Shades

by Eric Dallaire

  My mind imagined the rocket’s cramped interior. Hours or days before, those workers had lived as grandparents, parents, sons, and daughters. Those shades would enjoy no rest until the internal timer programmed into their serum expired. They became the world’s beasts of burden, carrying humankind to its new manifest destiny in space. Without the need to breathe, they made the perfect worker to build opulent moon habitats.

  The rocket’s flight opened the endless blue with a long, gray zipper. Its destination, the pale moon, appeared to greet the oncoming space pilgrims. This scene stoked one of my familiar dreams. In my romantic vision, Vanessa and I embraced atop our home on the Lunar Spire, overlooking a sprawling view of the space colonies and Earth in the distance. Such thoughts fled too soon from my practical, terrestrial-bound troubles. With thoughts of my meager checking account and bills, my reverie faded, just like the fast disappearing rocket.

  We continued driving for three more hours, not stopping for food, drink, or fuel. Time crawled, since Spenner remained silent while driving.

  “I have observed an interesting temporal phenomenon,” Sasha said to my ear. “As you are unable to respond to me, I observed that my emotional subroutines perceived time as slower than my clock program. Perhaps this is boredom? Accessing a relevant quote from Henry Van Dyke…”

  “Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love – time is eternity.”

  I gave a thin smile, and nodded for more. For the next hour, Sasha maintained my sanity by reciting wisdom and beauty from Keats, Poe, Angelou, Dickinson, and Frost.

  * * *

  After another two hours on the highway, I wondered why Spenner chose to travel only on ground roads instead of flying along the aero-lanes. In all likelihood, he preferred old-fashioned driving to avoid the increased air traffic control government scrutiny.

  When our car passed Raleigh, North Carolina, billowing gray smoke on the road’s horizon heralded a multi-vehicle accident. To avoid the snarled traffic, Spenner spun the car’s control hand-pads hard, whisking the car off the highway for a small town detour. We barreled through the off-ramp, then entered the local streets. That choice proved no better, since dozens of ambulances with blaring sirens swarmed the local roads. As we crawled along the line of cars, a parade of white and red vans lined up outside the hospital, delivering victims from the accident. My eyes spotted two black sedans parked just far enough away to avoid detection, but close enough to scoop up any debtor that died on the operating tables. Ghouls, I thought, ready for a quick payday. Then Spenner broke his silence.

  “A lot busier than my last visit here,” Spenner said, motioning to Mercy General Hospital.

  “You there as a patient?”

  “Not exactly,” he answered. “Did I tell you about the time my old partner and I reaped twenty debtors in one week?”

  “Twenty? How is that—”

  “This was a few years ago,” Spenner said, “back when the IRS gave juicy reaping bonuses for their Most Wanted. My partner Daniel and I, we made a record run.” Spenner showed an actual emotion, a frown, for the briefest moment. Like someone had flicked a light switch on and off. Maybe he felt remorse, maybe anger; it appeared and disappeared too fast for me to register. This surprised me somewhat, since my research on Spenner showed that he preferred to work alone.

  “One of the targets was Barbara Billups, a patient at that hospital,” he said, clearing his throat to continue. “She owed a ton of dough from a bad real estate deal her late husband made. The bills she got in the mail gave her a stroke. I got a report that said she died, and I headed out to collect her.”

  Our car swerved around a long line of cars waiting their turn because of the detour. Not wanting to bother waiting, Spenner swerved into the side breakdown lane and sped up faster.

  “So I show up, and she’s in pain, on morphine, but alive. Inconvenient as all hell, right?” He looked to me for a sympathetic nod, that somehow I understood his feeling of irritation. Instead, his story evoked the worrisome image of my mother in her hospice bed, staving off death so she would not have to face her afterdeath.

