When she answers and my Viseon wall flickers to an image of her face, I hiccup in midbreath and manage only to stare mutely at the screen.
“Wilson, you have to stop this,” she says. Her eyes are pained and intense; she’s dressed, but it looks as though she was interrupted while doing her makeup. She looks beautiful to me—even the unpainted half of her face.
I want to tell her how sorry I am, how truly miserable I feel for causing her pain. I want to tell her that my life has been a flavorless gruel but for the few moments I spent with her. Yet if my motives are pure—and I believe they are—I can’t squander this opportunity.
“I know, Mitzy. I just need a second, okay? Then I’ll be out of your life forever.” Then because for all my talk of pure motives, at heart I’m still a lonely man, I add, “If that’s what you want, I mean.”
She rubs her temples with her fingers—never the effect I hope for with women, but one I apparently bring out in them—and sighs.
“Wilson, please.”
“Just listen for a second, okay? Do you remember what I told you about Mars? The plants, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“Have you been watching the news lately?”
A pause. “You mean ...”
“Afraid so.”
“How bad is it?”
“It’s bad, Mitzy.”
She leans forward a little, eyes glassy with worry. “Define bad, please.”
“End of the world bad.”
Another pause.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t even know how to sugarcoat it.”
Mitzy swallows, and I see my fear mirrored in her face. “Is there anything we can do? To protect ourselves, I mean?”
I want to sow a little hope here, to give Mitzy a reason to chin-up, if not to trust me. But I know how cheap and transparent my platitudes will sound, and if these are to be my last words with her, I want them to be the truth. However ugly the truth may be.
“No. I’m sorry.”
She nods with bland detachment, and then begins to sniffle. “I have to go to work,” she says. “Don’t call me again, okay, Wilson?”
Tears spring into my eyes, but I nod my agreement. “Okay. Take care, Mitzy.”
“I will.”
“And Mitzy?” I croak. Her eyes are wet, but they abruptly harden.
“What?”
“I—I’m just so sorry. For everything. I never meant to hurt you.”
She swallows and clears her throat. “I know,” she says. “But it doesn’t matter.”
My screen darkens, revealing my grief-stricken face in its reflection.
When I finally crawl out of bed, the sadness of my dreams—of memories I thought to be buried and forgotten—cling to me. Even from the foot of my bed, I feel that the world has changed. My deadened sense of smell seems to have infected my surroundings. It’s as if the shine of life on planet Earth has faded into gray.
I guess that’s just what sadness does to me.
I’m like the walking dead all the way to work. I offer and return no greetings, not out of rudeness, but out of a near-physical inability to participate in the banal rituals of life. As I shuffle into my office, my light flicks on. My desk is clean, the carpet vacuumed for once. I realize I’ve glossed through my routine and forgotten my coffee. I don’t really care. I don’t really care about anything, to be honest. If the police marched in here right now and arrested me for Keith’s sins, I doubt I’d say a word in defense.
I’m sick, I think. Lovesick.
Tim peeks in on me; he notices my state, but chooses to ignore it. “Wilson, you gotta start checking your updates,” he complains.
I look at him through corpse eyes and offer a shrug so uncommitted that it’s only just discernible.
“Jeez, Wilson.” He stomps past my desk and taps my Viseon wall—possibly the first time it’s been used in many years. I don’t even turn around to see, but I don’t need to. The audio is enough to freeze my blood.
“—first appearance of the so-called blood plant in the state of Illinois. This particular plant was discovered growing in the back seat of a tram,” a woman is saying.
A man volleys: “Have any definitive explanations been released that might explain how the plant came to be there, and perhaps how long it was there before it was discovered?”
The woman again: “As we speak, local law enforcement and nexus administrators are working together to make that determination. This is a fairly small plant by comparison with those we’ve seen reported in other states, so the assumption is that this is a relatively young specimen—”
I’m trying very hard to care, and a part of my mind is abuzz. Yet the better part of me is in a thick funk that I can’t seem to overcome. It’s as if all the muscle I’ve worked so hard to put on is suddenly dead weight, working hard against me rather than for me.
My NanoPrint hums as a contact request downloads. I’ve probably got several in my queue; I haven’t checked them since yesterday. To drown out the sickness of my psyche, or perhaps the sounds of my collapsing city, I begin sorting through them now.
Two from Keith: one yesterday afternoon, another just before I walked into the office this morning—I delete these without listening to them. One from Tim about an hour ago—Wilson, I need you to get here ASAP. It’s important. And bring your implant reader.
A final one from Mitzy, just now.
My heart flip-flops so hard I could faint. But then Tim interrupts my thoughts before I can take any joy from the moment. “Keith is really getting busy, man,” he warns. “We don’t have much time.”
I feel my blood warming again. “What’d he do?”
“When I got here this morning, a GFL pickup was already scheduled. They’ll be here before lunch today. The invoice is already approved and accounting is processing it.”
“Dare I guess who approved it?”
“One Wilson Abby.”
This sucks, but we’ve been expecting it for a while now. “So what’s the panic about?”
“Got a call from our nexus consultant after you left last night.” His face is suddenly beyond grim.
