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

by Scott Bartlett

  “Yes.”

  “Many consider me to be, and so when important information arises, they often entrust me with it. Several years ago, I received one such piece of information from the preacher of your church. Do you know what that was?”

  Carl gripped the arms of his chair, and a tingling sensation rushed through his limbs. “I don’t dare say it.”

  “Of course not. People are constantly claiming to be Schrödinger reborn, which usually causes them to commit strange acts that lead to their prompt arrest. You are intelligent, so you dare not proclaim yourself Schrödinger without proof. But I happen to know the truth. And I want to help you however I can.”

  Relief washed over Carl, leaving him calmer than he ever remembered feeling. “Thank you, Xavier. Thank you so much.” He paused. “But what will you help me to do? I still don’t know what a messiah should do. What is my role?”

  “Well, what do you think it is?”

  “All the preacher told me was that I would deliver humankind unto salvation.”

  “What’s your idea of salvation?”

  Carl didn’t answer.

  “Forget who I am, for the moment. I want your honest, unrestrained answer. This is important.”

  “I…” Even with Xavier’s blessing, he faltered. “I don’t think my destiny lies here in Dodge, but in the New World. I think Dodge is set up to effectively prevent any meaningful change from happening. So my divine duty must be to travel to the New World, where doing good is still possible.” Carl became aware that his face burned with shame. “I’m sorry,” he added quickly. “I know you intend to stay forever.”

  “Don’t apologize. I asked for honesty and you gave it. At any rate, I think our interests coincide. If you successfully complete the task of cementing FutureBrite in the public mind as a force for good, you should be able to leave Dodge much sooner than you otherwise could.”

  The bitterness brought on by last night’s dinner with Gregory had vanished completely. In its place, elation burst in Carl’s chest. He had the Hand of the Market on his side, gunning for him to reach the New World as quickly as possible. What could go wrong?

  “What do you think?” Xavier said.

  “I think you’re right,” Carl said, breathless.

  The Hand of the Market picked up the bottle again. “Shall we drink to it?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  His mind full, Carl took a detour on the way home to stroll around a walking trail. Returning home would likely mean a tirade from Maria about Natalie Lemonade, and he wanted to delay that as long as possible.

  The automated toll booth chimed when he paid the entry fee, and the trail’s gate opened wide enough for him to slip in, though it clanged shut immediately after.

  Ever since his embarrassment at the restaurant in front of Gregory Stronger, Carl had been working on elevating his LifeRank to where he thought it should be, the reps’ surveillance be damned. He would have to risk their scrutiny. After all, a messiah should have a high rank. How else would anyone take him seriously?

  To that end, he took out his phone and opened the Unfurl app, sharing his walking route (getting exercise), and his excitement over his new position at SafeTalk (feeling happy), which, of course, he wasn’t able to discuss (moving up in the world—making a difference).

  These offhand posts were generating quite a lot of activity for him. Plenty of people favorited them, showing support for him sharing his accomplishments, but he loved the comments the most: endless, jocular speculation about what he might be doing for SafeTalk. Secrecy was incredibly novel. Carl kept the conversation moving with cryptic interjections, and apologies for not being able to say more. His rank was slowly recovering.

  “Excuse me,” someone said behind him. “Do you have a moment for a chat?”

  He turned around. A smartly dressed woman was holding a microphone toward his face. A man holding a camera flanked her. The reporter’s blazer bore a badge emblazoned with the letters “DBC”—Dodge’s largest news network.

  “What’s this about?” Carl said.

  She held the microphone closer to his mouth. “We were wondering if you’d care to comment on—”

  “I don’t want to be on television.”

  A ghost of a smile appeared on her lips, and then vanished just as quickly. She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “One of your colleagues at SafeTalk’s new Youth Dignity Department posted today about seeing you enter a closed-door meeting with the Hand of the Market. Would you be willing to comment on the topic of discussion?”

