Devious Origins

CHAPTER 25

As usual, thoughts of my impending meeting with Dee proved to be a distraction as I attended my morning classes. I thought about blowing off my last class of the day, Philosophy 102, but class participation was a not insignificant part of the grade, so I decided against it. This left me a two hour break between my last morning class and Philosophy. I grabbed a sandwich from the cafeteria and spent most of those two hours trying to finish up the electronics project I had abandoned the previous night. I barely finished soldering the last connections when the alarm on my phone urged me to class. No time for a circuit test. I wrapped the components in bubble wrap, carefully slid them into my backpack, and ran out the door.

To be honest, Philosophy is not my favorite class. The unit on logic and reason was interesting, but otherwise I often found the topics too abstract, the arguments to fuzzy and impractical. It was so unlike math and engineering in that respect. Nevertheless, the discussions were often fun, and today was no exception. We discussed René Descartes' evil demon thought experiment from his Meditations on First Philosophy and compared it to The Matrix movies. We discussed solipsism, the nature of reality, and the definition of knowledge. The hour flew past, and suddenly class was over. If I hurried, I could catch the 76 bus in time to make it to the factory by 2pm.

I ran to the bus stop, barely beating the bus there. It was 2:02 when I reached the door of Dee's lair. The main door was locked, so I got out my phone to call Dee, but then the door opened before I finished dialing. Brian Claremont, one half of DualCore, greeted me.

"Hey Barry, thought that might be you at the door. Come in. We started without you, but you haven't missed much."

I followed Brian to the makeshift coffee tables where Liz Claremont and Dee were pouring over a variety of documents. They had arrayed various photographs and printouts over nearly every surface, the only exception being a space occupied by DualCore's tablet computers.

Dee looked up as I approached. "Barry, you made it. You never let me down." She nearly glowed with happiness. I thought for a moment she was just happy to see me, but then I recognized it for what it was. It was the joy of doing. Of problem solving. It was like the rush I get when solving a complex software problem or designing a clever hardware hack. I recognized it, and it was infectious. I wanted to be part of it. Some part of me wondered if this was her superpower at work. Maybe her I-Belong-Here field creates a general sense of inclusiveness.

Or maybe I'm just going crazy.

"The day is young," I answered, "and my capacity to disappoint is limitless."

Dee laughed and said, "self deprecating humor is a defense mechanism. You don't need it here." She turned back to Liz and pointed at one of the printouts. "I still think this is our best option. Anything else will take longer and has less chance of success."

"I still say it's too risky," Liz countered, "let us work it from the outside. It's what we do."

Dee shook her head, "This is what I do, Elizabeth. You've got your skills. I've got mine. Trust that I can do this."

"Is she still pushing for a frontal assault?" Brian asked. Liz nodded yes.

"Someone bring me up to speed, please," I requested. The words frontal assault had warning bells going off in my brain.

"We've found ourselves a hard target," Dee offered, "now we're looking for a way to crack it."

"It's the Freedom Birthright Foundation," Brian explained, "We've discovered they have an office right here in the city. Liz and I dug into that email hack that the professor talked about. Not many bread crumbs left to follow after all this time, but we found a few." Brian looked very self satisfied as he said it.