“Uh-oh. What’s the damage?”
“With everything going on with the blood plants? The nexus admins are tabling all asynchronous programs and/or add-ons relative to perishable industries. IntelliQ is double-dinged.”
“What? Why in the world would they do that?”
“My guess is, they’re trying to avoid a panic.”
“What do you mean?”
“If a blood plant manages to infiltrate our food supply, nexus admins wanna know instantly that it’s happening, and they don’t want to risk the information bleeding out of their loop or lagging because discretionary processes are asynchronously eating up all the bandwidth.”
“What, so they’re shutting us down?”
“Pretty much.”
“Jeez, that seems extreme.”
Tim looks at me like I’m miswired. “Extreme? Were you not just listening to the news?”
“Of course I was. Kind of.”
“Maybe you didn’t hear: three people died in Illinois overnight from those freaking blood plants. One of them wasn’t even a drug user; they think it was in his food. And this morning, they found one growing in a fricking tram here in Chicago.”
I can put the rest together myself. The moment IntelliQ was put on hold, the future of IDS plummeted. Keith is pushing the satellite upgrades—even when he knows they’re useless—because it’s his last opportunity for a payday before we go under. As for me? I’m useful only as a scapegoat, so Keith is going to be falling all over himself to bury me.
Probably today.
“Please tell me you brought the implant reader.”
I sigh. “Afraid not, buddy.”
“Dang it.”
The moment Tim steps out of my office, I call Mitzy.
“Did you hear?” she asks without preamble.
“Yes.”
“What’re we sup
posed to do, Wilson?” Her face is screwing into a mess of fear. It breaks my already broken heart to see her like this.
“I wish I knew, Mitzy. I really do.”
She’s crying now, and a head pops over the cubicle wall beside her.
“You okay, Mitz?” asks the disembodied head of an older woman. Mitzy turns to her and nods. “Fine, Beverly,” she assures. “I’m fine.” The head disappears. Mitzy turns back to me and whispers, “Sorry, there’s no such thing as privacy in here.”
“It’s okay. Do you want me to call you later?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Are you sure? I can—”
“Please don’t go, Wilson. Please.”
My heart lurches. “Okay, I won’t.”
I’ve avoided Keith for as long as I can. I catch him just as he returns from a long lunch. I can surmise who he had lunch with—and who picked up the check—from the giddy grin on his face. I glance toward the racks and see that Tim’s watching through the window. He gives me a subtle nod.
“Wilson, just the man I was hoping to see. Let’s talk.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
As soon as I sit down, I feel my implant begin to hum—not the brief whir I’ve come to associate with gathering updates, but a long, grating buzz that tells me Keith’s up to something. Keith chats me up about nothing until he senses my patience is wearing thin—all things considered, I’m actually a little proud of him for picking up on this. Then, he gets down to business.
“Listen, Wilson, I guess you probably have an idea of what our future looks like at IDS, considering what’s happened and all.”
“You could say that.”
“I want you to know that I appreciate all your hard work, everything you’ve done to help save this company.”
My implant winds down and is finally silent. Whatever that was, it was huge.
“Did you feel anything?”
“Felt something. I don’t know what, though.”
Tim rubs his temples, eyes bugging in their sockets. “Man, that was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. He overwrote your proximity history.”
“He what? How?”
“I’m not sure how, but I know that’s what he did. I’ve been expecting him to try something fishy today, so I’ve had your stats pulled up since this morning. Yesterday, for example? You left at a quarter to five, but now your stats show you were the last one here, well after six thirty.”
“Wow. That’s a whole new level of slimy.” It’s a shame I’ve let myself forget that Keith has access to all the same technology as me—or Tim. “I can’t believe it’s even possible for something like that to happen.”
“Yeah, it’s baffling. Thing is, whatever he just did? It’s way above our capabilities here. He’s getting help from someone smarter than us.”
“What about your implant reader—couldn’t he just have gotten one of those?”
“Nope. Law enforcement readers do just that—they read. I’m not aware of anything capable of overwriting stats via an implant. That kind of technology is highly illegal, and it isn’t supposed to exist.”
“Fantastic.”
To my confusion—and irritation, in fact—Tim’s smiling. “You aren’t seeing the silver lining, my friend.”
“Feel free to enlighten me. I’m about to pee myself.”
“Let me start with a recommendation. You know your detective friend?”
“Who, Rackley? I wouldn’t exactly call him a friend.”
“Whatever. I think it’s time you gave him a call. But first, you need to run home for a late lunch. And don’t come back without that reader.”
I’m not hungry, but I obey.
At home, I scarf down a sandwich in less than two minutes. I pack Tim’s NanoPrint reader into my pocket and as I head back to the office, I’m inexplicably filled with hope. For the moment, I choose to forget the fate of the world tomorrow—because my own is on the line today.
At ten to five, the front door opens and a surly-faced man stalks past the receptionist and into Keith’s office. I don’t recognize him, but he has the look of a police inspector. This is it—Keith’s going down right where we can all watch and applaud.
