Blood Zero Sky

by Gates, J.

  There’s my elaborate fish tank, my robot cat, my leather sofas . . . and silence.

  My few friends are all working late and will have to wake up early for work. My father is in N-Hub 119, a place once called Mexico City, on business. I am alone.

  Outside my door, the security squadmen pass by, laughing. They patrol every building like this. They are everywhere. I could invite them in, I suppose, give them a drink, share a little cake. If one of them was a woman, maybe . . .

  I walk to the fridge and take out a cupcake purchased especially for the occasion. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

  But why invite the squadmen in? They aren’t my friends. They don’t know me, and I don’t like them.

  Nobody knows me, whispers a voice in my mind.

  And that’s true, no one does. Some vices do that to a girl.

  So I sit and eat my cake alone. I try not to think of Randal’s dire prediction of the Company’s coming loss.

  I put on my N-Elita silk pajamas, wash my face, say Jimmy Shaw’s prayer for health, wealth, and power, and go to bed.

  So ends my twenty-fifth birthday.

  ~~~

  The next day.

  I sit at the conference table with my team, dreaming up ways to make people buy things they don’t need. It’s not a difficult task by any means. The way it works is simple: we only produce a few models of each product, and we promote them so much before they come out that everyone goes out and buys them instantly, no matter the cost.

  The challenge, as my father confided to me on the day I was hired into the N-Corp marketing department, is that, truthfully, N-Corp products aren’t that exciting. We’re the only company operating in the Western Hemisphere, and that means that there are no other companies’ products on the market for us to compete with. Since there’s no competition, there’s no financial incentive for us to innovate. So this new IC is no better than the last one, except that it’s green instead of silver, it has a slightly narrower screen, and you can strap it to your wrist. Of course, the fellows at Cranton are coming up with new stuff every day, but most of it is never developed, or if it does get developed, it’s never brought to the market.

  “Just enough to keep the lemmings entertained,” was my father’s axiom when it came to rolling out new products. “It’s not the product they need, May, it’s the need itself. They need to need something. It could be a sports car or a can of peanuts. It’s the distraction they crave.”

  To make that distraction work to the fullest, my mission is to make the new product, whatever it may be, more than just a necessity; it must be an obsession. The desire for it must eclipse all else in the consumer’s life.

  Easy.

  Ads appear on the imagers located inside your shower, on the doors of public toilet stalls, on the surface of your desk at work, inside commuter trains and elevators, in shopping plazas, inside your car, in the backs of the pews at church, in street signs, on the screen of your IC, in the living room of your apartment, in the ceiling above your bed, on the exterior of every building, of course, and in a million other places. The line between thought and suggestion is forever and irrevocably erased—that’s my job.

  Today, my marketing team and I sit in suede chairs around a huge ebony and mother-of-pearl inlaid conference table. A giant crucifix hangs on the far wall. I’m almost falling asleep as my team brainstorms about the launch plan for the new IC.

  They’ll be mandatory equipment for all Company employees by the end of the year, but those who want to buy it now can do so—at a 300 percent markup.

  My job is to make everyone want it now.

  “She should hold the IC next to her bra, like this,” says Miller, a pasty young man in a wrinkled tie.

  The screen at the center of the table lights up and displays Miller’s sloppy sketch of a ferocious-looking, half-naked girl standing before a fireworks-laced night sky, holding her IC. On the top right-hand corner of the sketch, the N-Corp logo with its big, black cross appears.

  “Yeah,” Dagny says thoughtfully, “I like that, but we need a man in there, too. And text. Something like: ‘I know what you’re thinking.’”

  “Not bad,” Jeff says.

  “That’s good,” Kate agrees.

  “Is the guy shirtless?” Carter asks.

  “Of course,” Dagny scoffs.

  “Does he have an IC, too? Or are they both holding on to hers? Maybe he’s looking at her screen—you know, trying to see what she’s uploading,” Miller offers.

  “Or should he have his own? Maybe they’re back-to-back, both engrossed. Like the IC is so fascinating, they don’t even notice each other,” Carter says.

  Dagny shakes her head. “One IC says luxury. It says there aren’t enough ICs for everyone, so if you’re lucky enough to get your hands on one, you’d better snatch it up.”

  “What do you think, May?” asks Miller, turning his bloodshot, sleep-deprived eyes to me.

  Dagny watches me expectantly, too. Her face is round and plump, and the cross under her left eyes makes her features look strangely proportioned, as if she’s just stepped out of a painting by Picasso. Or maybe I just need more coffee.

  “Hmmm,” I yawn. “What market is this going to be focused on again?”

  “Mostly prime time imager—and we were thinking of using a variation of it as the tag during The Jimmy Shaw Hour in Christ,” Dagny replies.

