The cardboard box she pulled out was marked D. Thomas – Notes; she had to pull out stacks of sloppily-packed papers and folders before she felt relief that her little secret was still there. She pulled out the green plastic case that resembled a large lunch pail, unlocked it with her key, and opened it on the table. A slight chill brushed Dellia’s face from the case’s refrigeration unit as she laid it flat. Each side of the case was lined with twenty-five tiny glass vials of clear liquid, each with plastic caps on both ends and each tucked away neatly in one of the slots built into the case. Without hesitating, she took one of the little vials, popped off the cap to reveal the needle beneath, and stuck herself in the upper arm, cringing slightly at the pinprick. After popping off the second plastic cap, the liquid inside disappeared. Some—but certainly not most—of her fear subsided.
That would take care of her, but the other forty-nine vials could not serve as vaccines themselves, at least not all of them; they were all she had and they would be nowhere near enough. No, she had plans for these. The trick would be finding the right people and staying away from the grasp of Silte. I’d have an easier time trying to hide from the air.
She closed the case and checked the green light that indicated the refrigeration unit was working, then she placed it in the backpack, which she zipped up and draped over her shoulders. Now it was time to disappear, to leave her now-compromised life and blend in, to become a shade in Silte’s menacing shadow.
First, however, she would need to get out of the building without another friendly encounter.
2
“I heard they got it way worse down in Dallas—Silte headquarters and all. Those privy-pigs they hired don’t fuck around.”
Jason closed the door to his apartment behind him and moved toward the deep, unfamiliar voice. Standing on the sidewalk with his back against the wall was Jason’s friend Seito, who was on a vid-call with someone on his tablet.
“Did things get bad in New York?” Seito asked the person on the tablet screen.
“Nah, nobody died,” the deep voice said. “Those pussy privy-cops just roughed a few people up and tried to tear gas us or something. But, no shit, the gas bombs were all duds. Every one of ’em!” The voice laughed, long and rumbling. “They started firing rounds into the air, though, so everyone scattered.”
“Crazy, man, the same thing happened up in San Fran, I heard.” Seito looked up as Jason approached and waved him over. “Me and Joans stayed home in San Jose. Not much went on here.”
‘Joans’ was the nickname Jason used to go by among his friends, and if nicknames were being used the man Seito was talking to must be a member of the Anti-Corp movement. Jason stood beside his friend and saw that the face on the screen was not human but rather a bug-eyed, green-skinned humanoid avatar, animated to mimic the movements of the real face it represented. His and Seito’s faces and voices were probably being changed on the other end as well.
“This is Ra52 from the New York group,” Seito explained to Jason. “He was right in the mix in the Wall Street march up there. They kept the private cops busy for a while.” He sighed and shook his head. “Not good for shit, though.”
“Hey, we had to do something,” Ra52 said, sounding a little offended. “Man, I shouldn’t be telling you this, but the AC higher-ups got something big planned. They needed something serious to go down. Draw Silte out, stall them, you know? They’re going into Crisis Procedure. We can make our next move now.”
“Cool, cool,” Seito said. “Let us know what to do.”
“Not us,” Jason blurted, earning an annoyed look from Seito. For emphasis, he added, “Don’t involve me. I like being alive.” Jason was sympathetic to the cause, but he had learned a lot since his activism days in college—mostly that life was a lot nicer when you stopped getting angry about things you couldn’t easily change. Despite his friends’ pressuring him, he had so far stayed happily distant from the Anti-Corp movement and planned to stay that way. He had a comfortable life, and being thrown into a maximum security corporate prison was not a good way to keep that going.
“Whatever, man,” Ra52 said; even through the filter his voice had a defeated sound to it. “I’ll see you around, Sei-Kai.” As his gloomy face faded, Jason felt a bite of guilt; he realized all too well that most of the movement’s members knew they were fighting a losing battle.
“Why’d you have to piss him off?”