  “At the same moment, I mean the exact second, I get an alert from my data-hound that my next target is on the move. The late Mrs. Ortega racked up a mountain of loans for her gambling addiction, and the debt fell to her husband. Instead of turning her in to clear his slate, the old romantic tried to flee the US to bury her in her home country of Puerto Rico.” Spenner paused to swerve around a large pothole, cutting off another driver to weave in and out of the one-lane country road. A rising unease in my stomach foreshadowed a dark ending to his story.

  “Where was I? Right, so here I was in the hospital and standing in front of the only living person on the IRS Most Wanted list and my next target is about to skip town. I had to think of something if I was going to collect them both in time. So, I hurried her along…”

  My eyes widened.

  “Wait--what?”

  “I didn’t off the lady, I just handed her the morphine controls,” Spenner shrugged. “I may have told a little white lie. That her debt was paid in full and she could, you know, pass along if she wanted. Then I showed her the button to override the drip delivery and she did the rest.” To hide the shiver that went up and down my spine, I shifted in my seat.

  “I found a record of the patient he is describing,” Sasha remarked. Her quiet tone hushed even fainter. “Barbara Billups. She was eighty-two years old, and owed 23.2 million dollars. Her death certificate from Mercy General listed her death as an accidental personal overdose on morphine. She’s now served six afterdeath years. Jonah, please increase your threshold of caution with this man.” Now feeling more comfortable with my company, Spenner looked eager to continue his tales.

  “If you thought that was funny, listen to what happened with collection number seven during that run. That reaping ended with me jumping on the nose of a moving Cessna. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself, let me start from the beginning…” While Spenner boasted about his daring interception of Ortega’s private jet, I mulled the survival odds of leaping out of the car.

  * * *

  Two hours later, the car’s communication console beeped and interrupted Spenner talking about his sixteenth collection. A blue-tinged rectangular display appeared on the driver’s side showing an incoming transmission. He accepted the call with a wave of his hand, summoning a hologram to form on the dashboard’s display. Green photon particles formed a liquid sphere, rippling like a stone thrown into a still pond. The light coalesced to form a featureless human head, bald like an old-style store mannequin. Then the image’s hollow eyes emitted a shaft of white light to scan Spenner’s retina. I tucked my right hand to my side to hide it and tapped my forefinger and thumb together twice, a silent signal to Sasha.

  “The message is a new form of advanced ocular encryption, patented by Goliath Corporation and licensed by a handful of governments like Russia and China,” Sasha answered. “It is the most secure form of communication to date. I will record the raw footage. Without Spenner's iris and retina gene-map, it will remain indecipherable.” Literally, the sender meant the message to be for Spenner’s eyes and ears only.

  I feigned disinterest in the message and looked out the window, though I kept watching with my peripheral vision. As Sasha predicted, the face in the digital message remained obscured and the audio scrambled into a random chorus of nonsensical beeps and clicks.

  “Yes, we have the target,” Spenner responded to the unknown caller. “We had mild resistance, nothing serious. Jonah handled himself well. No casualties.”

  More lower-pitched undecipherable chatter emitted from the console. An unbearable curiosity urged me to use my wrist-com and invoke an echelon, a pre-programmed digital function that coders used for a variety of different situations. The specific one that came to mind decrypted coded messages. Like most hackers,
the desire to crack a difficult puzzle or pick a secure lock felt irresistible. Caution prevailed, and my hand dropped back down.

  “I'm glad you’re happy with our performance,” Spenner said to the glittering hologram. Spenner spoke in a flat tone with no hint of real pleasure. His strange affect made me wonder about the accuracy of his responses. I focused my attention on his volume changes, body language, and any subtleties I could detect. His response prompted more unrecognizable chatter issued from the formless face. Then a thin smirk cracked his stoic face just briefly before he responded.

  “I understand. That shouldn't be a problem. That will be an easy job. Anything else?”

  The transmission concluded with the formless head uttering a final unintelligible string of fading mechanical sounds.

  “Thank you, sir, we'll do our best,” Spenner responded as the hologram burst into millions of smoldering light photons. He jabbed at the virtual console, and the car responded by accelerating. His attention turned back to me.