  I nod, but before I can speak, there’s a din in the hallway, and we all look out the glass wall of the conference room. Four members of the security squad march down the hallway toward us. As they approach, the white letters “HR” stitched on the chest of their black military uniforms are clearly visible.

  “Uh-oh,” Carter says under his breath.

  “Who do you think it is this time?” Jeff whispers.

  “You,” Miller jokes, then cackles quietly at his own joke.

  “Shut up,” I bark. The squadmen are coming right toward us.

  The glass conference room doors slide open as they approach, and the leader steps forward. “Dagny Marot?” he asks.

  For the first time since the squadmen appeared, I notice Dagny’s demeanor. Her face pale, she stares down at the screen of the IC clutched in her trembling hands.

  “Dagny Marot?” the squad member asks again, and when she doesn’t respond, he nods to one of the other men. “Scan her cross.”

  The squad member lifts his IC—a slightly larger, more durable version of the one I carry. It beeps.

  “Identity confirmed,” the squad member says. “Dagny Marot, you are hereby repossessed by N-Corp.”

  Dagny is on her feet now, her chair tipping over as she backpedals toward the window.

  “No,” she says. “I’m working on the IC launch. I’m scheduled for a raise. And I’m saving credit. I moved into a smaller apartment. I—I—you need me! Tell them, May!”

  The squadmen grab Dagny. She fights for a moment, then groans pitifully and goes limp as the squadmen put the handcuffs on her and lead her from the room. As they depart, the lead squad member’s speech drones on: “. . . Per your employment contract, you will be incarcerated in a Company work camp until your debt load has been reduced to a satisfactory level. If you should fail to—”

  The doors slip shut behind them. Through the glass, my team and I watch as they drag Dagny away down the hall, leaving a tense silence in their wake. A few curious heads poke out of the cubicles they pass before quickly disappearing again.

  “Dammit,” I murmur. One less employee means one thing: more work for the rest of us. And Dagny was probably the strongest member of my team—although apparently HR’s Profitability Department didn’t think so.

  “I can’t believe they got Dagny. She has to have a higher credit limit than me,” Carter muses nervously.

  “P
retty skirt. I wonder if they’ll let her take it to the work camp,” Kate says.

  “Dagny was good. It’s going to be rough without her,” Miller says, then looks at me. “What do you think, May?”

  Instantly, every set of eyes in the room snaps toward me, the CEO’s daughter. I feel their stares burning into me, but I can find no words.

  “One IC, like they’re fighting over it,” I manage to say finally, tapping the screen in the middle of the table with my finger. “And put them both in metal swimsuits or something—him in a Speedo, her in a bikini. Make the fireworks green to match the color of the IC. Do a couple of different mock-ups and send them to Shaw’s people, see what they think. ”

  The members of my team all squint down at the ICs in their hands for a moment, letting their crosses translate their thoughts into text, which will be saved for them to refer to later.

  “Anything else?” I ask gruffly, and they shake their heads, all of them carefully avoiding eye contact with me. “Good. Thirty minutes for lunch. Go.”

  After everyone gets up and exits, I rise and linger for a moment, pacing the room. There’s an uncomfortable pain in my chest, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s causing it. Certainly, it’s not the fact that Dagny was repossessed. Human Resources is constantly evaluating all N-Corp employees. In the event that a person’s debt load (plus interest) outstrips the profit they generate the Company, then they’re designated an “unprofitable.” They get relieved of their possessions and transferred to a work camp. It’s a perfectly natural and reasonable solution. As my father has always pointed out, the greatest crime of all would be to let lazy and greedy people leach off Company profits and mess up the bottom line. With a repossession, the Company gets paid back the money they’ve loaned out, and the worker gets to atone for his or her lapse in productivity. It’s a perfect trade. Problem and solution.

  So why is my heart racing? Why do I feel like I’m about to throw up?

  I pace for a moment longer. The feeling has almost passed when I notice something under Dagny’s chair and pick it up. It’s one of her shoes, a charcoal-colored N-Splash Pump, fall collection, the one with the ivory heel. Not a bad shoe—for a mid-credit-level tie-girl like Dagny. I drop it in the trash as I head out of the room. After all, she won’t be needing it any time soon.

  Walking briskly down the hall, I’m feeling much better, as if throwing out that shoe got rid of whatever was causing my discomfort. And why not? I have nothing to be upset about. HR will send me a replacement employee automatically within two weeks. There are people all over the world who would love to step into a glamorous, mid-credit-level job like Dagny’s. And people get repossessed every day.

  The real question is, what should I have for lunch, baked ziti at N-Roma or stir-fry at N-Orient Café?

