Flight or Fight (The Out of Dodge Trilogy Book 1)

by Scott Bartlett

  Gregory glowered at him. “I hope you’re unlikely to take offense to this, but I’m actually a bit surprised Morrowne gave you the promotion.”

  Carl narrowed his eyes. “Why? You’ve seen my performance reports.”

  “Sure, but you’re always going to bat for Nutty Natty.”

  A searing invective sprang to Carl’s lips, but he bit it back. Gregory had just won the conversation, damn it all.

  “Who?” Maria said.

  “Natalie Lemonade. Do you know her?”

  Maria stood up, her face puckered as though she’d squeezed a lemon directly into her eyeballs. “I have to use the washroom.” She left.

  Gregory raised his eyebrows. “That was abrupt. Is Natty a touchy subject between you two?” Now it was his lip corners that curled.

  “It’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. “Natalie’s a friend. And she’s really not as…nutty…as people say.”

  “She’s incredibly unstable. They’ve been looking for a reason to terminate her contract for months.”

  “They can’t afford to fire her. She’s too skilled. You’ll see. We’ll probably need to collaborate with the Search Department, and she’s the best they’ve got.”

  “If she lasts that long,” Gregory said.

  Maria said little after returning from the washroom. When their food finally arrived, they mostly ate in silence. Gregory capped off his victory over Carl by insisting that he pay for everyone, which didn’t do much to improve Carl’s mood. Especially when the bill for Carl’s meal showed an unusually high amount, the restaurant having gleaned how important this dinner was for his career and inflated the cost accordingly. At least he managed to turn down Gregory’s offer to cover their cab fare home.

  They rode in silence. Walking across the lobby to their pole, Carl asked Maria what she thought of Celine.

  “I think she’ll get along well with Nutty Natty,” Maria said.

  “What? You think they’ll meet?”

  “They will if you go on any more double dates. Because you’re not taking me out anymore. The next time you need a date, try Natalie Lemonade.”

  She quickened her pace, and was already inside by the time he reached the pole’s bottom.

  Gregory had orchestrated this, he felt sure. He’d probably gleaned how jealous both Carl and Maria were from social media; it wasn’t hard. And he’d used Carl’s friendship with Natalie to ignite that jealousy. For some reason, Gregory wanted to cause tension between Carl and Maria. Why?

  Maria probably sensed she was right to be suspicious. Carl did have feelings for Natalie, and if their family names had been compatible he might have pursued a relationship with her instead. They weren’t compatible, though, so he’d never made his heart known to her. Nor did he intend to. Still…when he saw her, his heart leapt, and whenever he felt Maria was being unreasonable, Natalie filled his mind’s eye.

  Nearby, a young mother buckled her baby into a harness attached to the bottom of a rope. Her gaze caught Carl’s, but neither of them smiled. Above, her husband began slowly pulling the child up toward their entrance hatch.

  Carl climbed his own access pole. The hatch was unlocked, but the bedroom door wasn’t, so he took a blanket and a bottle of Sleep to the TV room couch. He was happy to not talk to Maria right now, and he quickly downed the beverage to ensure it stayed that way. After ten minutes or so of flicking through his Unfurl feed, he went to actual sleep.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “I’ve chosen to delegate full responsibility for the situation to you,” Gregory said, his tone cold enough to prevent meat from spoiling. “If it impedes Youth Dignity work, it will be your fault.”

  Carl nodded curtly, saying nothing.

  “Why don’t you get Nutty Natty to help?” he called as Carl made his stiff exit. “You said we’d need her.” Gregory’s laughter followed Carl out.

  A situation had arisen, related to a blog post critical of FutureBrite. The post was rising rapidly through online search rankings, and nothing they’d attempted was working to slow it. Gregory, still prickly over last night’s exchange, refused to help in any way.

  So getting Natalie’s help was exactly what he intended to do.