  “Our client is happy that the stiff's been claimed on time,” Spenner said to me. “He’s impressed with you and says there will be more jobs coming soon.”

  “That’s great to hear, thanks,” I answered. Uncertainty prevented me from committing to more work with him. There would always be more jobs for able-bodied and willing collectors.

  “So, back to my story, we’re up to collection number sixteen now…” Spenner said. “His name was Peter, the son of a wealthy ex-actor who funded a religious cult. Peter was a pretty-boy, like you, Jonah, but he got a stomach cancer that his faith-healer father tried to cure with prayer. They didn’t believe in science and they certainly didn’t believe that the dead should become shades. You can probably guess that the prayer didn’t work out so well.”

  As he resumed telling his reaping tale, our car raced down the highway and caught up to a light rainstorm. A few miles further and the storm worsened, sending sheets of rain sideways onto the windshield. Undeterred, Spenner maintained his high speed, even as we entered a treacherous sub-highway.

  “So we invade the compound to collect Peter once the cancer takes him,” he continued, making a hard-right turn around a curve. “And the damned place is filled with armed cultists.” He made a rapid turn at a two-lane country road, flanked by tall green hills. “I shoot my way through, but just before I clear the whole place out, Peter’s father gets a lucky shot and takes out my partner.”

  “My condolences about your partner,” I muttered.

  “Oh, it worked out,” Spenner replied. “Turns out, Daniel had a lot of debts too, so I made both Daniel and Peter shades, turned them into the local IRS depot, and doubled my take for the day.”

  As my mouth opened for an acerbic response, the car's accident prevention system slammed on the brakes and displayed the words: Warning: Crash Imminent. A herd of cows crossed the road at the same time as our car swerved around the blind corner. Lumbering alongside the animals, a lone shade, an emaciated elderly male, pulled a wooden wagon laden with bales of hay.

  “HOLY SH--” shouted Spenner, spinning the steering pads in vain. All four tires locked onto the wet road, scorching a black trail toward our inevitable impact. Our car swerved to avoid a brown heifer, slammed into the shade, and then came to an abrupt stop when the shattered pieces of the body jammed the vehicle’s axles. Our seatbelts stretched but prevented us from hitting the windshield. Shaking his head, Spenner tapped his fingers on the car’s virtual display to engage the car's auto-repair mechanism.

  “Auto-repair initiated,” spoke a tinny computerized voice. “Foreign object detected. Please remove to hasten repairs.”

  We exited the car and braved the rain to survey the damage. Billowing steam from the crippled engine stung my eyes. While we walked around the broken vehicle, the rainstorm intensified to a torrential downpour.

  “We need a jack,” Spenner said, crouching down to peer under the car. “Get the stiff out.”

  I nodded, slogged through the mud, and opened the back passenger door. Jebediah stared back at me with unblinking eyes and pupils shining a bright shade of yellow.

  “Get out of the car and follow me,” I shouted a clear and simple command over the fury of the storm and hissing car. After receiving their serum programming, shades possessed the auditory and mental processing faculties of a well-trained dog. He obeyed, exited the car, and stepped to me.

  “Lift the back of the car,” I commanded, pointing to the rear. Jebediah blinked to acknowledge the order. Bending down, he placed his withered hands under the corner fender and lifted the car without any complaint. Like a sturdy mechanical jack, he held the right corner of the car four feet above the ground. Veins around his neck and shoulder gave off a faint yellow luminescence, an aftereffect of the serum coursing through his veins. While his muscles bulged and the car lifted above the ground, my subconscious mind surfaced an often-asked question -- how the serum granted heightened physical prowess and sustained the shades for so many years. To hackers and conspiracy theorists across the datanet, this question represented the Holy Grail of mysteries. Many amateur armchair scientists speculated the serum contained radioactive isotopes. Other self-proclaimed technology experts hypothesized that shades converted sunlight into energy using a plant-derived chlorophyll compound. A vocal minority of digital pundits argued that symbiotic nanite colonies sustained the shades. However, the world would never know the truth, since the government protected the patented formula as a national secret. Spenner interrupted my musing with a rage-induced scream.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” he shouted. “That shade we hit is smeared ALL over the goddamn undercarriage. Looks like the skull and spine got lodged in the axle assembly. This will take time.” In what I can only assume was Spenner's warped sense of humor, he peeled off part of the flattened shade's severed hand and tossed it at me. “I'll need a hand,” he joked. The hand struck my leg and fell to the ground. He laughed and disappeared under the car to continue the repairs.

