“Hello?” he whispered, and the voice that boomed into his ear made him wince, sending him scrambling to turn down the speaker volume.
“Carl! It’s Jim. How are you making out?”
“Jim…?”
“Jim Ofvalour! We met at the FutureBrite main office. Remember? Used to be a FutureBrite kid? No relation to Xavier Ofvalour? That guy?”
An image popped into his head of a neatly dressed young man, hair brushed to the side. The immaculate company drone.
“Oh, right. You.”
Jim laughed, apparently amused by Carl’s utter lack of enthusiasm. “How’s the caregiver life treating you?”
“Fine.”
“Glad to hear it, glad to hear it. Listen, I heard you met Jenny’s tutor, Rudy. He’s a close personal friend of mine.”
Now that gave Carl pause. “Really?” He found that very hard to swallow. Rudy had actually seemed to care about Jenny. He didn’t toe the company line as fervently as this guy clearly did. Carl couldn’t picture Rudy being friends with a sycophant like Jim. “I was told not to associate with Rudy anymore.”
“Is that right? That’s too bad. That’s really too bad. Rudy’s a bang-up guy. Lots of interesting things to say. You know, Rudy tutored me back when I was in FutureBrite’s care. I learned a lot from him.”
Thrills of excitement had begun to run up and down Carl’s spine, but he had no idea why. “Like what?” he said.
“Oh, lots of things. Like, for example, how important it is to keep a careful record of everything. Because if you keep careful records…if you document every little thing…those documents could become very important later on down the line. They could mean everything. Do you know what I’m saying, Carl?”
“I’m not sure I do,” Carl said, sensing a deeper meaning beneath Jim’s words but entirely unable to make it out. “Can you elaborate?”
“All I’m trying to get across is that it doesn’t serve anything to be disorganized. Because eventually everyone’s boat springs a leak. And when it does, you want to be prepared.”
“Prepared how?” Carl said. “Hello? Jim?”
But the man had hung up, without even a goodbye, which seemed uncharacteristic.
Carl had remained standing throughout the call, and now he stood in the middle of the office, the chair having spun around until it faced away from both him and the desk. His mind raced, spinning Jim’s metaphor around and around, viewing it from every angle. A leaking boat? Keeping careful records? What?
Would you paper over the leak with the records? Of course not. Almost all records were digital, nowadays. Even if they weren’t, the water would seep right through paper.
Then it hit him. Why would a FutureBrite kid, who’d almost certainly spent his childhood being mistreated by a rotating cast of detached caregivers, ever go on to become a loyal company man? Sure, FutureBrite had to love it, since Jim’s existence served as vindication. It showed the public they were doing everything right, and they even used Jim on a lot of their promotional materials.
But Jim had suffered under the company’s yoke for most of his life, and now Carl realized that he wasn’t the corporate drone everyone assumed him to be. Quite the opposite. Jim Ofvalour was the FutureBrite leaker. And he had just told Carl to go see Rudy.
It looked like Carl would be paying for the residence complex to open the special entrance after all, as well as the extra charge for CabLab to pick him up right at the access pole. He would pay Rudy a visit immediately, hours before he saw his first student.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Technically, Carl wasn’t violating Morrowne’s orders by visiting Rudy at two o’clock in the morning. His boss had forbade him to accompany Jenny on her tutoring sessions, but he wasn’t doing that. He wasn’t even really working right now, as his overnight stay at the FutureBrite unit had been self-imposed overtime to avoid paying extra for CabLab to take him home. Voluntary overtime, which he’d now decided to end.
Whether Morrowne would respond positively to such technicalities was an entirely different matter. Carl would prefer he simply fail to notice the excursion, and given its unusual hour, perhaps he would.
Rudy lived in a residence complex across town, and Carl wasn’t eager to find out what the taxi fare would come to. The driver barely spoke to him during the ride, which was typical, and also a relief. To think he’d once found CabLab drivers’ total lack of interest off-putting.
