Hopscotch Read Online Free Page B

unwashed feeling in this body. He took appropriate medications, rested, recovered as quickly as possible. . . .
             
    The following day he swapped back with the body's original owner. After synching ID patches on their hands, Eduard drew a deep breath, flexed his arms, and looked out the office window.
    The exec was glad to have the flu over with, though he did seem a bit reluctant to give Eduard his young body back. Without potent, and illegal, drugs, it was impossible to force an unwilling person to swap, but Eduard wouldn't need to take such drastic measures. He looked at the exec sternly. “Our contract has been consummated, the appropriate waivers signed, and I take it both parties are satisfied?”
    The exec had relinquished his hold, and the two men hopscotched. Eduard took a deep breath into his own lungs, glad to be home again. . . .
    Grinning, he walked out into the streets, his credit account fat now. He decided to pick up a small bunch of flowers that he would deliver to Teresa in her dwelling. She would like that.

5
    Beneath the ocean on the once-abandoned offshore drilling rig, Bureau Chief Mordecai Ob leaned across his desk toward Daragon. Overhead, thick windows looked out on an underwater world of fish and waving kelp. The young man had been assigned to BTL Headquarters for several weeks now, and Ob had taken him under his wing, grooming him.
    “From here, we're linked to the mainland through computer and energy conduits,” Ob said. “And that's how we do our work. Unobtrusively, if possible.” He flexed his thick arms, as if relishing the feel of his own muscles.
    “COM infiltrates every aspect of our lives from finances to entertainment to the national infrastructure. Therefore, information about everyone's daily activities can be found somewhere in all of those databases. You need only look for it.” Unlike the rest of the undersea facility, Ob's office was plush and warm. An ornamental gas fireplace shed a cheery, natural light.
    Daragon stood completely rigid in front of the Chief, impeccably dressed in his new uniform. “COM is a vast place to search, sir.”
    The other man smiled at Daragon. “Ah, now you begin to see!”
    Like a computerized sympathetic nervous system, the computer/organic matrix performed the functions that everyone saw and used but never noticed: turning on streetlights, circulating the air in buildings, monitoring impedance paths through the airways so that traffic flowed smoothly and safely, maintaining stable weather patterns via climate-control systems.
    With each mental engram added, COM had grown geometrically in processing power, designing new additions to itself. No one understood the entire network; no complete map had ever existed. The computerized matrix did not spy on people, but the Bureau of Tracing and Locations knew how to use the network to monitor anyone they chose.
    Daragon nodded dutifully. “In the past year, sir, I've been taught how to take advantage of COM, but there's so much available data that finding anything in particular is like finding a needle in a world full of haystacks.”
    Smiling, Ob stood from his desk and led him into a metal-walled corridor. “Yes, and
our
people are those most adept at searching for needles.”
    The Bureau Chief took him through humid biological reconstruction labs, frigid computer galleries, humming offices, dazzling map rooms, image libraries bursting with information.
    Inspectors, guards, tacticians, apprehension specialists, saboteurs, data archaeologists . . . rank after specialized rank. Some operatives, skilled in evidence analysis, could detect infrared footprints or pick up DNA tracings, compiling physical clues to build a trail for Inspectors to follow. Medical technicians could unravel brain scans, the mental fingerprints of a specific person regardless of the physical body it inhabited.
    Finally, his mind numb with everything he was seeing, Daragon turned to Ob. “Can I inquire which