lemon Kid's fancy driving, we got to the border on time.

"So now we're in Canada," Johnny said. "No worries, right?"

"You're thinking of Australia," Lemon Kid quipped.

"You know what I mean," Johnny said. We just keep going until we reenter the Blue Zone."

"We could," the Kid said, "except for the Friendly Neighbor Rule."

"Crap," Johnny said. "I forgot."

But fortunately we hadn't. The Red Zone negotiated a separate agreement with Canada requiring a time stamp for every vehicle entering from the former United States. All the Red States enforced what they called the Friendly Neighbor Rule, which said that visitors could stay in Canada a maximum of twelve hours. After that, Canadian police were supposed to detain the violators, and anybody re-entering the Red Zone after more than 12 hours was subject to arrest.

It was a little revenge against the semi-cooperative Canadians and a blatant attempt to stop Blue Staters from doing exactly what we were doing---driving across Canada to get from one Blue coast to the other without driving in the Red Zone. Since it was impossible to get from western Canada to the Minnesota border in twelve hours, we would have to cut across to the Red Zone for part of the journey.

So that meant the most elaborately planned part of our mission was still ahead. All told it was about 22 hours from Vancouver to the next blue border in Minnesota. We could get by, barely, with one short crossover into the Red Zone. Normally we might just take our chances on a straight run, but we had to get CalTech Johnny to Boston, and an arranged crossover was considered less risky. Though not by much.

So we placed two of our best undercovers at the Montana border station near what used to be the Waterton Glacier International Peace Park. Now there's no glaciers anymore and anything with "International" and "Peace" in it is considered unpatriotic in the Red Zone, so it's become the Waterton Mountain Flag and Fun Park and Chapel.

We'd pose as tourist couples. Me and Lemon Kid were plausible, and Dorrie Dorrie and Caltech Johnny might pass. But we were never going to be as invisible as I'd like us to be, not with Johnny looking like the geek genius he is. So we planned a real short visit to the Red Zone, over and back, just to get our time stamp re-set. We were even working on a backstory about a quick return to retrieve our dog, mending a sore leg at a kennel in Canada.

I guess I let myself be distracted by nailing down the finer points of the plan, because it was the day before we'd get to Waterton that I made my mistake.

It started because CalTech Johnny was looking so worn out and pathetic. When Dorie Dorie suggested Johnny could use some fresh air and exercise, I gave in. We could all use some of that. Our in-vehicle yoga and isometrics were supposed to keep us sharp, but some walking seemed a good thing. We might need our legs before we were done.

We found an isolated spot, with some trees and a nice size pond to walk around. My mistake was not keeping up with the others. I needed to use my supercell away from the vehicle for a secure channel BlueSat call to report in. I was also trying to figure out what breed our imaginary dog should be. Red Zone psychology is sometimes hard to figure out.

I stuck close to the minivan for security and did my work, while the others walked around the pond. They were supposed to be back in a half hour, and they weren't. I was about to get officially upset when I heard them coming. But it was only Dorie Dorie and Lemon Kid. They both looked awfully pale for just returning from a long walk but that wasn't my first concern.

"Where's Johnny?" I asked them.

"He's not back?" Lemon Kid said. "We left him sitting under a tree with his laptop, and went back that way to pick him up but he wasn't there. We figured he came back on his own."

They looked at each other.

"He was on a hill above the pond." Dorie Dorie said.

"That's all we need," I said, getting up. "A drowned genius."

It took us twenty minutes to find the place, then another ten to find Johnny. He was out cold in a tangle of brambles a few feet short of the water. We had to hack through to get to him, then be real careful getting him out of there. It turned out he had nothing worse than a twisted ankle, some bruises and a cut on his scalp. But we had to treat him and get his head on straight, and walk way too slowly back to the vehicle. By the time we got back on the road we were more than three hours behind schedule.

We made up some time but not enough. We were going to miss the shift our operatives were working. As mission leader I had to decide what to do. If we stayed over a day to catch the shift, we'd screw up our whole schedule.

"We can keep going and take a chance crossing into North Dakota," Lemon Kid suggested. "There are a couple of low profile border stations there."

"We'd be over time," I said, rechecking my calculations, "and we'd probably be arrested on the spot."