When they arrived, sloshing through the floodwater that also filled Rudy’s residence complex, the fare turned out to be pretty cheap. Carl took that as a good sign. It meant CabLab’s algorithms had failed to detect how important this trip was to him, which gave him hope that his superiors wouldn’t either.
“You wanna pay extra for me to wait and make sure you get in?” the driver asked.
“No,” Carl said. “I’d better not.” Just because everything rode on this visit didn’t mean he needed to break the bank. “You can go on.”
He leapt up to grab one of the handles, and the CabLab taxi sped off, twin wings of water fanning out behind it. Carl rang the bell.
No answer.
He waited a polite interval, and rang it again.
Nothing.
He cleared his throat. This was awkward. The ocean filling the lobby lapped against the forest of access poles—he supposed it was more of a swamp, now—burbling, beckoning, offering to ruin his shoes.
He rang the bell again. And again. And again. His grip was slipping. He switched hands and jammed his right hand’s index finger against the bell rapid fire, filling the residence above with an insistent staccato chime that he could hear through the hatch. Finally it swung open, revealing a bleary-eyed Rudy peering down in confusion.
“Let me in for Schrödinger’s sake!” Carl screamed, losing his grasp on the handle on the last word and plummeting down into the drink. He flailed with four limbs, unsure which way was up, certain he would drown, until finally he realized he could stand, his head and shoulders clearing the water’s surface.
“Hi,” Carl said to the tutor.
“Hello. Come in.”
With Carl’s sodden clothes and water-filled, no-doubt-ruined shoes, that proved impossible unaided. Rudy had to lower the harness, which Carl clung to in the cold water, unable to coordinate himself enough to strap it on. The tutor pulled him up handily, and finally Carl flopped onto the porch floor, shivering.
“What are you doing here, Carl?”
“Uh,” Carl said, sputtering, uncertain how he should phrase it. He decided to stall for time. “Aren’t you going to offer me some hot cocoa or something?”
“How about some coffee?”
“Perfect.”
The water had left the circuitry woven into Carl’s clothes intact, and as he settled onto Rudy’s couch he instructed them to start heating him up. His shoes, however, were done for. He should have paid the CabLab driver to wait.
The tutor returned with the coffee, not offering him anything to sweeten it. Carl took that as a bad sign, despite that he took his coffee black anyway. Rudy couldn’t know that, and his threadbare hospitality did not bode well for Carl’s purpose here. Neither did the fact that Rudy had not made himself a coffee.
Deciding to get right to it, he said, “I was speaking with Jim Ofvalour about an hour ago. He said that he knows you. He was speaking fairly cryptically, but I got the feeling he was trying to tell me I should come here.”
Rudy stiffened with every word, and now he stood up, glaring down at Carl. “I don’t know a Jim Ofvalour.”
A frown sprung to Carl’s brow. The tutor’s behavior was hard to fathom, given how caring he’d seemed when they first met. Then again, it was the middle of the night. “I believe that Jim was trying to insinuate you have some important information for me. Something that could have a positive impact on Dodge.”
“I have to ask you to leave. I am a staunch upholder of the markets, and as I see it your coming here falls well outside your responsibilities wh
ere conducting a report on FutureBrite is concerned. I don’t work for the company, and the only information I can offer pertains to the children themselves, and is personal in nature, not to mention confidential.”
Carl couldn’t believe this. Rudy was acting like the sort of person he’d assumed Jim Ofvalour to be. It was as though they’d switched bodies. “I have to admit, Rudy…I thought you were different.” Opening up the CabLab app on his phone, he ordered a ride home.
In the porch, as Carl pulled on the soggy mess that used to be his shoes, the tutor appeared in the doorway with something in his expression that looked like regret. “Your boss contacted me,” he said. “The day you came here with Jenny. He ordered me not to speak with you again, and said that he spoke with the authority of the customer service representatives.”