  He found her by checking her Unfurl account and seeing that she’d geotagged herself in the SafeTalk cafeteria thirty seconds ago, with the post “Anyone in Search want a coffee?”

  Waiting for her in the hallway outside the cafeteria, he saw her before she saw him. As always, the sight of her open, honest face made his problems seem to fade into the background and out of sight. But her wide-set, pitch-black eyes posed their own problems, often sending whatever he’d intended to say into flight, and causing her to study him quizzically as he cast about for his lost words.

  Today he had time to marshal his defenses against her beauty, and when their paths crossed, he was ready.

  “Wouldn’t it be great if there was an app that sent a notification to everyone in your department whenever you visited the cafeteria?” she said, juggling two trays filled with cups. She often began conversations without bothering with trivial things like greetings. “It would save so many people a trip down. Productivity would increase.”

  Carl suppressed a sigh, taking one of the trays and walking with her. This sort of thing was exactly why people called her Nutty Natty.

  “If there was really a need for an app like that, it would exist already,” he said.

  Natalie tilted her head to one side, which was not a gesture he would have performed while carrying hot coffee. “I’m always fascinated by which parts of the dominant rhetoric you decide to buy into, Carl. The markets aren’t static because they’ve met all our needs, you know. They’re static because the corporations want it that way. Innovation would disrupt their business models.”

  “Sure. Listen, I’m kind of in a rush. We have a problem in Youth Dignity.”

  “Oh? Youth not as dignified as they should be?”

  “A few blogs have posted roundups of the usual criticisms, and one of the posts is getting pretty popular. It made the third page of search results this morning.”

  “So? Less than one percent of people click past the second page of results.”

  “We need it buried. There’s a concern that someone will start a petition demanding FutureBrite become more transparent.”

  “What if I’m not interested in…youth dignity?” Natalie said.

  Carl stepped closer to her, lowering his voice, though that was a futile gesture. If their superiors wanted to hear, they would. “They’ll end your contract if you don’t help. They’re already talking about ending it.”

  Her eyes widened. “They are?”

  “Your contract’s up for renewal next month. The only thing keeping you employed here is your usefulness. You know that, Natalie. You do want to get out of Dodge, right?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Then tell me how we can push this blog post back down to the fourth page of results.”

  She closed her eyes and squeezed the bridge of her aquiline nose. “This blogger has a subscription to net neutrality, then?”

  Carl nodded. “The post loads after a few minutes, so it must be at least a mid-level subscription. Do you think we could just launch a sustained denial of service attack? Make the blog impossible to access?”

  “No,” she said. “Too blatantly authoritarian. We’re supposed to live in a free-market anarchy, remember? It would be obvious that we’re doing it, given we just created a department for the purpose. Listen. I’ll tell you what we do.”

  Alone in the elevator, on his way back to Youth Dignity, he knew the rational course of action would be to take credit for Natalie’s ideas. He should tell Gregory Stronger and their subordinates that he had gone to the Search Department and personally instructed them on exactly how to address this issue. It’s what anyone working toward leaving Dodge as soon as possible would do.

  Maria often monitored his lifelog in real-time, and if she saw him do something as un
conventional as letting someone else have the credit for a success, he would never hear the end of it. Particularly because it was Natalie Lemonade.

  But his friend’s job was in jeopardy. He’d been telling the truth about that. And she could use all the help she could get in keeping it.

  There was also the small fact that he loved her.

  He called an impromptu staff meeting. Gregory was content to lean against the wall nearby and let him do the talking. The staff knew by now that Gregory was actually in charge, but that didn’t mean Carl could afford to let them forget their place—namely, below him.