"Then why not stay on this side until we're on a Blue Zone border," Dorie Dorie said. That was the most tempting possibility. But lately Canada was getting nervous about Star Wars too, and they were starting to enforce the Friendly Neighbor Rule on their side.

"No, we'll have to take a chance with the Montana station," I said finally. "Over and back will be especially tricky, but that's our best choice. Get ready."

I was more or less counting on our undercovers to improvise, once they realized we weren't going to make it on schedule. Either that, or we'd have to do some persuasive acting at being invisible. Or as Lemon Kid insisted on saying, "Better Red than dead."

In the hour before we got to the border, things were pretty tense in the minivan. I was the last to crawl in the back and change. When I climbed back up in my olive green pants suit, I looked at Lemon Kid for my reality check. He was wearing a starched white shirt and pressed bib overalls. He looked me over solemnly and arched an eyebrow. " Are you Bluish?" he said, his voice melodic and intimidating. "You don't look Bluish."

We all broke up at that, and so we were fairly loose when we got to the station. The Lemon Kid was at the wheel and I rode shotgun. We kept CalTech Johnny way in the back, where he might pass for a surly teenager. Even the Red Zone had those.

Just before I pulled up to the border station window, I stuck a paperback copy of Red Badge of Courage on top of the dash. The guard saw it right away. He ran through the usual questions, then asked casually, "Have you read that?"

"No," Lemon Kid said, "but I saw the movie."

The guard turned away and gave no sign he'd heard. But when he turned back he waved us through.

We had a half hour or so on the main highway south, then we would loop back to the border. I would have preferred a nice quiet ride but Johnny had climbed into the back seat and was breathing down my neck.
"Were those like passwords?" he whispered.

"Sort of," I said. "More like code."

"'Have you read that?'" he mumbled to himself and then brightened. "Read! That was it?"

"It's not real subtle," I admitted, "but it's a default under certain circumstances."

"Like when you're crossing at the wrong place or the wrong time."

"Like that."

"'No, but I saw the movie,'" Johnny repeated, laughing. "Hooray for Hollywood."

When we got back to the border, the same guard asked us the same questions, like he'd never seen us before. I thought he had to be one of our undercovers pulling an extra shift but I later learned he wasn't. He was a Blue Blaze Irregular, an underground group that was gaining members in the Red Zone. We got back through. We had our new time-stamp and we were good to go.

We hadn't been in the Red Zone long but Johnny had his eyes opened. "I heard it was real poor there," he said now. "But I thought it was propaganda."

I shrugged. "Europe can't stand them and they have no Pacific ports."

"Yeah, but all that oil they fought everybody for."

"Not much left."

"And all that funny money," Dorie Dorie added.

"But it's like those Great Depression photos," Johnny said. "They've got nothing but discounters, fast food, shacks and churches."

"Maybe they like it that way," I said.

"I don't know." CalTech Johnny was dubious. "And they kicked us out?"

"Go figure," I said, managing not to sigh.

I took an uneventful turn driving, then sacked out in the back seat. It should have been smooth sailing but I had a major surprise coming. It started when something woke me up. I can't say what it was. Something just didn't feel right.

I raised my head up, looked at the highway sign, then waited till the next one and looked harder. Adrenalin was pumping hard.

"Red alert!" I all but shouted. "Break out emergency kits." As I scrambled to put on my Wal-Mart name tag, I glanced forward. We were back to our original configuration, with Dorie Dorie driving and Lemon Kid beside her. They were both staring ahead, stony-faced.

"What happened?" I asked as calmly as I could. "How did we get off course? Something happen to the GPS?" This was a frequent problem if you got too close to the Red Zone. Some of their radio stations had powerful jamming transmitters. But at the moment we weren't too close to the Red Zone. We were in it. Somehow we were in the Red State of North Dakota.

Dorie Dorie glanced at me in the rear view, then across at Lemon Kid.
"We thought you'd sleep through this," she said. She looked at me again. "Another half hour and we'd be back in the Blue."

Now CalTech Johnny was awake and listening hard. Evidently there were two of us not in the know.

"What's this all about?" I asked.

"Me," said the Lemon Kid. "It's about me. I haven't seen my children in four years. Not since I got indicted for unholy speech and corrupting the souls of minors for my lecture on James Joyce."