“I didn’t mean to,” Jason said with a shrug. “Look, I like what they’re doing, but if there’s a chance of me being beaten to death by some coked-up private cop, leave me out.”
“Hey it’s not like I was sad not to be up there last night,” Seito said. “You know, in the danger zone. Last time I visited my parents I went through Tokyo and I saw some demonstrators get taken down. You know, they’ve been doing this stuff a lot longer than us over there. I saw a kid get all his teeth knocked out by SDS goons. Crazy stuff.” Seito tucked his tablet away in his pants pocket, and the two started down the sidewalk toward the bus stop.
Bassett Street was full of the usual pedestrian traffic, some going to work, others (like Seito) wandering around with no place to be this morning. Lately, it seemed like the latter were becoming more prominent in the neighborhood. With urban expansion, San Jose was slowly becoming just another forgettable section of the sprawling metropolis creeping outward from San Francisco, and that made it an increasingly more desirable place to turn apartment buildings and houses into droves of the 100 square foot micro-habitations Seito’s type tended to live in. Jason’s building was repurposed, but it was a two-story house turned into two single-story apartments; he actually had one of the nicer living situations in the entire area.
The city itself, though, was not what it had been when he had moved here for college. After several major tech companies, not the least of which was Adobe Systems, were acquired by Silte Corp and relocated to Dallas, San Jose had become little more than a haven for relatively cheap housing and cheaper office space. Once deemed the capital of Silicon Valley, it was now just one dense patch of city in the greater urban area.
“And what’s with the tear gas thing?” Seito said after a while. “Faulty gas bombs here and on the East Coast? You think our guys got into the central supply depot or something? Hit a weapons factory maybe?”
“Our guys?” Jason said cynically. Seito ignored the jab. This was something Jason hated about his best friend, the fact that Seito continued to consider himself part of the movement while refusing to get too involved when there was a call to action. Things had been much different in college. Seito was more like Jason now than he admitted, but he still needed to believe he was doing something.
“It is weird, isn’t it?” Jason said. “Let me know if you find anything out. This is getting too risky for me. I mean, riots?”
Walking fast to keep up with Jason’s long strides, Seito said, “Hey, I get it. You’re afraid of the blacklist.” He put derisive emphasis on the last word.
And he wasn’t wrong. Jason’s employment at the Silte-controlled Sanon Software had always been a hot issue wherever the AC movement was concerned. Seito thought Jason could somehow use his position to some advantage for the movement, but Jason had made him and the others who knew his real identity swear to keep his employment private. He couldn’t help them even if he wanted to; Silte Corp was too careful for something like that to ever work. He was a Software Director at Sanon Software—a mid-level job at a small company—and in the grand scheme that meant he was nothing, a lowly worm, one among many thousands. Even if he could somehow infiltrate Silte’s sphere of power, being caught would mean the blacklist. Seito may be skeptical, but it was serious: if you were blacklisted you would probably spend the rest of your life in unemployment and poverty. There were even rumors that the worst offenders were secretly executed, silenced for knowing too much. And Jason had seen enough evidence to believe the rumors were true.
“Get a job and you’ll know how I feel,” he told his friend, for t
he thousandth time.
“When will you accept it?” Seito said, faking offense. “Watching feature-length ads is a job. As long as I meet the review and recommendation quotas, I get what I need. Besides, if I did go out and get a real job it wouldn’t be at a Silte company. I’ll never help fuel their global domination. Maybe you’re willing to do that, but I—hold on a second.”
Quickly reaching inside his pocket, he pulled his eagerly-buzzing tablet back out, swiping the screen to answer the incoming vid-call. “I’m here,” he said. He held the tablet in a position that would include Jason in the conversation.
Appearing on the screen was a real face, not another avatar—though Jason knew right away that this call was also related to the Anti-Corp movement. He recognized the face: a broad pale female’s outlined by shoulder-length blonde hair. It belonged to a woman who had been one of his closest friends since they attended San Jose State together.
“What’s up, Steph.” Seito said. There was no need for nicknames or voice filtering with her.