  ~~~

  I return here over and over again, to this long-ago place.

  A breeze cuts the night, breathing into the white sails, filling them. The air is warm across my face. The only sounds are the slight rustle of the jib and the whisper of the hull through the water. Dad’s cigar smoke smells sweet, comforting. If he’s still smoking, that means I must only be—what? Nine? Ten years old?

  He sits, one lax hand on the boat’s oversized steering wheel, the other gripping his cell phone—this is before introduction of the ICs. His voice is deep and gravelly, but there’s something comforting in its sonorous rumble.

  “Jimmy, mark my words. The shareholders mean nothing. They’ll follow us wherever we lead them. The merger is happening. . . . No, like I said, I’ll be back in the office on Wednesday. You’re going to take care of this. You’re the one with the golden tongue, buddy. . . . What? You’re goddamned right—or, G. D. right, I mean. And you can tell Yao I’ll be back on Wednesday, not a minute sooner. I’m teaching May to sail. . . . Of course she can sail; she’s my daughter! She’s a goddamned conquistador!”

  The dark shape of his body turns toward me for a second, then back.

  “My shrink said I should spend some quality time with her. I told him, ‘Bullshit, my little girl is doing fine—more than fine—she’s going to be the goddamn—er, G. D. president of the Company. She’s going to own us all one of these days!’ But here I am anyway, and here I’ll stay until Wednesday. You tell them if they don’t like it they can go piss up a rope. Now stop bugging me before I run us into a damned rock. . . . Okay, buddy. Cheers.”

  He shuts off his phone, takes a puff of his cigar. I lean over the edge of the stern—Dad won’t let me say “back,” it has to be “stern”—and stare into the black water. The sky above and the foam below are tinged with pink—Dad says no matter how far we sail, we’ll never quite escape the stain of city lights.

  There!

  I gasp. Below the foam, there’s something amazing in the wake. A magical green light shines among the churning bubbles.

  Of course, I’ll later learn that this is just phosphorescence caused by a type of plankton or something that glows when it gets stirred up, but today, and for years to come, I’ll truly, fervently believe that this is proof of magic. I’m on a path marked by magic, and if I look closely enough, I’ll be able to see it all around me. Pointing down to the radiant froth, breathless, I turn to my father—but he speaks before I get a chance.

  “May,” he says through cigar-clenching teeth, “grab the wheel so I can take a leak.”