Then I remembered. Lemon Kid was teaching college in the Red Zone when he fled to the Blue. I never knew exactly where. We weren't supposed to know too much about each other before we became Blue Blaze.

"But you're risking the mission," I said, not bothering to point out that he was also risking our necks.

"I know," he said sadly. "But a calculated risk. I planned it so you'll be in and out in an hour."

That's when I heard Dorie Dorie swallow a sob.

"You're staying," I said finally, looking at Lemon Kid. "You're not coming with us."

"We'll pick him up on the way back," Dorie Dorie said, not quite holding back tears. "We'll do a meet-up at International Falls."

"Is that what you told her?" I asked the Kid, then looked at Dorie Dorie looking at me in the rear view. "And you believed him?"

They were both silent. I didn't doubt that Lemon Kid wanted to go back with us. But the chances of getting across to Minnesota on his own weren't very good.

"We're almost there," Lemon Kid said quietly. But then he stared at his hand-held and frowned. "We're being scanned," he reported, the emotion of a moment before gone from his voice.

"Source?" I said, leaning forward to look.

"Behind us, a quarter mile."

"Configuration?"

"Consistent with a pick-up truck."

"Shields!" I cried. Lemon Kid switched them on from the panel that popped out from under the dash. If we were lucky the scanners wouldn't detect them at this distance, or their suspicions would become certainty. But if they got any closer, we might need the extra layer. The shields had some success repulsing bullets with sonic waves, but mostly they confused tracking sensors, and if an adversary vehicle got behind or beside us, the sound waves could discourage the human occupants from getting closer.

"They're moving up, faster," Lemon Kid reported.

"Increase our speed," I said to Dorie Dorie. We might look like a Red Zone SUV but we had considerably more horsepower. Unless our pursuers were specially equipped Red Guard, we could outrun them if necessary.

"They're matching."

"Okay," I said. "They're definitely pursuing. Evasive maneuvers."

Dorie Dorie nodded and glanced at the readouts. Now the GPS really was down.

"I remember this road," Lemon Kid said. "There's a class 2 cutoff coming up."

"Sounds good," Dorie Dorie said. "Which way?"

"To port. Right past that used car lot."

Dorie Dorie nodded.

"Once you're on it, be ready for a quick left," the Kid said.

A dextrous 45 degree turn and we were shooting down a two lane asphalt, coming up fast on a feeder road. "Starboard," Lemon Kid said calmly, and we were careening towards a huge parking lot, leading to an equally huge low building.

"It's a War-Mart," Dorie Dorie said with awe.

We'd only heard about these places but we knew the Red Zone was supposed to be full of them. War-Marts sold surplus from the Iraq, Iran, Syria and Mexico campaigns, plus a lot of cheap knockoffs. We'd heard the uniforms were becoming a Red Zone fashion. Under other circumstances I might have been tempted to buy some outfits for future missions-camouflage in both senses. But we weren't going to be doing any shopping.

"I had no idea they got this big," CalState Johnny said.

"This used to be a whole shopping center and office park," Lemon Kid said. "An electronics campus, some town houses, all gone. Looks like the road configuration is the same. I think I can get us through this."

The Kid was always cool under pressure but he outdid himself this time. Dorie Dorie was totally in synch. She made every turn flawlessly, including all the double-backs, as Lemon Kid signaled them with his finger. In maybe twenty minutes we'd run the maze several times, and we were out again, on another two-lane.

We were all quiet for awhile, getting used to a straight road once more, while Lemon Kid studied his hand-held. "We're clear," he said finally.

A little farther down the highway Lemon Kid made his hand signal again and Dorie Dorie turned down a side road, considerably more slowly this time. We were in a quiet corner of the woods when she pulled off the road. The Lemon Kid got out. He came around to my side. I got out, too. It was a sunny cold day.

"You're about an hour from the Blue Zone border," he said. "Stay on this road and you should be okay." He handed me a scrap of paper. "Memorize this number and call it if you have a problem. There's an active Irregular cell near here. They'll help you."

I nodded. "Good luck, Kid," I said.

"Catch you on the flip-flop," he said. I smiled. It was an old trucker's term from the CB radio era. We learned it at the academy.

