Of course. He didn’t actually share a simulated room with Xavier Ofvalour. It was a recording that inserted the name of whoever wore the headset. He felt silly.
“Air Earth, a company born from the privatization of a government agency responsible for airport security, had already proved its business savvy by coming to dominate global air travel. It did this by allowing its economy-class passengers to ride for free, so long as they agreed to wear harmless neuroimaging headgear while they watched a series of ads for the duration of the flight. Air Earth made its profits by selling the data it gleaned this way to corporations the world over. Meanwhile, its competitors vanished, one by one, unable to compete with free.”
From thin air Xavier produced a bottle of surry wine and two glasses. He set the latter on a table that had also manifested without warning, and he filled both glasses halfway. “Care for some red?”
Carl reached forward. His hand passed through the glass, and he frowned.
Xavier wore a prim smile. “Just kidding, of course.” He sipped from his glass. “The captains of industry responsible for Air Earth knew that humanity was headed for global catastrophe. To say that doomsday had arrived would be inaccurate. In actual fact, several doomsdays had come all at once. The world economy was gutted by accounting fraud on a massive scale. Extreme weather events brought on by global warming hit with a ferocity unforeseen by the direst climate models. Peak oil production came and went, sending oil prices skyrocketing and rendering global trade increasingly less feasible. Fresh water grew scarce. Our antibiotics stopped working after a century of misuse, and deadly superbugs hopped from airport to airport, tearing through populations.
“Air Earth was not alone in this knowledge. Indeed, many people had known for decades what was coming. Why did they do nothing? Why drive knowingly over a cliff? The answer is simple. Worldwide, humanity suffered from an incredibly debilitating mental illness. And that illness was called government.”
Xavier paused to drain the rest of his wine. Then he picked up the other glass, stood, and began pacing the room. “Most people are stupid, and when stupid people try to regulate markets, they pervert and corrupt them. Politicians were both stupid and wicked. To be elected, they had to make promises to the public they couldn’t possibly keep. The better a politician could lie to the dull masses, the more success he or she enjoyed. In other words, the very worst rose to the top.
“Governments were bent on governing. They refused to allow the world’s clear-eyed elite to implement the necessary market-based solutions. And so disaster came.” Xavier stood stock-still and stared at Carl with wide eyes that pinned him to the chair. “Just before it did, the people of the world realized their folly. There was worldwide revolution, and humanity bucked its leaders, hoping to soldier on with their independence won. For a brief moment, blessed free-market anarchy reigned. But it was too late, the damage too extensive. Global civilization was lost.” The Hand hung his head. Carl found that his eyes had grown moist.
The great man rallied. “Air Earth foresaw this, and a decade before the fall it called a conference between the men and women of the world who, through their rigor and intellect, had risen to the top of their respective sectors. For two reasons, these elites decided to make common cause with the United Kingdom. One, its government was unusual in its degree of friendliness to their ideas. And two, it occupied an island with strict immigration laws, which made possible the formation of a new society. One that could be spared from those who would pervert its markets.
“Air Earth flew the elites it had gathered to the United Kingdom, and together they pooled their considerable resources in order to construct a sustainable path into the future. They implemented—”
“That isn’t entirely true,” another voice said, cutting through the simulation. Carl realized it came from outside of it, and he took off the headset. An ample man wearing a light-blue dress shirt stood before him, the shirt’s buttons stretched almost to breaking across his stomach.
“Hi, Carl,” John Anders said.
“How do you know my name?”
“I saw you on the news. Duh. Plus, I creeped you on Unfurl. I enjoyed the post about your breakup.”
“What are you doing in here? I mean, I saw a quote from you on the museum’s site calling it ‘packed with propaganda.’ They display it like it’s a testimonial or something.”
“It is packed with propaganda. But I have a lot of free time when I’m not on TV giving the truth a bad name. Besides, they let me in here for free.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Good for business. I come in, collect evidence for my so-called conspiracy theories, and when I write about it on my blog it raises the institution’s credibility.”