  “I’m not able to discuss my work at SafeTalk. Sorry.” He turned away and continued walking down the trail.

  The reporter and cameraman followed. “It must be difficult,” she said, “not being able to discuss your work, when LifeRank rewards openness. Have you noticed a down-tick in your rank?” She moved the microphone next to his mouth again.

  “Um, no, actually, I…I can’t talk about my position at SafeTalk!” He quickened his pace.

  The reporter matched it. “Young people are by far the most unpredictable demographic. Many people hope that Mr. Ofvalour will push for stricter measures to kerb youth impulsiveness, and for more research into how to model their behavior, given they have the most aberrant social media profiles out of anyone. Can you comment on that possibility?”

  Her words reminded Carl of his teenage years, when he’d felt alienated and universally mistrusted due to this kind of thinking. He badly wanted to call out the reporter, and anyone else who pedaled such nonsense. But that would hurt his standing at SafeTalk. It wouldn’t do.

  “I’m leaving,” Carl said, unable to keep the strain out of his voice. “Bye!”

  Watching the segment later, which came after a piece about some locusts getting into a hothouse and destroying the crops overnight, he grimaced at how ridiculous he looked as the camera tracked him running away down the trail in his work clothes. He would have to stop geotagging himself in Unfurl posts.

  The idea of becoming a media personality made him nauseous. Between SafeTalk and the customer service reps, his life was scrutinized enough already. Right now, he just wanted to be left alone with his thoughts for a while.

  He walked over to the PlanITSmart thermostat to turn up the air conditioning, knowing it would only turn itself down again. The house was always too warm, and he hated sweating all the time. The thing took your “goal LifeRank” into account, which you had to represent accurately since it autoposted to social media. It had calculated that in order for Carl to achieve his goal, he would have to conserve quite a lot. When Maria was in the room it lowered the temperature to a comfortable level.

  He sat on the couch again and told the wall to show his Unfurl news feed, setting it to autoscroll, making a thumbs-up gesture whenever he saw a post he wanted to favorite. A lingerie ad appeared in his feed, which surprised him until he remembered he’d ordered underwear online recently for Maria’s birthday.

  He told the ad to play. Maria might check his lifelog later and catch him watching it, but he hardly cared at the moment. He wanted to look at something nice.

  The video showed an empty room, dimly lit. A foot emerged from a doorway, in slow motion, followed by a slender calf. The video cut to a woman’s naked back, approaching a bureau.

  The camera cut to a bra clasp being fastened, and then to panties being adjusted over firm buttocks.

  It flashed to the woman’s front, with her head cut off by the top of the video player. Light from the next room played across her taut stomach.

  Then the camera pulled out, showing her face, and displaying the name of the lingerie brand in cursive font across the screen.

  Carl gave a wordless exclamation, leaning forward. The woman was Maria.

  He replayed the ad. It was their bedroom, he realized. The ad had been captured in their bedroom.

  Taking out his phone, he dialed furiously, getting the digits wrong twice.

  Maria picked up after the fourth ring. “Hello?”

&
nbsp; “Where are you?”

  “At a friend’s. Why?”

  “I just saw your ad on Unfurl.”

  “Which one?”

  “For underwear.”

  “Okay. And?”

  It was common practice for corporations to use algorithms that scanned surveillance footage of public places, searching for consumers using their products. Maybe you were in a bar, and a beer company harvested video of you drinking their product with your friends and laughing. They contacted you for your permission to use it in exchange for a small sum. The LifeRank bump was the real reason people agreed. Then they would put the video to music, sometimes with a voice-over, and show it to your friends and followers on social networks. Seeing someone you knew using a product was the most effective form of advertising.

  But Maria’s ad had been harvested from their home.

  “The ad shows our bedroom,” Carl said.

  “Yes, it does.”

  “That means they could only have gotten the footage from hackers.”

  “I still got paid. And my rank rose.”

  “The hacker probably got paid, too. Which means he’ll probably be back for more.”