  “This blog post situation isn’t over,” he told them. “We need to stay vigilant. Continue removing social network posts that link to it, or even reference it. That will slow the blog’s rise through search results. In the meantime, we’re going to use some of the funding from Mr. Ofvalour to buy favorable front-page ads from Searchable for the keywords in question. But these are just tactics to buy us time. What will we do with that time? I’ll tell you. SafeTalk has partnerships with all the main viral mills—Buzzworthy, Gawp, Insider Life, et cetera—and we’ll approach them about publishing a slew of articles casting youth care companies in a positive light. This will be a double coup. It will manage public perception while banishing the blog post to obscurity. To pay for these articles we’ll just credit our partners’ accounts, which will make them feel better about any scandals they may have looming on the horizon.”

  “That should work,” Gregory said. “But I find it hard to believe Nutty Natty actually understood all that. Are you sure you shouldn’t go back to Search and run through it with her again?” This earned a few chuckles from the Youth Dignity staff.

  Carl felt a bit light-headed. “Actually,” he said, “all of that was Natalie’s idea.”

  Gregory didn’t look surprised, but Carl could tell he was, because he shut up for once. The rest of the staff stayed silent, too. He spotted more than a couple of raised eyebrows.

  Carl cleared his throat. “By now you’ve all been assigned roles within the department, and you’ve had time to determine whether you’re a good fit for them. So I’d like to open up the floor to anybody with any comments, criticisms, concerns, suggestions, preferences, questions, requests, remarks, confusion, stipulations, inquiries, anxieties, difficulties, observations, ideas, proposals, worries, statements, queries, interpretations, specifications, announcements, assertions, requirements, perceptions, pressing matters, propositions, appeals, opinions, affirmations, recommendations, preconditions, reservations, troubles, petitions, judgments, avowals, illustrations, entreaties, input, burdens, clarifications, complications, woes, desires…”

  Carl continued rhyming off synonyms until the group dispersed, returning to their respective workstations. He allowed himself a satisfied smile. Industriousness was pleasing to behold.

  He’d noticed that the rogue blog ran ads for several of SafeTalk’s corporate partners, and now he set about emailing them to request they pull those ads. Cut off the dissenting blogger’s revenue. Standard procedure. He’d only just begun this when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to behold Xavier Ofvalour.

  “Come,” Xavier said.

  His heart pounding, Carl followed him to Morrowne’s office. The Hand sat in Morrowne’s chair. “Have a seat.”

  Carl sat. “Where is Mr. Morrowne?”

  “I told him I had need of his office, without him in it. He bores me.”

  Carl chose not to respond to that.

  “I’ve been watching you, Intoever,” the Hand said. “I’ve been watching the way you’ve conducted yourself since becoming head of the department I commissioned.”

  “I take the position very seriously.”

  “I see that. You’re very thorough. Very…what’s the word? Orthodox. In fact, you’re so orthodox you’re nearly unorthodox. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “Not really, sir.” Though it reminded him of what Spenser had said, about his ability to appear orthodox despite his thoroughly unorthodox behavior profile.

  “No need to call me sir. We aren’t on a prison barge. Xavier will do.”

  “Thank you. Xavier.”

  “Take, for example, your willingness to use others’ ideas to achieve your goals, as you just used Natalie Lemonade’s. Using others to get ahead is perfectly orthodox. But you took it a step further: you actually gave her credit. So you see, you’ve taken a completely orthodox practice and carried it so far it’s become unorthodox.”

  “I see.”

  “I’d recommend dropping the habit of giving others credit. I didn’t become Hand of the Market by doing that. I claimed every idea available to me as my own. That’s how I became so revered.” Xavier opened the top drawer of Morrowne’s desk and removed a bottle of surrogate whiskey. “Drink?”

  “Oh. I have to watch my—”

  Xavier held up his hand. “My record will register the consumption.”

  “Wow. Thank you.”

  The Hand poured him a stiff one and handed it to him. “Do you believe in God, Intoever?”

  “Maybe.”

  Xavier pointed at him, a small smile on his lips. “That’s what I’m talking about. That radical orthodoxy. You replied correctly, but no one’s ever that concise about it. Everyone always feels compelled to inject some ceremony into the question. Want some more surry?”