But that’s not what happens. Rather, the man says something to Keith, who gestures through the door—toward me—with his chin. The man turns to look at me. His eyes are loathing and predatory—whoever he is, something tells me we aren’t destined to be buddies.
He closes the gap between us with startling efficiency; his legs are long and bony like a crane, adding to his predatory image.
“Mr. Abby, a word?”
“And you are?”
He produces a badge from his pocket and suspends it in my face, much closer than necessary. “Inspector Filmore.”
“All right, Inspector. How can I help you?”
He smiles with a giddy grimace cluttered with bad teeth. “You can start by putting your hands behind your back. You are under arrest.”
I suppose I’ve feared this very string of reality all along, yet I’m more dismayed than ever that it has come to life. That’s what happens when you dare to cling to hope, I guess. I’m given no opportunity to ask questions. I’m simply prodded past Keith’s office—he’s smiling faintly, victory proudly bleeding through his makeup—and into the parking lot.
Sulking in a police tram, cruising to the police station in handcuffs alongside this toothy man who believes me to be something I’m not, I realize that it’s all over. Both life as I know it and the life I’ve been chasing with all my heart are approaching the end.
I’ll be imprisoned.
I’ll never see Mitzy again.
All the while, blood plants are going to overrun this entire planet, and I’ll spend my final moments wondering what I ever did to deserve such an awful lot in life.
I’ve been in an interrogation room for more than an hour now. Though he was gushing with glee when he tossed me in here, Inspector Filmore hasn’t returned to gloat. He’s left me instead to the wiles of an old digital clock bolted to the painted cinderblock wall. With little else to look at, my eyes are drawn to it; not merely by the novelty of it, but by the spell of its steadfast pace. The pixellated digits glow faintly, seconds pulsing slowly from double zero to fifty-nine over and over again.
This is how they break you, I realize. With the clock. It’s a psychological weapon, relentless and impossible to ignore.
There’s a small window across the room, and I stumble to it with relief, leaning against the sill to peer into the bowels of the city. This part of town is dirty, and the view isn’t at all flattering. I wonder how long before the buildings are completely obscured by blood plants. Weeks? Months?
The door startles me as it hinges open with an unoiled screech.
“Thought you’d save me a trip, huh?” says a smiling Rackley as he pushes into the room.
“Yeah, you know. Was in the neighborhood, and all.”
“Really? My good luck, I guess.”
I’m glad he’s in a good mood, but I’m already weary of this back-and-forth. “Yeah. So, here I am.”
“Indeed.” He looks at me as if seeing me in a new light—though I’m not sure if it’s a good one or not. Abruptly, he realizes my hands are cuffed behind me and curses under his breath. He unshackles me with a practiced hand and we sit.
“So, I got your package.”
“Good.”
“Our techs are going over the data right now. So far, everything you’ve told me checks out. Can’t imagine how, just yet, but your proximity statistics have clearly been altered.”
I nod. “So what happens now?”
“For the moment, we sit tight. I wish I could just send you on home, but until this is fully resolved, I’m afraid my colleagues feel you’re a bit of a flight risk. You know, given your ... uh, history.”
“Ah, I see.” My eyes flicker to the dreaded clock, and Rackley smiles knowingly.
“It shouldn’t be long, though. Filmore may b
e a world-class jerk, but he’s no idiot. Even he’s gotta wonder why a multimillionaire would get his hands this filthy over a measly hundred thousand credits.”
If I had been drinking something just then, I’d have shot it right through my nose. I try to keep my cool, but Rackley’s well trained at reading people, and I know I’m wasting energy. “How’d you find out?” I want to know.
He smiles modestly and holds out his palms, as if to say, I’m a detective—how else?
“It’s okay,” he assures me with a warm smile. “Your secret is safe with me. Everyone has a right to his privacy. Even rich people.”
My NanoPrint has been remarkably quiet in here. I’ve begun to wonder if the building is wired to absorb—or even jam—wireless communication. I’ve been alone in here for a good hour and forty-five minutes now, and I’m getting hungry. At seven thirty, Rackley returns.
“You’re free to go, Mr. Abby,” he announces. Though his words should fill me with joy, everything about his demeanor says that something is very wrong.
“Everything okay?” I ask. “Keith didn’t fly the coop before you could nab him, did he?”
“No, no. We got him, no problem.” He gives me a forced smile, and then adds, “Frankly, we’ve all got bigger problems at the moment.”
Something tells me I don’t need to ask for examples, and the look in Rackley’s eyes tells me I should know better than anyone what’s happening. “Sorry I can’t offer you a ride home,” he says with a tired frown. He hands me a plastic bag containing my belongings, and then he’s gone.
Along with my gaudy watch, I’m surprised to find Tim’s implant reader inside—I guess I more or less assumed it would be confiscated, considering it’s not strictly legal for an unconnected civilian like myself to have one in his possession. Obviously, I assumed wrong.
That Rackley’s an interesting guy.
Tim’s waiting in the lobby for me. When he sees me, he cries out in joy and crushes me with a hug. His enthusiasm fills me with joy, if only for a moment. On our way out, he says, “Guess you’ve probably figured out what’s going on, even if you haven’t officially heard the news, right?”
The Pedestal Page 31