  “Well, why don’t you hire a geezer to do our security? You’re getting paid more now. And anyway, why are you assuming the hacker’s a he?”

  “Maria, all our friends just saw you half-naked. In our bedroom.”

  “So what, Carl? Openness is a virtue.”

  “It makes me feel weird.”

  “You are weird.”

  Carl paused for a moment. “What friend are you visiting?”

  “Jessica Livefort. Why?”

  He sighed. “I just…I want to fix things between us.”

  “You tried fixing things the night we went out to dinner with Gregory. Didn’t work out very well.”

  “I don’t like you appearing in this lingerie ad. You’ve never been in one like that before. All our friends, seeing you like that…”

  “Carl, you’re being extremely strange. But I’ll be home soon. Okay? We’ll talk then.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  He ended the call, feeling a lot better. She hadn’t even mentioned Natalie Lemonade. Maybe that had blown over.

  A white screen replaced Unfurl on the TV room wall. Black block letters appeared.

  “HOLD ON TO HER TIGHT, CARL.”

  Carl sat up straight and gave a wordless shout.

  The message dissolved, and another replaced it.

  “YOUR FAMILY PHRASE IS ALL THAT’S KEEPING HER HERE.”

  Then the wall turned itself off.

  Though he knew it was what the hacker wanted, he found himself wondering whether Maria was truly at her friend’s.

  She didn’t return home that night, despite her statement to the contrary. Hours later, when Carl got up halfway through the night to use the washroom, he heard a sizzling sound coming from the kitchen. He found the coffee maker on, having apparently taken it upon itself to make a full pot, which smelled burnt. Carl poured it into the sink and turned on cold water to rinse the glass pot, which cracked. He cursed.

  He was certain he hadn’t programmed the thing to make coffee in the middle of the night. Had Maria? Or had the hacker used the house’s smart system to make it happen?

  A chill stirred the hairs on his back. This felt like a warning. Or a threat.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Excitement shot through Carl as he read the message from Xavier Ofvalour. “You’re skipping SafeTalk today, Carl. You and I are heading to the PlanITSmart headquarters to use their monitoring technology to see whether we can’t track down this pesky blogger. I’ve already cleared it with Morrowne. Leave for work at your usual time, and you’ll see me along the way. See you soon, Xavier.”

  Xavier’s car was waiting for him on the sidewalk outside the residence block. The passenger door opened as he approached, through no action of Xavier’s that Carl could discern. He got in, and the Hand tapped a surface, causing a compartment to slide open in front of them revealing a bottle of surry wine and two glasses. He poured them a glass each as the car joined traffic.

  “Do we have the antidote?” Carl asked as he took his wine.

  “Don’t worry about it. You’re not at the office today.”

  As the car sped down the road, Carl noticed that every taxi they encountered pulled to one side so they could pass.

  He remarked on it, and the Hand nodded. “A little service CabLab provides to those with the means to pay for it. They’re always looking to maximize cash flow. The roads cost them a fortune to maintain, you know.”

  “Do you ever wish you had more control over the car?” Carl said.

  “Actually, increased control is one of this model’s features.” Xavier tapped another panel, which slid away to reveal a large red button. Just above it, in golden capital letters, was the sentence “Are We There Yet?”

  Xavier pressed it.

  “Not yet, Mr. Ofvalour,” the car said in a calm voice.

  Xavier looked at Carl with eyebrows slightly raised, and Carl nodded. They rode in silence for a while. He didn’t actually know where the PlanITSmart headquarters were located. Soon, he realized they were leaving the city. That made him nervous. With extreme weather a persistent problem, no one left the city without good reason.

  “How about now?” Carl said.

  Xavier punched the red button.

  “Soon enough, Mr. Ofvalour,” the car said.

  “Do you know what PlanITSmart does?” Xavier said.

  “They run the city’s smart systems.”

  “Correct.”