  Awed by this new responsibility, I jump up, dodging lanyards and winches, and grip the wheel with my tiny hands, just like Dad taught me. He wordlessly tosses his cigar into the drink—we never call it “the water,” it has to be “the drink”—and lumbers down into the cabin. His urine starts up. I like the sound.

  “Hey, May?” he says, his voice muffled.

  “Hey what?” I say. He taught me to answer like that.

  His voice drifts up from the cabin below: “I know you’re different, but don’t ever let the other kids give you crap about it, alright?”

  Right now I don’t really understand what he means by “different.” In a few years it’ll make sense, but by then it’ll be too late. For now, I think maybe he means I have special powers, like Superman or something.

  “Okay,” I say.

  This is the only time in my life he will ever mention my “difference.”

  Sounds float up to me: he zips up his fly, he cracks another beer.

  I steer us straight through the dark on a path marked with magical light.

  ~~~

  I walk the shopping plaza’s marbled halls. The grand, vaulted ceiling soars 120 feet above me, smooth white buttresses holding at bay a fragmented, glass-clamped night sky.

  My IC beeps, and the screen shows that it’s Randal calling again.

  I understand his anxiety about the presentation tomorrow morning; God only knows what will happen when we tell the Company’s board that they’re headed for the first financial loss in a generation. But talking about it endlessly with my madly neurotic best friend won’t help. When he’s stressed, he rambles and stutters and pulls his own hair, and it drives me nuts.

  Me, when I’m stressed out, I wander the shopping plaza.

  I ignore the call.

  Amid the crush of countless milling shoppers, a couple walks past me, holding hands, all perfect hair and plastic skin. Do I imagine it, or are their eyes vacant, windows into the souls of mindless dolls? (It’s the pills that do it. Smiles on their faces and nothing behind their eyes. N-Pharm, at your service.) Their lips move, but they don’t speak to one another. Each of them is talking to someone else on their ICs. The man mumbles about interest rates, the woman chirps about the fall line, and they pass me by.

  My gut knots up as they drift into periphery, and my neck seizes with pain and tension. The hatred, the contempt I feel for these people scares me, but it isn’t their vapidity that bothers me. No, it’s their l
ove. Because like all the couples I see in this place they can be together openly, and they take that blessing for granted.

  They’re gone, and I pass a planter where a tall palm tree grows, surrounded by a bristling pot of fake flowers. I pass a bench. I pass a makeup store with a tall, thoroughbred of a woman standing out front handing out samples of lip gloss. She gives some packets to a group of teenage girls as they pass, favoring them with a smile dripping with self-satisfied boredom. When I pass, she doesn’t even hold out a packet.

  In the dark hollows of my heart, a voice cackles at her: You bitch, you don’t even know: I’ll be a Blackie one day. And I hate her for not noticing me, not seeing me.

  Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised by her not handing me lip gloss: I’m dressed like a man.

  Women wearing pants went out of fashion years ago, when N-Style first decided to go with gender-specific clothing as a matter of policy. Since then, Cranton studies showed that nonconformist dress was a workplace distraction and a drag on productivity, and the practice was strictly forbidden by the HR handbook.

  Unfortunately, it’s only when I’m wearing pants and a tie with my hair pulled back and stuffed under a hat like this that I truly feel like myself. It’s my release, my happy place. And, yes, maybe the forbidden nature of the act adds to the thrill.

  So far I haven’t been caught. But even if my dirty little secret were to get back to Blackwell and his HR cronies, I have plenty of credit to pay whatever fines they might charge me, and they wouldn’t dare give me a demotion—not me, the daughter of CEO Fields.

  Thinking of my father, I take out my IC and try to call him again. Again, his voicemail greets me. Ever since Randal’s revelation I’ve been trying to get a hold of Dad, to warn him, to get his advice. I’ve left messages at his office and at his house. I’ve sent them to his IC. No response. Typical. He’s too busy for me. Well, fine—he can be blindsided by my news like everyone else.

  “Entry fee: fifty dollars. Your account has been debited,” a synthesized voice croons as I enter N-Lumin, a candle shop.