The Bar Code Rebellion Read Online Free

“We will not use violence to achieve our end,” he continued, “but we can use the strength and energy of our minds to change our world.”
    Now they stood outside the White House waiting for David Young to emerge with Loudon Watersin tow. Finally, they were going to force their so-called President to give them some straight answers.
    “Hey! Over here!” Kayla and Mfumbe turned toward the familiar voice that had called to them. A short, heavy-set guy with dyed neon orange hair waved to them. August Sanchez was maneuvering his way through the crowd that separated them. His burly frame barreled through with the determination of a linebacker.
    “I thought you’d decided not to come, man,” Mfumbe said, gripping August’s arm in delighted solidarity.
    “You guys shamed me into it,” August replied, smiling. “And I was getting bored spending all day in a field trying to contact alien life-forms with my mind. It seemed like a good idea at first but, I mean, come on. My brain was starting to hurt. You guys were only gone half a day when I started to miss you. I tried to catch up, but you two move fast.”
    “We’d have waited for you if we had known,” Kayla said as she hugged August. He was their friend from high school and part of their original resistance group. Like them, he’d wound up in the Adirondack Mountains, but he had joined a group that hoped to contact outer space with their thoughts. Although it had seemed bizarre to Kayla, the people involved were sympathetic to the resistance. “Just before I left, I got a letter from Allyson,”he added, pulling an envelope from his back pocket.
    “Postman?” Mfumbe asked. Postmen, who were both men and women, secretly passed mail from one person to the next until it reached its intended recipient. It was an act of resistance, a way of circumventing e-mail that could be read by the prying electronic eyes of Global-1 and bypassing phones, which were also known to be monitored. The Postmen’s skill at tracking people was quickly becoming legendary.
    It was said that Postmen never gave up. They simply asked if anyone had seen or even heard of the intended recipient of the letter. Then they either passed the letter on or asked some more, and tracked and tracked until their letters were delivered. They performed this task with a dogged determination resembling religious fervor.
    August nodded, unfolding the handwritten letter. Allyson was another one of their group, their science whiz, always rational and sensible. Kayla thought of her now in her loose, flowing clothing, her blond curls like a halo around her face. For Allyson, not getting the bar code tattoo would have meant passing up a huge scholarship that she needed. It was her dream to study genetics at Harvard, and so, in the end, she’d gotten the tattoo.
    “How is she?” Kayla asked.
    “Here. Read it yourself.” He handed her the letter, and once again Kayla saw the twisted, angry scar on his wrist where he’d scorched off the bar code he’d allowed them to tattoo on him in a moment of hopeless despair.
    August 20, 2025
     
Hey Augie!
     
I hope a Postman can find you with this letter. I’m sending it this way because your handwritten letter found its way to me and I figure you don’t have a computer or would rather not use it. I hear Postmen are very effective in finding people; their skill at it is said to be really final level.
I sure do miss you and Kayla and Mfumbe. I almost miss Zeke. Still can’t believe he was working for Tattoo Gen. Don’t miss Nedra, I must admit. She was probably the one who convinced him to turn against the cause.
I wonder if Kayla and Mfumbe are mad at us for getting tattooed. At least you had the guts to burn your tattoo off. I’m stuck with mine until I graduate, and even then I don’t know if I’ll be able to stand the pain.
Speaking of graduating, guess where I am? Not Harvard as I’d planned. I’m in Pasadena, California, at the California Institute of