Zone 23

by Hopkins, C. J.

  Kyle Bentley-Briggs was so utterly normal that other Normals thought of him as normal. It didn’t get any more normal than Kyle. Kyle Bentley-Briggs was the epitome of normal, the quintessence, the apotheosis of normal. The man was virtually normal incarnate.

  Kyle was a man of normal height and normal weight, with a normal build. All of his features were remarkably normal. The size of his hands and his feet were normal. The size and shape of his head was normal. His ears were normal. His nose was normal. His chin and jawline were entirely normal. His eyes were not piercing, or steely, or dreamy, or bright, or dull, or ... well, anything, really. He wasn’t thin-lipped, nor especially full-lipped. He wore normal clothes, had a normal haircut, bore no distinguishing marks or scars, and exhibited no memorable physical traits. His appearance in toto was profoundly normal.

  And it wasn’t just physical, normality, with Kyle. Every aspect of his life was normal ... was a reification, an embracement of normal. His palate, for example, while, of course, eclectic, ** was impeccably and definitively normal. His tastes in Entertainment Content, whether visual, literary, musical, tactile, interactive, or fully- immersive, while in no sense lowbrow, were equally as normal. *** His political views were exceedingly normal (e.g., stability, freedom, and peace were healthy, extremism and social unrest were unhealthy). He worked normal hours, took normal medications, and attended normal social functions, where he made normal small-talk on normal subjects that never caused anyone to question anything. His aspirations were normal aspirations (material security, professional advancement, and emotional, spiritual, and personal growth), and thus, like pretty much every other Normal, he diligently read The Path(s) to Prosperity , and basically believed in the tenets thereof, but not in any overly literal way, and certainly not to the point of fanaticism. While he was ambitious, to a normal extent, he didn’t aspire to any level of greatness, and had no desire to leave a mark on the field of Informatics, or anything, or to otherwise etch his hyphenated name into the annals of recorded history. At the same time, he had warmly and graciously welcomed the minor recognition he’d received (which he knew was minor, and did not overestimate, or tediously crow or go on about) from his peers in the Informatics community, as well as, of course, from G-Wave Industries, who were sponsoring his position as Associate Professor at the Bloomberg Virtual Community College, which had just been acquired, and was being delayered, and streamlined, and otherwise totally restructured, by InfoEducation Solutions, which rumor had it was in turn being looked at by G-Wave Industries’ parent company, U.A. MedEon Content, Inc., who were possibly merging with Hadley Entertainment, none of which negatively affected Kyle, who was more than happy to work with whoever. As far as Kyle Bentley-Briggs was concerned, a corporation was a corporation. Each had its own unique identity, corporate culture, policies, and so on, but the bottom line was always the same. The bottom line was the bottom line ... profits, for the corporation and its shareholders.

  During Kyle’s tenure as Associate Professor, the Bloomberg Virtual Community College had been bought and sold by a host of corporations, each and every one of which determined to increase the profits of its shareholders. A variety of meticulously thought-out strategies had been employed in pursuit of this goal, most of them involving the complete restructuring of every department and its staff and curriculum. While providing a first-class private education to its virtual and, in some cases, physical students remained the college’s number one priority, this constant restructuring did create some challenges. For example, whenever the college was acquired by a new corporation, its marketing divisions would immediately survey the courses on offer, identifying any academic Content referencing, citing or otherwise relating to the products and services of its proprietary predecessor, and then, unless that predecessor was a non-competitive subsidiary or assign, would delete that Content and replace it with Content referencing or citing its own products and services. Which, as you can probably imagine, unless properly managed, which it hardly ever was, rendered the curriculum of every subject, if not entirely incomprehensible, then muddled and confusing to the point of absurdity. Nevertheless, it had to be done. Because imagine the ire of the company’s shareholders if they learned that one of the corporation’s assets (e.g., the Bloomberg Virtual Community College) was actively marketing, or otherwise promoting, the products and services of one of its competitors.