Carl furrowed his brow. Anders was a lot different in person from how he appeared on television. His voice’s hoarseness remained, but it wasn’t as loud, and there was no trace of the trademark fervor.
“What did you mean,” Carl said, “about the exhibit not being truthful?”
“Well, it’s true that governments were useless. But it isn’t because they interfered with the free market. It was because they were utterly compromised by corporate monopolies. Once corporations succeeded in killing the legal limits on how much they could spend on political campaigns, they took over completely. As far as they were concerned, society existed solely to serve their short-term profits. Solving things like global warming did not fall within the purview of short-term profit.”
“How do you know that?”
Anders shrugged. “Accurate information is freely available on the net.”
Carl thought about that for a moment. “Where?” he said.
“Oh, well, you probably have a restricted net package.”
“A what?”
“Sorry. They call it the Premium Package. It only lets you access a fraction of the actual net, and of course it’s a lot cheaper. They market Premium as free of inappropriate content, as only the major sites can be visited. They call the more expensive one the Indie Package, to make it seem like the extra content is of questionable quality, so why bother buying it? Except the extra content is the entire net, like it was intended to be. Open. Equal.”
“Ah.”
“The Indie sites take forever to load, of course. Their subscription to net neutrality is generally dismal. You wanna grab lunch?”
“Uh. Sure.”
They left the museum for a nearby café. “One of the few restaurants in Dodge where your LifeRank doesn’t go down if you loiter,” Anders said. “You can actually sit and talk after you eat. I’m thinking about your LifeRank, of course. Mine can’t go anywhere but up.”
Indeed, they didn’t do very much talking between ordering their food and waiting for it to arrive. Anders seemed wholly focused on it. With astonishing speed, he devoured a salami sub with extra pizza sauce, as well as two jelly-filled donuts, a croissant, a large bowl of soup, and a salad with garlic bread. Then he ordered more. Carl had a burger.
“So,” he said once he finished it. He wanted to break the silence, rather than just sit and watch Anders continue to eat. “How did you come to work for Xavier Ofvalour?”
The large man swallowed and wiped his mouth. “Um, it happened because I got the Indie Package, actually. They watch people who buy it a lot closer than they watch Premium users. They justify that by saying the Indie Package isn’t sanitized like the Premium one. But what they’re really nervous about is all the truth Indie users have access to, if they know where to look. I gorged on that truth, which caught their attention. It made me dangerous but also useful. So Ofvalour sent someone with a job offer. I accepted.”
“Why? If you think he’s deceitful…”
“What else was I going to do? Look at me. Physically repulsive. Obnoxious. Abysmally low LifeRank. Highly unlikely to be taken seriously by respectable members of Dodgian society. I was basically made for the job they were offering. If I didn’t take it I was doomed to continued failure.” An
ders took a large bite out of a second donut, this time not bothering to swallow before continuing. “I used to make documentaries, you know, before Ofvalour hired me. My magnum opus was a film called Tastes like Karma, about the inevitable collapse of Dodge under the weight of its own hypocrisy. It ends with everyone having to eat each other. Have you ever seen it?”
“Uh, no. Sorry.”
“Figures. It only got coverage once, when DBC played clips just to mock it, making jokes about how much cannibalism would add to your consumption record.”
“Sorry to hear that. So, in your current job…is everything you say on TV true?” Carl wanted to steer the conversation away from cannibalism.
“A lot of it is. I mix in preposterous stuff to make the actual truth look even less likely. They allow me a fair bit of creative license.” Anders wiped his mouth. “Listen, there have been people like me for centuries, playing the same role as me, whether they were aware of it or not. The elites love us because we’re clowns, and we divert attention from what actually matters. If some of what I say is true, all the better. Like I said: it’s my job to give the truth a bad name.”
Their server returned, and Carl ordered a beer. Then he asked Anders: “Did you really just happen to be in that museum the same time I was?”
