Read The Bar Code Prophecy for Free Online Page A

scanner,” the nurse pointed out. “On the other hand, some people like them because they don’t look like the old ones. It makes people feel safer.”
    “But is it really any safer?” Grace asked.
    The nurse shook her head and smiled. “They’re both perfectly safe now.”
    Once the blood was in the tattoo machine, the blue laser lights appeared once more. In an instant, the bar code tattoo was emblazoned on Grace’s inner wrist. She withdrew her hand, rubbing away the burning sensation. The nurse handed her a cool cloth. “In five minutes you won’t even feel it,” she promised.
    A strange elation mixed with sadness swept over Grace. It was done. There was no turning back from it, no more deciding.
    “It’s like closing a door on your childhood, isn’t it?” the nurse said kindly, reading the anxiety in Grace’s expression.
    “In a way,” Grace admitted.
    The nurse got up. She’d had this conversation many times before, no doubt. “You’ll get used to it very quickly.” She displayed her own bar code tattoo. “Soon you won’t remember how you ever lived without it.”
    As Grace headed toward the elevator, she was so engrossed in her bar code tattoo that she walked right into the tall figure standing in her path. “Dr. Harriman!” she cried when she looked up and saw who it was. “I’m so sorry.”
    “You’ve been bar coded,” Dr. Harriman observed. Grace was immediately struck by how concerned he looked.
    “Yes,” she told him. “I’m seventeen now.”
    His expression twisted into one of self-reproach. “Of course you are. How could I have forgotten?”
    What was he talking about? Why should he even know her birth date?
    “Dr. Harriman?” Grace asked.
    Clutching Grace’s wrist, Dr. Harriman examined her bar code tattoo. “Go home, Grace,” he ordered. “Right away. Wait for my phone call.”
    “What’s wrong?” He was scaring her. “Isn’t the Bar Code all right now?”
    “No, it’s not all right. Not all right at all!”
    This didn’t make any sense. Dr. Harriman had invented the bar code tattoo. Grace wanted to turn back to the nurse, to ask if she was imagining things. But Dr. Harriman’s grip was too tight, too real. His words were too urgent.
    “Tell me why it’s not all right,” Grace said, pointing to his tattooed wrist. “You have one.”
    “Mine is deactivated. And I wish to God I’d never begun this cursed thing.”
    Maybe Eric was getting to her, because the moment Dr. Harriman said this, she expected Global-1 police to come storming in, to pin them both to the ground. She expected the walls to cave in and the ground to shake, because that’s what listening to this man felt like.
    But none of that happened. It was just two people in the hallway of a corporation, one of them holding on to the other for dear life.
    “What do you mean by that? Please tell me,” Grace pleaded.
    There’s a good man, her father had said when she was a child every time Dr. Harriman had walked by. Great men aren’t always good, but this one is.
    “And now you! This has happened to you,” Dr. Harriman muttered. Then he came back into focus — not with any answers, but to repeat his instructions. “Go home,” he told her. “Go home as if nothing else in the world matters.”
    He looked around, to make sure there was nobody else nearby. Then he hurried off, leaving Grace standing alone, bewildered, and frightened.
    Grace’s natural first instinct was to call her father. Heading to the nearest inter-office image phone, she punched in the numbers for the maintenance department, desperate for him to be there. He would dispel her worries. He always had a good way of calming her.
    But all she got was the department secretary, who told her, “Sorry, dear, he wasn’t scheduled to work today.”
    Grace punched her home number into her droid cell. “Face. Screen. I don’t care!” she cried when Tilly’s voice came on asking for instructions.
    “Screen only,” Tilly