  This Review and Revision of Academic Content (or “RRAC”) was a lengthy process, and one that was never entirely completed, as inevitably, at some late stage of the effort, the college, or the corporation that owned it, or the parent of the corporation that owned it, would be acquired by yet another corporation, which, naturally, would start the process all over. The result of all this was that BVCC was usually crawling with marketing analysts, Content reviewers, and delayering specialists, roaming the halls with digital clipboards, vivisecting lectures, eviscerating syllabi, hacking entire canons to bits, and making redundant any faculty members they deemed unwilling or unready to cooperate .

  Kyle was more than happy to cooperate ... it was probably his most distinguishing feature, and his cardinal virtue, and his spiritual center, and what made him so exceptionally normal. Kyle, unlike a lot of academics, understood the logic of business. And the ways of business. And the needs of business. And the need to set the needs of business against the needs of education, and weigh those needs, and balance those needs, and, basically, to do whatever he was told. And not just in the professional sphere. Kyle, routinely, followed directions, and generally did whatever he was told. He did this in every realm, province, domain, and sector of his normal existence. He routinely followed the directions of doctors, lawyers, accountants, financial advisers, fitness consultants, management gurus, celebrities, experts, and online pundits. He carefully read and followed the instructions of installation and operating manuals, prescription labels, product inserts, those tags they sewed on the sides of mattresses ... anything that came with a set of instructions. He switched off his Viewer and gave his attention to flight attendants before departure. He scrutinized the terms of service agreements. He was not ashamed to be witnessed doing this. He was proud of doing this. It was good to do this. It was prudent, practical, and wise to do this.

  This was the kind of person Kyle was, and had always been, and intended to remain ... and thus he could not begin to fathom how he had ended up sitting there, alone, on their overstuffed faux-leather eggshell sofa, in the suit he’d been wearing for the last three days, staring into the dead white screen of their HC Systems In-Home Viewer as if into a dimensionless abyss, trying to come up with one viable alternative to pressing “Security” on his All-in-One Viewer.

  Which was what he knew he had to do. Which was what one was supposed to do. And was what Valentina would want him to do. And what she’d expressly told him to do. How many times had they talked about it?

  “If I ever lose it ... really lose it, you make the call,” she had told him, tearfully, time after time, and he had nodded and kissed her, never actually believing it could happen.

  “Don’t you ever do that, OK?”

  “I’m trying, Kyle.”

  “I know. I know. ”

  Her mother had made it well into her sixties. Valentina was only forty two ... or forty one, Kyle couldn’t remember. He’d taken a lot of Zanoflaxithorinal. More than the recommended dosage. And a few Nembutrixafil. And some Thorochlorazadine. None of which had done the trick.

  Two nights earlier, at 1940 in the evening of officially 02 March, he stood in the tasteful, teal green foyer of 3258 Marigold Lane, staring gravely at Valentina’s Viewer, which she had not answered for the prior three days. It was resting on the spotless, smoked glass surface of their Coleman & Waterston landing strip table with the unfinished “rustic” wrought-iron legs. Her KeyCard was lying there right beside it. He’d just returned from a fascinating seminar (“The Informatics of Info-Entertainment”) nominally sponsored by something called the Hakuhodo Chayevsky Foundation, but
actually run by the Branding Division of InfoEducation Solutions, and convened at their luxurious corporate headquarters, a city-sized complex in Region 20. Bob Sandusky, an IES bigwig, had given a talk on Saturation Strategies, which Kyle had attended, but hadn’t quite followed, distracted as he was by the series of messages he’d left for Valentina, which she had not answered. There they were, all sixteen of them, logged on the counter of her All-in-One. He’d called out her name when he came in the door and saw her Viewer and KeyCard lying there ... and received no answer. Which didn’t make sense ... unless ... perhaps ... yes, that was it, she’d locked herself out, and had gone to Susan Foster’s, and was sitting there waiting for Kyle to get back, and figure it out, and come and get her. However, that didn’t begin to explain why she hadn’t answered when Kyle had called her sixteen times from Region 20. She hadn’t been sitting at Susan Foster’s waiting for him for the last three days. If she had locked herself out the day before, or the day before that, she would have called Security and had them come and let her in. Which she hadn’t done. So that wasn’t it ... whatever. He keyed in the Fosters’ number.

