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head
scoffed in contempt. I should be
dead. Such was the power he held over her.
With a simple twitch of his finger and a light brush across her
skin, he’d reminded her that she was forever the property of the Guild . There was only
one way out of a building that had no doors, and she couldn’t
operate the portals without a microchip. So they’d trapped her
there, in a living death with a handful of equally mistreated
sufferers.
    “ You stink.”
Esteban snarled at her.
    Look who’s
talking. She didn’t dare breathe the
words.
    “ Take a shower
before I get home tonight, okay?” He waited in vain. “Okay? Answer
me!”
    She mustered the strength
to nod though he would never understand the effort it required. “I
will.”
    Satisfied,
Esteban wrapped a towel around his legs and headed for the showers,
light-headed from beer and the exertion of sex. With his desires
slaked, he turned his thoughts to what was waiting for him at
head-office in San Francisco. Yeah, you’re
gonna wish you never heard the name Esteban Garcia Valdez you
motherfucker.

    Chapter
2

    I picture the
reality in which we live in terms of military occupation. We are
occupied the way the French and Norwegians were occupied by the
Nazis during World War II, but this time by
an army of marketeers. We have to reclaim our country from those
who occupy it on behalf of their global masters.

    Ursula Franklin,
Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, 1998.

    Tuesday, September 14,
2066
    Sydney University,
Camperdown Campus
    23:55 Sydney,
Australia

    Samantha was giggling
uncontrollably.
    Jen
looked fearfully around and tried to hush her. “Quiet would you? You’ll attract
security.”
    One hand gripped her
midriff while the other wiped tears of mirth from the corner of her
eye. “Are you serious?”
    Jen nodded forlornly and
it started Samantha on a fresh bout of giggling. Jen doubted she’d
be ready to see the humour for some time yet, but merely watching
her friend was enough to draw a smile, despite her usually serious
demeanour.
    She waited for Samantha
to compose herself before asking, “What about you? You’ve never had
one go wrong?”
    Samantha shook her head.
“Not that badly. What’d you do then?”
    “ What else
could I do? I told him I’d think about it and portaled out of there
as fast as I could.”
    “ So has he
called yet?”
    Jen nodded again. “But
I’m screening them. I’d rather not speak to him again if I can help
it.”
    They crouched near a
vending machine at the front of the Faculty of Education. The
massive sandstone buildings were impressive at night, lit up the
way they were. Streamers of light licked the aging sandstone
blocks, attracting moths and other flying insects. The low pH in
the rain from the past few days was slowly eating away at the very
fabric of the building and granules of sand stuck to Jen’s skin
when she placed a palm against the structure. She dusted her hands
together to remove the grit. After portaling back to their
apartment in Tweed Heads she’d traded her oversized shirt for a
tight-fitting tank top. She expected the night to be warm,
especially if they had some exercise. She’d bleached the white
fabric to the point of fluorescence in the last wash, and she
thought it’d be wise to do something about it if they went ahead
with the plan.
    A rucksack of equipment
hung loosely from one shoulder. “Are you sure you know how to do
this?”
    Samantha rolled her eyes.
“Quit worrying would you? I know what I’m doing.”
    Jen wasn’t
convinced. She knew Cookie wouldn’t have a problem, but they’d
never tripped this model of circuit alone before. Electronic
schematics flashed across her mind whenever she closed her eyes. A
bridge here, power supply there, this board boosts the power, that
board formats the image, this one does the scaling, and that board scans the
transmission. There came a point where all the images blurred into
one and she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. She