Invasive Read Free Page B

artificial intelligence one day take control of them and decide that we are the greatest threat to robotic “life”? GMO crops that don’t feed us and brain modifications that allow us to read each other’s minds and mass extinctions—a drain-swirl of improbable but possible scenarios.
    At some point, her mind quiets down long enough for her to sleep. But her dreams are thick with terror—in the darkness of slumber she smells that foul piss-vinegar odor. She smells the earthy, turned-soil stink of fungus on skin scraps. She reaches into a mailbox and returns an arm covered in ants. She tries to scream but the sound is caught in her throat. She tries to flail but her arm is stiff and her feet are rooted to the ground. Her family’s farmhouse sits in the distance. Somewhere a goat bleats, then screams. The ants begin biting. Ripping bits of skin off like pulling the wet label off a sweating beer bottle—bit by bit, in larger strips and curls, in worthless, gummy swatches. Until soon her arm is just bold vermilion—red and raw like a steak cut right from the cow. Lush, blood-slick meat braided with bruise-dark veins.
    Finally she screams—
    And screams herself awake. Here she is. In the airport rental lot. She sits up. Her hair is matted to her forehead with sweat. She looks at her arm. She’s got three scratches down the length. Nothing serious. No blood. Just raised red furrows where her nails must have done their work.
    She looks at the time. She’s running late.
    With a growl of frustration, Hannah gets out of the car and rescues her carry-on from the backseat. She’ll call the rental place, have them find the car parked in the adjacent lot. She rushes to catch a shuttle bus.

    The shuttle is slow. The lines through security are long, too long, and because she’s only a consultant with the FBI and not actual FBI, she is afforded no privilege with the TSA. She has to go through the cattle chute like the rest of the traveling herd.
    The plane leaves without her. They rebook her on an afternoon flight.
    She calls her mother.
    â€œYou’re not coming, are you.”
    â€œIt’s work,” she says. Her stock answer.
    â€œYour father wants to see you.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œHe needs to see you.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œNo, you don’t know.” A sigh on the other end. Mom’s voice softens a little: “Is it important, what you’re doing?”
    I don’t know. “Yes.”
    â€œDo you need to warn us? Is something going on?” Her work always leads to that question.
    â€œNo. This is just standard. It’s a . . .” Her mouth forms the word murder, but she has no evidence of that. It doesn’t even add up yet. She says, “It’s an ongoing investigation.”
    â€œYou didn’t tell me about last year. The plane.”
    â€œI didn’t know about the plane.”
    â€œTerrorists can hack planes and crash them into the ground? What have we done to ourselves, Hannah? We’ve made it all too complex. Too complex to live.”
    â€œI have to go, Mom. I’ll be in Tucson a day or two and then—”
    â€œDon’t say it. Your mouth shouldn’t make promises the rest of you can’t keep. We will see you when we see you.”
    â€œI love you guys.”
    A pause.
    â€œWe love you, too, Hannah.”

    The flight is a roller-coaster ride. Bucking like a horse, then dropping like the horse got shot. (Here, a sudden, unexpected memory: The way to drop a whitetail deer is a lung shot. Take the air out of it and it’ll fall right where it stands.) The turbulence doesn’t bother her, even though her stomach takes every bounce and dip a half second later than the rest of her. But all along the way she pondershow you’d hack the plane in flight. She’s not a hacker, so she doesn’t have the skills, but if she did . . .
    The systems are all bound