  Susan Foster answered cheerfully.

  “Foster residence!”

  “Susan, it’s Kyle.”

  “Kyle ... oh. ”

  This was not good. “Oh” was not good.

  “Is Valentina there?”

  Valentina wasn’t there. Susan Foster didn’t know where she was. On top of which Susan sounded funny, not quite normal, more frightened than usual, and slightly sad, which made Kyle nervous. He steeled his nerves and asked her whether there had been some kind of horrible accident. Susan Foster said no, there hadn’t, or at least not as far as she knew at that time. She said they needed to talk right away. She told Kyle she would be right over.

  Susan Foster came right over and told him how she thought she’d spotted Valentina entering the entrance of the WhisperTrain station with her wraparound glasses and Vittorio suitcase and her hair all a mess. Actually, she was sure she had spotted her. She’d called out her name, but Valentina hadn’t answered. “She looked upset,” was how Susan put it, “or agitated ... definitely agitated.”

  “Agitated” was really not good. “Agitated” was “off her medication.” “Agitated” was NormalSpeak for borderline Anti-Social behavior.

  “Should we call somebody?” Susan suggested.

  Susan Foster was Valentina’s friend, so she knew the details of her medical conditions, and her family history to some degree, and was naturally concerned for her personal welfare. In addition to which, the way it worked was, if someone you knew went off their medication, or behaved in an otherwise unstable manner, you needed to get them some help right away, to prevent them from harming themselves or others. You needed to do this by alerting Security, which was who Susan Foster meant by “somebody.”

  “I will,” Kyle assured her, “I’ll call tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Look, let’s not overreact here. Maybe something happened to Walter.”

  “Her father?”

  “Let me make a few calls.”

  “I wanted to wait until I talked to you, Kyle.”

  “I appreciate it, Susan.”

  “But it’s been three days.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s just. ”

  “I know. Don’t worry. I’ll talk to Walter. I’ll handle this, OK?”

  “Call me tomorrow?”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Because.”

  “I know. I will. I promise.”

  The next two days were Kyle’s worst nightmare ... there was nothing to do but sit and wait. He knew he couldn’t call her father, or anyone else on her contact list. If he had, the Network would have picked up his KeyWords, run the recordings, and alerted Security. He couldn’t go out looking for her either, because where would he start? He had nothing to go on ... except for all that shattered black glass, or whatever it was all over the kitchen, the jagged, pea-sized fragments of which he had tried in vain to reassemble into whatever object it had originally been, which he speculated might have been a vase, except ... whatever, it was totally hopeless. He’d ransacked the house and was relatively certain that she had been in his desk and had taken some Viewers ... some ancient, seriously obsolete Viewers, which wouldn’t even connect to the Internet. Which rendered them useless. Which didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. He was losing his mind. He needed to sleep. He could not sleep. He called in sick and sat there and waited. He swallowed more pills, and imagined scenarios, flipped through six hundred channels of news, ransacked the house again, and ground his teeth. He scoured the Internet for “preemptive detentions,” and poured through the records, which numbered in the hundreds, but none of them sounded like Valentina. He knew this was risky, as they would correlate his searches and flag his account for suspicious activity. But what else could he do? He had to do something. Hour by hour, minute by minute, the crisp clear image of his normal existence, their normal existence, his and Valentina’s, and the baby she was finally carrying, was breaking up, dissolving, warping, the pixels bleeding into each other, meaning collapsing into chaos, which he wasn’t prepared to just sit there and watch. Whatever had happened that had set her off, which had something to do with that mess in the kitchen, wherever she was, whatever she was doing ... clearly, Valentina had lost it. Based on Susan Foster’s description, it sounded like she had lost it completely. Where did she think she was going with the suitcase? She couldn’t get on a plane like that, with her hair a mess and those big black sunglasses ... no, she had to have taken a train. To where? Kyle had no idea.