I didn't watch him walk away into the woods. I opened the driver's door and told Dorie Dorie I'd start my shift at the wheel. She nodded and got out but didn't look at me. She had to realize there wasn't much chance any of us would see the Lemon Kid again. But he's a resourceful guy. You never know.

Once we were on the road, I glanced back at Dorie Dorie. "Before you fall asleep," I said, knowing it was unlikely she would, " I have to ask you."

"I know the regulations," she said. "Ask."

"Was Lemon Kid in contact with his family here?"

"Not the wife," Dorie Dorie said quickly and firmly, then more quietly, "the oldest son. He's on his own now. Lemon Kid didn't say but I think his son is a Blue Blaze Irregular."

I nodded into the mirror. "Do you know his Red Zone name?"

"No," she said.

"Not the son? Not the Lemon Kid?"

"No, neither," she said a little more forcefully. " I know nothing about his Red Zone life you don't know: he's an exile, he has a family somewhere near these coordinates."

"Okay," I said finally. "Get some sleep." We all knew more than I was comfortable with, but not even Blue Berets can sacrifice every bit of our humanity, or being Blue has no meaning anymore.

I looked over at CalState Johnny beside me. He was wide-awake and weirded out. I needed to calm him but I hoped he wasn't going to ask anything indiscreet. But he was still sorting out our little chase scene. He hadn't even gotten to Lemon Kid yet.

"So back there, was that the Red Guard?" he asked.

"Maybe," I said. "But don't call them that. Out here they expect to be called Homeland Security."

"Right," he said. "If it wasn't them, who would it be?"

"Could be just about anybody," I said. "All they need is a radio and some surplus electronics."

I waited for a joke about what they might have mounted on their gun rack, but that would have come from Lemon Kid. Didn't take long to start missing him.

Johnny knew enough not to ask about him. Not then anyway. Sure enough, we were in the Blue Zone in an hour. After that it was just a matter of time and miles. We crossed Minnesota, skirting Lake Superior, drove down through Michigan, crossed into Ontario and back into the Blue Zone at Buffalo, where we exchanged our minivan for a Janus, the new Detroit-made hydrogen hybrid. It was a little tense at first, but one long night me and Dorie Dorie got to telling Johnny stories about the Lemon Kid, and we all laughed a lot.

The next morning it was better. The three of us were especially gentle with each other, and CalTech Johnny even took a couple of turns at the wheel. He was quiet and thoughtful as we crossed western Massachusetts. Somewhere around Northampton he opened up.

"This has been some ride," Johnny said. "I guess I never really thought about the Red Zone much. I remember my grandmother telling me stories, about people with Blue States tags getting jailed on phony traffic charges in Red Zone small towns, and Red Staters being refused service in Blue State restaurants. But it never bothered me that I couldn't visit the Red Zone. I've been everywhere else in the world, and at home I've got the beach, the lab, whatever. I couldn't understand why anybody would even want to go to the Red Zone. But there's some beautiful country there. Different. It's too bad."

Soon we were cruising into Cambridge. We delivered CalTech Johnny to the Blue Blaze hq at the Harvard Azure office. Our contact there was a woman called Barton Clare. Johnny was hustled off pretty quick. Good thing we'd said our goodbyes in the car.

In fact the whole transaction was so quick I didn't know what to say. I just mumbled something about looking forward to a little shut-eye before we turned back.

"You'll be here longer than that," Barton Clare said. " We have to find you a couple of companions---male ones." She smiled at me. "We can't be sending two women across the continent. Talk about your red flags in the Red Zone."

I guess I didn't look too happy. "Hey, it's not so bad," she said, grinning. "Our world champion Blue Sox are in town this week. Or you could take a shuttle down to New York, catch a Broadway play."

"I heard Broadway's not the same since they lost the Red Zone tourists," Dorie Dorie chimed in.

"True," Barton Clare said. "It's not the same. It's better."

Dorie Dorie looked at me.

"Yeah, sure," I said. " Sounds good---a few days of R & R in the eastern blue."

Dorie Dorie smiled. She seemed relieved. I was doing it for her. Me, I could use some sleep. But we're always needed. You can't let yourself get too soft, and still serve your country in the Blue Blaze.

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posted by Captain Future @ 10:23 AM