Carl straightened, meeting Rudy’s gaze, suddenly afraid to speak at all.
“He said any conversation we did have would be closely monitored and analyzed. And that a single misstep would land me on a prison barge.” The tutor glanced over his shoulder, as though doing so would let him see his watchers. “I may be making such a misstep just by telling you this.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The comments on all his blog posts were glowing. They lavished praise on SafeTalk, FutureBrite, Carl, or all three. He’d showcased only the positive aspects of the youth care company, especially with the editing his writing had undergone at SafeTalk. The caregivers all came off as valiant and selfless, while the children appeared unpredictable, violent.
Most people in Dodge were fully prepared to accept this narrative about FutureBrite’s charges. They already held a deep mistrust for the young, who were unrestrained by the incentives and laws that came with a LifeRank subscription. Their behavioral patterns proved the most difficult to model, and every commenter responded with relief to the news that FutureBrite had turned out to be such an impeccable corporate citizen.
Comments from the sort of person who would have pointed out that over seventy percent of FutureBrite’s clients ended up on prison barges did not appear on Carl’s blog posts. SafeTalk’s moderators would never let them through.
Maria hadn’t returned or communicated with Carl in any way. He hadn’t reported her to the reps for conducting her decades-long campaign of clandestine harassment, and it occurred to him that if he went to the reps now they’d ask why he’d waited this long.
The truth was that he retained a deep affection for Maria, which, absurdly, her absence had only increased. He worried about her, and her departure added to the bedrock of depression already created by his multiple FutureBrite failures.
On Carl’s last day, Jenny’s tutor Rudy came to the unit, a full week after Carl had gone to him. That was odd, and so was the fact that Rudy gave no indication that Carl had ever paid him an early-morning visit. Maybe that stemmed from his fear of the reps monitoring him. Better to pretend unorthodox things never happened.
Jenny was lying on the couch with her gaming headset on, but when she heard Rudy’s voice she took it off. “Hey,” she said to him.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said. He turned to Carl. “Can I speak with you in the lobby?”
“Sure.” Carl doubted it would please Morrowne, but he also didn’t care.
In the lobby, Carl refused to be the one to speak first, not knowing what was safe to say, and still stinging from Rudy’s corporate-mandated rebuke last week.
Rudy handed him an envelope. “This is a code for the educational video game you were asking about for Jenny. I was able to obtain an access code for her to use at home. I think the company that makes it hopes you’ll cover it on your blog.”
“This is my last day with Jenny.”
“Oh, really? That’s too bad. Maybe you can play it with her as a parting gift, then. Give the code to one of the staff afterward.”
“Fine.”
Rudy wavered, seeming torn between leaving and saying something further. Finally, he settled on the latter. “I think Jenny will really enjoy the game, Carl.”
“Yes. I’m sure. I’ll play it with her.”
“Good.”
Rudy left, and Carl climbed back into the unit, where Jenny had donned her headset again. He decided not to use the game Rudy had given him as an incentive for her to do homework. He’d already tried and failed at motivating her several times, and it seemed futile to try again on his last day. He would just let her play it. At least it was an educational game.
It took several attempts to get Jenny’s attention. When he tapped her on the shoulder, she finally took off the headset. “What?”
“Rudy gave us a copy of the video game you play with him. Would you like to try it out on the wall?”
“No, thanks.” She put on the headset again.
Carl frowned. She’d seemed to love the game at Rudy’s, but he supposed that might have something to do with the novelty of being able to play a video game during her tutoring session, any game. But here, she had access to games she enjoyed more. Ones with no math in them.
He activated the wall anyway. Maybe if he put the game on, the sounds would attract her and make her want to play it.
The envelope contained a printout that bore a site address and a long string of letters, numbers, and symbols. But when he visited the site and entered the code, it wouldn’t work. He tried twice more, in case he’d made a mistake. Nothing. Rudy had given him a faulty code. Carl sighed, crumpled up the printout, and threw it in the trash. He could call the tutor for the right one, but he doubted contacting him again was a good idea. The game’s makers certainly wouldn’t get a mention in his final blog post.