  The thing was, it had been five days, or nearly five days, since Susan had seen her ... five whole days since she’d gone full-blown, during which Kyle had not called anyone, not Pewter Palisades Community Security, not Hadley Security, not any Security. He hadn’t even contacted Doctor Graell, who he knew would immediately call Security. He hadn’t even called back Susan Foster, who at this point had possibly called Security. This was not at all like Kyle, this lapse in judgment, this failure to act, to do what one did in times of crisis. His All-in-One fleeped. It was Georg Borovsky, Dean of Marketing at BVCC, hoping Kyle was feeling better. He wasn’t. He flagged and saved the message. The time on the screen was 0840. The time was time to make a decision. He could not go on sitting on the sofa praying to the One Who Was Many to save him. He needed to do what needed to be done ... which was press the “Security” key with his thumb. Once he did that, that would be it. They would plug her into the SkyNet system and GPS her and track her down. They would track her down and find her and help her. Men in puncture-proof armor would do this. These men would turn her over to doctors, who would diagnose her, and help her further. They would help her with sedatives, serious sedatives, and possibly even four-point restraints, to prevent her from harming herself or others. They would do this in a locked facility, with visiting hours, for an indefinite period. This would happen no matter what. He could not save her. He knew he couldn’t. Whether he, or Susan, or some fellow passenger, or random pedestrian made the call, or she flipped and started raving in public ... or whatever, the details didn’t matter, this ended with Valentina in the hospital. So why not simply press the key and get it over with? Why was he waiting? Did he think she was going to walk in the door, collapse at his feet and beg him for help? She couldn’t even get back into the Community ... not without her KeyCard she couldn’t.

  “Press the key,” he told himself. “Press it already.”

  He could not press it.

  Every minute he delayed the inevitable increased the danger he was already in. Even if he pressed it right this minute, this second ... now ... now ... now ... he was going to have to answer a lot of questions, questions he could not begin to answer. Beginning with why he’d been sitting around over-medicating on his eggshell sofa and not calling anyone for five whole days. He hadn’t, of course, he’d been at the seminar, but that wouldn’t matter, an
d was no excuse, because what did that say about his ability to function as a normal, responsible person, a caring husband, a soon-to-be father, an Assistant Professor of Info-Entertainment at the Bloomberg Virtual Community College? How, if he couldn’t even monitor his wife, could he be entrusted with the education of his virtual and in some cases physical students, much less with raising and nurturing an infant, a child ... a Clarion, all by himself?

  “Press it. Press it now ... now.”

  The sooner they got her into the hospital, the sooner she’d be safe, at least. And the baby ... it would be safe at least. And the sooner he could answer all those questions. He’d do his best. He had nothing to hide. He’d tell them the truth. He’d cooperate fully. He’d let them search the house if they wanted. They could search his office ... whatever they wanted. He’d ask his doctors to send in his records. He would call on his colleagues at BVCC (those few who were left), who would all attest to his unimpeachable and unswerving normality. They’d likely put him on supervision, and up his meds, but that was OK. He would make it through this, and so would she. She would have the baby in the locked facility, and Kyle would take a leave of absence, and raise her himself, which ... he could do that. His mother would probably fly in and help him, and Susan Foster would certainly help, and eventually Valentina would improve, and they would let her out and she would come back home, probably even better than ever, and life ... and life ... could go back to normal.

  “Press it. Stupid. Press it. Now.”

  Why? Why was this happening to him? How, and when, had he chosen this Path? Was all of this some kind of spiritual test, some trial by fire, or initiation, the One Who Was Many was putting him through? He couldn’t remember asking for it. He’d never prayed for insight, visions, evolution of his mind and body, or initiation into the Mysteries. He didn’t want it. He liked who he was. He liked his life exactly as it was. All he wanted, and had ever really wanted, was what the majority of people wanted ... a normal life. A normal family. A normal townhouse in a normal Community. A normal job at a normal college, owned by a series of normal corporations ...