  Carl was startled to see he had drained his drink in an instant. “Um, well, I wouldn’t want to jeopardize my performance as department head.”

  “You won’t. Morrowne keeps the antidote in the drawer here, right next to where he keeps the bottle.”

  “Okay, then.” Xavier poured him another.

  “Tell me,” The Hand said. “Does SafeTalk have partnerships with the television stations?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s no need. No market for it. The stations censor themselves.”

  “And why do they do that?”

  Carl considered this. “Well, um, television isn’t like the net. Normal residents don’t make television programs. Whereas online there are so many variables to manage, with so many people posting, and—”

  “The stations censor themselves because they are owned by me, or people like me. If an employee of a television station shows signs of endangering someone’s bottom line, he or she is terminated.”

  “Right,” Carl said.

  “So. Why is this man given so much air time?”

  The wall above Xavier’s head turned on, showing an overweight man shouting red-faced into a microphone held by a reporter. “It’s an outrage!” the man shouted. “They shuffle us from job to job, buying up our waking hours for a pittance and expecting us to smile about it. And for what? So we can fly off into the sunset, to the so-called New World? I’m not buying it. Tell me, why doesn’t Xavier Ofvalour want to follow us there? Or his rich friends? We only get to see the New World’s ad campaigns. Where will I really be when I get off that plane?”

  The man grabbed the pencil-thin microphone with one hand, bringing it closer to his quivering jowls. The reporter was trying to conceal a grin and not doing a very good job of it. “You know what I think?” the large man went on. “I think we’re all sleepwalking onto that plane, and I doubt we’ll like what we find on the other side.”

  “What will we find?” the reporter said, her voice bubbling with mirth.

  The man didn’t appear to notice. “Slavery,” he shot back, his expression frank and bland. “Oppression. A police state. We need to wake up here, people—”

  The wall turned off.

  “Do you know who that was?” Xavier said.

  “Of course. John Anders.”

  “Correct. Now, Intoever, let’s not mince words. You and I are in the business of suppressing dissent. And yet this man Anders regularly appears on a television station I own. Why would I let him get in front of a camera and question my integrity? Why would any station let him?”

&nb
sp; Carl didn’t know.

  “Would you believe,” Xavier said, “that John Anders is on my payroll?”

  Carl blinked. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Why not tell you? If you repeated it I would know immediately, and have you fired. You would never get to the New World, and any online posts you made about it would be suppressed by the very company you once worked for. Anyway. Back to John Anders. I pay John Anders to be the face of dissent. The red, ugly, wobbling face of dissent. And he’s good at it. Isn’t he torturous to watch?”

  The wall turned on again, but with no sound this time. Carl watched the jiggling jowls, the hands waving back and forth. The wall turned off.

  “That’s who I want people to think of when they contemplate criticizing the way things are done in Dodge,” Xavier said.

  “Is what he says true?” Carl said.

  “Doesn’t matter what he says, as long as his claims are controversial and slightly crazy. Not too crazy—not to anyone paying attention—just slightly. His LifeRank is bottomed out, of course. He’s not just the face of dissent but also the face of disrepute.”

  “He has a fairly high-level subscription to net neutrality, though.” Carl had been to Anders’s site, which loaded after a minute or so.

  “Paid for by me. He pretends to subsist on donations, but barely anyone donates. He often complains on Unfurl about his followers getting arrested by the customer service representatives, which is untrue, but it contributes to the image that’s been crafted for him.”

  “Does Mr. Morrowne know about this?” Carl assumed Morrowne had the office bugged.

  “Morrowne is party to the information he needs, and no more. That said, I don’t question Morrowne’s discretion. He knows his happiness is linked with his performance as a lapdog.”

  Carl shook his head. “I’m still not sure why you’re sharing all this with me.”

  Xavier spread his hands. “We live in a free-market anarchy. We have no government, except for the invisible hand of the markets. But I think it would be fair to say that I am an agent of those markets. Don’t you?”