During his two weeks with Jenny, he hadn’t seen her display very much emotion. But at eight o’clock, when he told her he was leaving and likely wouldn’t see her again, she whipped off her gaming headset, jumped up, and ran around the couch to hug him. Ernest, who was standing nearby, raised his eyebrows.
“I love you,” Jenny said.
Carl opened his mouth and found that no words came out. Finally, he said, “I…I care about you a lot, Jenny.” It sounded weak.
“Can you kiss me?” she said. “On the cheek.”
“I…” He looked at Ernest, whose expression didn’t change. “I probably shouldn’t. I’m sorry.”
She released him. “Okay. Well, bye.”
“Goodbye. I’ll miss you.”
She returned to the couch and put on her headset again.
“See you, Carl,” Ernest said. “Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Carl said. “Thanks.”
The walk from Jenny’s pole to his own was less than a minute. Not for the first time, he thought about how strange it was that he’d lived so close to a FutureBrite unit all this time without knowing. Would Jenny remember him in ten years’ time? In five? Had he made any significant impact on her life at all, or would he disappear from her memory, just as she was now once more invisible to him?
Part of him wanted Jenny to become invisible to his thoughts again, too. He could hardly bear to think about the situation he’d left her in, which would drag on for years, until she was legally able to escape it. In the intervening time, FutureBrite would wring her for every last drop of profit. They’d no doubt have her diagnosed with some condition that required more medication. And, given how irresponsible her caregivers were in administering what medication she already took, it would probably cause her behavior to become more erratic, resulting in an incident at school. The smallest violation would get her expelled, which would mean a full-time tutor would be required, which would mean more funding FutureBrite could apply for, all while keeping Jenny totally isolated from other children her age, and on and on. As he walked through the lobby, Carl could see the years of Jenny’s life pile up like a teetering tower made from poorly-stacked stones, which could very well come crashing down the moment they released her into society, resulting in her deportation on a prison barge.
An unopened bottle of surry gin sat in the back of the cupboard over the
sink, awaiting guests that rarely ever came. Neither he nor Maria had ever drank much, but now he cracked it open and tipped it into his mouth, gulping the vile stuff until it began to spill and he had to stop. Then he took a breath and drank some more.
He began to cry. He was an intelligent man, so why couldn’t he help Natalie? Or Riley, or Jenny? He would save them all if he could, but he was completely incapable. FutureBrite had won, and SafeTalk. Morrowne had won. Xavier. Gregory. But people like Natalie, who wanted to make a difference, and people like Riley and Jenny, who got trampled on—they had lost. They’d been losing for centuries, and would continue losing. There was nothing anyone could do about it, it seemed, least of all Carl.
Once half the gin had disappeared down his throat Carl decided to visit Natalie one last time. The walk to her residence passed in a drunken blur, during which he constantly felt like he was about to trip and fall on his face. But he wouldn’t slow down. He couldn’t.
“I failed, Natalie,” he said, having somehow made it up her access pole, into the porch, and onto her couch. He held his head in his hands. “I failed you.”
“What are you talking about? What have you failed at? You weren’t supposed to try anything stupid, remember? You said you wouldn’t.”
“I’ve been trying to find a way to keep you off a prison barge. That’s why I suggested the report on FutureBrite…you must have heard about it on TV?”
She nodded, and through his drunken haze he saw tears in her eyes.
“I wanted to expose them for what they are. To vindicate you and get you exonerated. But I failed.”
“Oh, Carl. You shouldn’t have done that, and you definitely shouldn’t have talked about it openly like you just did. Just saying it is dangerous, even when you haven’t actually done anything wrong. Even admitting to the intention of unorthodoxy can hurt you. You know that, right?”
Flight or Fight (The Out of Dodge Trilogy Book 1) Page 20