  I just shook my head while regarding the gory appendage Spenner tossed. The gnarled hand still held a diamond wedding ring on one finger. Even though the soul had departed the husk, I still made the sign of the cross and recited a Hail Mary in a hushed tone. Then my thoughts switched to the worry of more debt. We’d destroyed a shade, real property, and that would cost someone money.

  “I’m sorry, Jonah,” whispered Sasha. “I could have taken control of the guidance system and maybe spared that shade. However, I would have revealed myself to Spenner.” With the noise of the storm rendering anything under a shout inaudible, I dared a soft, muted response. Otherwise, her sympathy algorithm would continue to review alternate actions she could have done.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Spenner ripped more bone fragments from the car, causing a brackish liquid to flow from a punctured tank. With the foreign object removed, the auto-repair mechanisms engaged. Three fist-sized silver spheres detached from the engine block. They sprouted legs then skittered like metal insects towards the leaking gap. Then they emitted focused plasma beams from their antennae to cauterize the damage. Using my wrist-com, I tapped into the car’s computer system and examined the code governing the repair-bots. Back in my old military days, one of my main areas of specialty involved field cyber-warfare and counter-defense--a fancy way of saying computer hacker. After a few of my code improvements, the repair-bots moved faster and initiated the repair of the oil drum.

  Together, the three of us formed an effective team. Jebediah held up the back of the car. Spenner did the grunt mechanical heavy lifting to remove debris, leaving me to handle the technical repair.

  Despite our speed, a nagging feeling of anxiety bothered me. Why was the shade we struck wandering around alone? In all likelihood, its master would not be too far behind to discover us with evidence of destroyed property.

  “We need to hurry,” I shouted over the storm’s fury.

  Spenner grumbled his annoyance but seemed to
agree as he chiseled at the gore faster. After five more minutes of work by Spenner and the repair bots, we finished.

  “Repairs completed,” announced the computer voice from the car’s speakers. “The automobile is at 93% capacity and within safe driving thresholds.”

  I heard Sasha scoff in my ear. “Technically, it is 92.53%, well within safe and nominal driving standards,” Sasha informed me.

  Spenner jumped up from the ground and motioned for me to get Jebediah into the car.

  “Jebediah, put the car down slowly,” I commanded. Jebediah complied and lowered his burden back to the ground inch by careful inch. I learned from experience that clear instructions like 'slowly' helped avoid nasty accidents with shades. In most states, owners needed to take online courses and earn a license before operating a shade for any work. When the government first approved and legalized the use of shade labor for private use, there were many learning pains during the first rollout. Many business owners experienced firsthand how literal the shades processed their commands. Today, if a master said something like 'throw out the garbage', shades would comply. Twenty years ago, a first-generation shade's reaction would have been more disappointing, if not dangerous. The IRS scientists put in charge of the research had improved on the serum's original formulae, and subsequent rollouts had added more colloquial phrases to the command phrase lexicon. Even with those improvements, accidents from vague orders still occurred. A famous example that captured national attention had happened in Cape Cod, Massachusetts nineteen years ago. A wealthy businessman had bought a first-generation shade, an expensive purchase back then, to be a house servant and ordered it to: “Move my furniture, hurry up, break a leg.” That unfortunate disaster had led to stricter serum programming protocols and safeguards that prohibited direct or indirect harm to human beings by the undead. Despite those controls, common sense and good practice demanded that owners issue careful, direct, and literal commands.