  Carl chewed on his lip. “I thought we dealt with the mystery blogger.”

  “We dealt with the first post. Now there’s another, and it’s gaining much more attention.”

  “I can’t imagine how. The post we buried used the best arguments FutureBrite’s detractors could marshal. The post was well written, too. Catchy headline, everything. And we buried it.”

  “According to this new post, our blogger is an employee of FutureBrite. We have on our hands a genuine whistleblower. Which is why I decided to involve myself directly.”

  He tapped the red button.

  “Getting there, Mr. Ofvalour.”

  “Maybe the blogger’s lying, just to make the blog go viral,” Carl said.

  “Unlikely. The post contains knowledge only a FutureBrite employee could have access to.”

  “Well, that’s grounds for termination at the very least.”

  “Sure. But first we have to uncover the employee’s identity.”

  “Do you think this could be the same person who stole all those documents?”

  That brought a wince to the great man’s face. “I hope not. If so, our blogger’s probably waiting until his posts attain a certain level of visibility before dumping the docs. We need to prevent that from happening.”

  The only outcome of today’s endeavor that was acceptable to Carl involved him being the one to uncover the blogger’s identity. This could be the best chance he got to impress the Hand of the Market and ensure he got his plane ticket as quickly as possible. He wouldn’t screw this up.

  The car turned off the highway and paused in front of a gate while a scanner checked the license plate and then their faces. The gate slid open.

  As they moved through the facility they began to encounter humans—at first security personnel, and then technicians. Many of them seemed to know Xavier and smiled or nodded in greeting. Carl asked him whether he’d invested in smart tech as well. Xavier shook his head. “PlanITSmart management and I have an understanding.”

  They entered a closet-sized room with what looked like an access pole in its middle. Xavier spoke a command, and the floor began moving upward. Carl gripped the pole to steady himself. He looked up and realized the elevator had no ceiling. Just an open tube extending up into dimness lit by intermittent LEDs.

  When they stopped, darkness surrounded them. “M
aps,” the Hand called out. Four giant walls lit up, showing the city at different resolutions. The elevator shaft was below them now, with only the pole to indicate the elevator was there at all.

  “PlanITSmart needs mountains of data,” Xavier said. “To stop traffic jams before they happen, to reduce waste and conserve electricity, to provide data to rapid response emergency services, and to calculate LifeRank. Without access to the data they need, the engines that run our society would break down.” He pointed at one of the walls and said, “Zoom.” The map enlarged an area of the city encompassing several blocks. Xavier moved his hand. “Zoom.” The map swooped in further, now showing a single city block. Red dots spread out all over it, some in buildings, some walking the sidewalks, others rushing by in cabs. Xavier pointed at one of the sidewalk dots. “Select.” The map disappeared, changing to a view of the street from one individual’s perspective. Information about this individual popped up in a sidebar: name, gender, age, place of work, active social network profiles, etc.

  “Thanks to lifelogging, technicians can manage the city’s systems without ever leaving PlanITSmart headquarters,” Xavier said. “With thousands of microcameras woven into every garment they can use residents themselves to monitor any problems that arise, without ever having to bother the resident. Then they dispatch autonomous robots to address the issue.” He raised his hand again, pointing. “Look,” he called. He moved his hand all around, the view following his every movement. “We’re able to see the resident’s environment from any part of her clothing.”

  “What if there’s a problem they aren’t able to see?” Carl said. “I’ve heard some people refuse to wear smart clothes.”

  “There are far fewer opt-outs than most people believe. In the city there are currently eleven, and in all of Dodge there are barely a hundred who don’t participate. Think about it. You can’t get an insurance policy without having a lifelog. Your risk of dying increases; if you become injured and pass out while alone, emergency services won’t know. And you’re guaranteed to spend life at the very bottom of the LifeRank leaderboards. A total disgrace. Plus smart clothes are free, while dumb clothes are quite expensive. No, Carl, opt-outs are on the extreme fringe of society.”