“Hey Seito, Jason.” Jason greeted her with a wave and realized immediately Steph wasn’t herself; tiredness was etched deep into her eyes, and her demeanor was dark, hopeless.
“Stephanie,” Seito sang, “did you hear about Silte going into Crisis Procedure?”
“Yeah.” Her smile was fleeting and devoid of life. She was giving Jason an uneasy feeling, though he wasn’t quite sure why. “So,” she said, “Seito, you said to call if anything came up. Word came down the pipeline that Silte is shuffling; they’re moving things around big time, asset redistribution. Heavy stuff. Actually, Jason, it’s good you’re here. I was thinking of calling you before you went to work.”
“What’s going on?” Jason stopped to give her his full attention.
“Crisis Procedure,” she said. “Like Seito said. Don’t you know what that means?”
“Vaguely.”
“I’ve heard from a few different people,” she said. “Silte is about to indefinitely shut down most of their non-vital business operations—allegedly. I don’t know, but it sounds like Sanon will be closing, at least everything below the executive level. It’s part of the protocol.”
“Vacation time,” Seito said, nudging Jason with a bony elbow. “So we did it, huh? We really did something. Ha!”
“I wouldn’t put such a positive spin on it,” Steph said. “We didn’t do anything. This is a calculated response. They…they’re throwing around words like ‘retaliation’ and ‘war.’ AC people are starting to panic and calling for militarization of all things. I… It’s just…” She trailed off into silence and shifted so that bedsprings creaked beneath her.
“Hey,” she said, regaining herself, “are you two sick?”
Jason and Seito glanced at each other in bemusement before answering, “No.”
“Hmm.” She was no longer looking into her tablet but down and off-screen, seemingly deep in thought. “No, you guys weren’t there. A lot of us—everyone I talked to—have been sick. We thought maybe somebody had the flu or something last night. It’s not the flu. I don’t know. I couldn’t sleep all night.”
“Are you okay?” Jason asked her.
“Yeah,” she said unconvincingly. “Yeah.”
Seito brought his face close to the screen and said enthusiastically, “Hey, why don’t I come over and take care of you for a while? It’ll be like that time you ate those bad shrooms sophomore year.” Jason rolled his eyes; Seito and Steph’s late night sexual encounters had always been the worst-kept secret within their circle of friends.
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know. Look, I’ve gotta go guys. Keep what I said in mind.”
Before Jason and Seito could say anything else, Steph was gone, and Seito pocketed his tablet once again. She had certainly not been herself, but what she had said about Silte’s possible movements was the more pressing concern for Jason. Things were getting heavy. Had the time finally come for him to sever ties with the movement altogether? He’d rather have a steady job and good pay than become Silte’s enemy in a war.
When they were back to walking down the sidewalk Seito asked, “Do you think it’s true, what she said? You think Sanon’s closing for a while?”
Instead of answering, Jason pulled his own tablet out and said, “Inbox.” The dark screen lit up with his recent mail. The only unread message bore the headline “URGENT: All Employees.” He tapped it, and a video popped up of a poorly-animated middle-aged man in a blue suit: an HR bot.
“Active immediately,” the bot droned, “the offices and facilities of Sanon Software, Inc. are closed to all employees and associates. All Sanon employees receiving this are hereby placed on unpaid leave until further notice. Thank you, and have a nice day.”
Steph was right, thought Jason, the shit is getting deep and I could get soaked. He had the crazy idea of going straight back to his apartment, pulling out his old print copy of Untraceable: Deleting Your Imprint in the Digital Age, and separating his identity from any Anti-Corp relation.
“That was quick, huh?” Seito said, but Jason hardly noticed him; a new message appeared in his inbox which he tapped instinctively.
The headline of the new message was “Jason Delaney: Suite 2 Immediately.” There was nothing in the message body. He stopped dead and stared at the tablet screen. Suite 2 was Silte Corporation’s office at Sanon, notorious around the company as the last place people went before being either transferred…or blacklisted.