The large man smiled. “You got me. I came to this town because I knew you’d be here. Ofvalour told me.”
“Did he send you?”
“No. I was personally interested in meeting you.”
“I can’t imagine why.”
“Because I think we find ourselves in similar situations.”
“Both working for Xavier, you mean?”
“Both doing things we know are wrong.”
Carl frowned. “I do what I have to do to get out of Dodge.”
“Yes. It’s ingenious, isn’t it? The way the system is set up. The most orthodox are actually the least orthodox. They’re the ones who want to leave Dodge because they hate it. You, however…you hate it here, but that isn’t your biggest reason for wanting to leave. You possess something very much like a moral compass. It’s battered, and mostly points in the wrong direction. But it’s there. Somehow, Dodge hasn’t completely destroyed it yet.”
I’m Schrödinger reborn, Carl didn’t say. “What about you?”
“I see the system for what it is, but I have no interest in leaving Dodge. Even on the Indie Net, there’s no information about the New World. All I know is that our society has been meticulously engineered to funnel us onto that Air Earth flight. And that makes me nervous. So I stay here and lead a very careful existence.”
Anders didn’t bother to stop talking when the server brought Carl’s beer. “Your friend Natalie Lemonade is the most dangerous type of person,” he said.
“How so?”
“She’s the type that can’t bear life in Dodge, yet doesn’t try to escape. Her type seeks instead to create change in Dodge. Natalie identified herself as that type when she came forward yesterday as the true SafeTalk blogger. And believe me when I tell you that they intend to destroy her.”
“Do you know Natalie?”
The large man froze—the first time he’d exhibited anything other than calm. “Why do you ask that?”
“You seem to know a lot about her.”
“Hmm. That’s a story for another time.” Anders stood up, then, wiping his mouth and hands. “You probably won’t be in this town for much longer.”
“No. SafeTalk is going to need me. I’m surprised they haven’t called me back already.”
“Piece of advice: don’t try to help Natalie. You’ll only get dragged down with her.”
“I don’t intend to.”
Anders chuckled as he placed a still-greasy hand on Carl’s shoulder. “I hope you get your chance to be a good person someday, Carl.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Though he’d decided on inaction, he couldn’t help watching in horror as Natalie’s character was thoroughly assassinated. No one mentioned Chuck Erything anymore. It was as though he had ceased to exist. Bringing him up would amount to admitting they’d made a mistake, after all.
Quite a large number of SafeTalk employees were willing to get in front of a camera and bash Natalie. They didn’t come up with anything very dramatic, by Carl’s reckoning. But each eccentric detail they divulged was another nail in the coffin of her reputation. Most of them appeared to be Youth Dignity workers. He guessed they were doing it to curry favor with Gregory.
The hardest part for Carl to witness was when they released the information that Natalie saw a therapist every week. That didn’t come from her lifelog. Before starting her therapy Natalie had gotten permission from her insurance company to pause her lifelog during the sessions. Instead it came from her GPS records, which were leaked by an “anonymous source,” who had probably hacked her phone to get them. Her phone records were also leaked, revealing several late-night calls to her therapist.
They made a big deal out of Natalie assuming another identity to work at FutureBrite. What surprised Carl most was that she’d managed to escape detection for so long. SafeTalk routinely checked up on employees through their lifelogs, and so did the insurance companies. They also read employees’ emails and other correspondence, and they analyzed their GPS logs, looking for signs of irresponsible behavior that might negatively impact job performance. To avoid that level of detection, Natalie would have had to be either very lucky or very well-funded.
Monday came, and he still hadn’t heard from Morrowne or Xavier. Maybe they were keeping him out of the ordeal for as long as possible because of his personal connection with Natalie. That was unnecessary. As much as he wanted to help his friend, he knew he couldn’t.
Having visited the museum three times already, he went to church instead, for novelty’s sake. Before going he drank a bottle of Sleep and set his smart clothes to the customary shade of pink, so anyone he encountered would know he was unavailable for conversation. Then he set out.