3
The hazy August morning was slowly fading, and still the bottom fifty-four floors of Silte headquarters were empty. Mike Torres, in his spacious office on the 58th floor, was growing uneasy. The headquarters of the largest corporation in the world had suddenly placed over eight thousand employees on indefinite leave; it was as if someone had lopped off all but a tiny (though extremely important) portion of a brain and expected it to maintain control over its body. What’s going on up there? Mike asked himself. Have Silvan and the board gone insane?
The truth was, Mike had caught occasional whiffs of something foul during his time as COO of Silvan Ventures on Wall Street, but now that he was here, at the bright center of the Silte galaxy, it was more like a rank stench that seeped down from the 78th floor penthouse suite and pervaded the rest of the building—the rest of the world, even.
“Mr. Torres.” Elle, his virtual secretary, popped up on his desk screen, “Monika Leutz is approaching.”
“Good,” Mike said. Bad, he thought. “Send her on in when she gets here.”
“Shall I send anything up?”
Mike thought for a moment. “Liquor,” he said. “Whatever’s her favorite.” He could use the liquid courage. He had been thinking about this meeting with a taste of bile in his mouth since Leutz messaged him about it early in the morning, but now he was positively dreading the inevitable confrontation. He had to demand answers, had to know why he had arrived to a nearly empty building this morning. “Crisis Procedure” was all he had gotten out of anyone on his level, but Leutz was Silte Corp’s unofficial second-in-command.
And it hadn’t taken him long to find that out. Officially, Monika Leutz was Senior Vice President of Operations up on the 61st floor—Mike’s own boss to whom he had been reporting since getting this position as Senior Operations Manager. But everyone knew she was the only one who ever went through those archaic oaken doors to Silvan’s suite upstairs. She was also the only one to receive and relay orders from Silvan himself, without going through a bot or virtual secretary; and no one, not even the executives above her, dared refuse anything she asked of them.
A noise behind Mike made him jump and turn swiftly in his chair. The drinks, he realized, calming himself. This office had everything: 3D conferencing panel, top-of-the-line smart desk, kitchen nook, private bathroom, an exquisitely comfortable couch he could lie down on, and this office delivery unit that brought him most anything he could think of (from where, he wasn’t sure). The little door on the unit opened to
reveal two glasses, each containing two fingers of clear brown liquid covering several perfect cubes of ice, and an open bottle of some fancy whiskey with flamboyant cursive on the label. Mike drained one of the glasses as he was setting the other across the desk from him. He refilled his own glass just as the door to his office slid open.
“Mike,” Leutz said as she crossed the room hurriedly with those impossibly long strides of hers. “I would have knocked, but your secretary said to come on in.” She took the seat Mike offered her across the desk. “For me?” Without waiting for a reply, she quaffed the whiskey and poured herself a second glass. Mike drained his own glass again and let her fill it for him.
“Look, Monika,” he began, letting the warmth of the whiskey drive on what he had been anxiously preparing for all morning, “you need to clear up a few things before you begin. What’s going on here? Why do I get in this morning to find most of the building empty? And this message about indefinite leave…” He trailed off, sensing her hard stare. She had a way of making him forget what he wanted to say. Why does this woman scare me so much?
About a year or two shy of forty, Leutz was tall and robust. She kept her dark hair in a close pixie cut and plastered it neatly against her head in a perfect mold the same way every day. Today, like most days, she wore a pair of slacks and a matching blouse—both dark gray and modest. As always, her cold blue eyes stared out from behind thin, rectangular smart glasses. Usually her pupils darted back and forth as she did things on the lens screens no one else could see, but just now her gaze was fixed intently on Mike, somehow warning him off and beckoning him closer all at once.
“You’re to the point this morning,” she observed. “I would be angry at you for speaking to me like that, but it so happens that’s exactly what I was here to talk to you about.”
Dreams in the Tower Part 1 Page 2