People reviewed the local church very highly online—the preacher’s sermons in particular. The sensor at the entrance communicated with his smart clothes as he passed by, and it beeped amiably. At the very least, this would improve his LifeRank a little.
Settled in a pew near the middle, with a squirming boy on his left and an off-smelling geezer on his right, he waited for the preacher to take the pulpit. The church soon bristled with people, and some were forced to stand at the back for lack of seats.
The preacher appeared from a doorway at the front, wearing robes that featured a collage of cats. When she took the pulpit, she raised her arms while twin screens flicked on behind her, showing Gawp’s logo. “Today’s sermon is brought to you by the Gawp Blog Network,” she said. “Gawp: ‘Your business is our business.’ Gawp has kindly offered a coupon code to anyone in the congregation who would like to advertise with them. Just enter the code ‘PROBABLICIOUS’ the next time you’re using their automated ad service and you’ll get fifteen percent off.” The code appeared on both screens.
“I had a dream last night,” the preacher went on. “Was it sent by God? We don’t know. Does God even exist? We don’t know that either. We can’t know.”
“We can’t know,” the congregation said. Carl was out of practice, so he mumbled it, out of sync with everyone else.
“In this dream I had a revelation, which at the very least was true within the context of the dream. I rolled my prayer dice this morning, and from them I learned the revelation has a sixty percent chance of actually being true. You all, of course, will want to consult your own dice on the matter. Anyway, in the dream I saw people all over Dodge being kind to one another. I bore witness to deeds that improved the lot of others but did nothing for the doer and sometimes even diminished his or her status. I realized with sudden clarity that all this could very well be abhorrent to God, that, indeed, it’s likely all moral acts are abhorrent to him.”
The congregation emitted a thoughtful murmur.
�
��Consider what is implied when we commit a moral act. What are we saying about the world when we do that? We’re implying that this world is special. That this world is somehow worthy of the sacrifices we sometimes make in order to improve it. We all do it, folks. Heck, I’ve done it. But is it what God wants? Let’s examine that.” She spread her hands. “I don’t need my prayer dice to tell me that God, if He exists, did not intend this world to be our final destination. I mean, look at it. Right? Life sucks.”
“Life sucks,” the congregation said.
The preacher held up her hand. “Maybe in the New World it’s better. I hope I have the opportunity to find that out someday. But based solely on what I’ve seen in Dodge, it seems this life is a test: of our intellect, of our stamina, of our rigor. It’s a test to see who comes out on top. And when we commit moral acts, when we sacrifice our performance in God’s test, that’s a direct insult to God. It’s also vain. It’s like we’re demanding to be rewarded right now instead of in the next life. It’s like we’re suggesting that we are the arbiters of good, not God. And I believe that kind of thinking is likely a huge piss-off for Him.”
At the end of the sermon, Carl joined the lineup for the offering slot. When it was his turn, he waved his hand over it so that it would register his biometrics. Then he deposited a calculated sum, just enough to give his rank another boost.
When he finally climbed up his hotel room’s access pole and opened the hatch, a wave of heat washed over him. Everything was turned on: the coffee maker, the heater, the electric blanket, all of the walls, the hot plate, the iron, the bathtub, and the bathroom sink. Water filled the bathtub and was spilling onto the floor, and when he tried to switch it off it wouldn’t work. Nor could he lift the plug to let the water out. It was locked in.
When he took out his phone, he discovered it was dead.
He ran back to the hatch. It had swung closed and was locked from the outside.
Trying to keep his breathing slow and even, Carl began pacing around the room, looking for a solution, trying and failing to turn off devices as he went. The walls were all showing scenes from various hardcore pornography videos. The moment he noticed that, the sound came on at top volume—a chorus of voices in booming ecstasy, or at least in booming feigned ecstasy. He wondered if the neighbors could hear it, and what they would think if they could.
Flight or Fight (The Out of Dodge Trilogy Book 1) Page 11