by Therin Knite
The serrated edges of the knife nip at my neck. "Don’t give me that non-answer bullshit. What are you doing to the recruits? Where is everyone else? Dead? Are you killing them?"
Yes. "No. I’m changing them. In a way most of them won’t accept, unfortunately, if I give them the option to decline. And I can’t have them all decline, Dr. Salt. We’re on a tight schedule here."
"If you don’t stop speaking in riddles, I will slit your throat."
I raise my hands in a non-threatening manner, fingers extended and spread. "Don’t be rash. I’m doing what needs to be done."
"For what?"
"For the world."
Her hair tickles my cheek as she leans over my shoulder. "Explain." The knife bites deeper.
"You know why the Heights was created."
"To speed up scientific advancement and improve the prospects for the future."
"Yes, except, you see, there is no future. Not for the current human civilization anyway. It’s all going to fall down. Guaranteed. We started this project too late to stop a total collapse. So instead of planning for a better future for our society, we had to plan for a better future society. We had to plan to rebuild. And in order to create a human society not doomed to repeat the same cycle of rise and fall, rise and fall, we need to achieve an optimal level of advancement across eighty-six critical disciplines before we go about rebuilding. And we need to be ready at the moment of the fall, too, or the community will inevitably collapse before we can implement anything. So, you see—"
"You’re rambling. Make it quick. I want the whole story." She puts her thumb on the knife blade and increases the pressure every three seconds.
"For fuck’s sake! You’re slow, okay? You’re too damn slow. We tried this the real way at first, providing the safety and the funding and the leisure activities and everything else we advertise to ‘boost your productivity.’ But it wasn’t enough. Human beings are too slow. You cannot create at the rate necessary to reach the tech level required at the fall."
"So?"
"So we came up with an alternative solution. One that cuts out your inefficiencies. One that increases your productivity to the appropriate level."
"What solu—?"
A second patrolman leaps out of the shadows behind us, grabs both of Salt’s arms, and rips her away from me. She shrieks, kicking and clawing at the iron grip, but the first patrolman is already on her. It roughly yanks her hair to expose her neck and injects the sedative. She struggles for almost a minute more, the energy draining from her limbs as the seconds tick by. The patrolman who jumped us lifts her weakened body into its arms and strides in the direction of the ruined dining room.
Before it crosses the threshold, Salt mumbles, "What are you going to do to me?"
I dab at the blood pooling on my collar. "Remove the inefficient parts. The parts that cause all the problems, all the time. That have always caused our problems. The parts that have built empires and ground them into dust. The parts that make us act when we shouldn’t yet idle when we should. You know, Dr. Salt: the human parts."
... [ Chapter Two ] ...
1
Marco
( 5 Years Ago )
"I don’t give a fuck what they want for it. Either they take the deal or we rescind the offer." I flick the end call command on my screen, and the lawyer’s sour pout is replaced by a background image of a vibrant blue giant. Reggie, lounging on the sofa in the "living room" corner of my office, barks out a laugh and peers over his flex tablet, bookmarking his latest stopping point in Oliver Twist. The man’s been reading it for a month.
"Damn, Marco. Playing hardball with these guys, aren’t you?" Reggie stretches his arms and pops his chest forward. Something snaps in his back, and he sighs. Not the spry young guy he was ten years ago. "You think they’re going to bail?"
"And then what? It’s deal or die." I point at the coffee table in front of Reggie, where I dropped the latest batch of Heights mail when I came in at eight o’clock sharp. Reggie swipes the long, narrow box off the table and tears through the tape with his house key, revealing a neat stack of rolled-up blueprints.
"Ooh." He plucks one off the top and slips the red tie off, letting the plan unroll like a boy band poster. "Sweet! It’s the new commercial generator design we won in that awful bidding war with Elofyre a while back."
"Send it to Arnold, then. And while you’re at it, sort the rest of those and send them where they belong. Since you obviously don’t have anything better to do than read books in my office."
"Hey, don’t tease. I can read Dickens and perform my tasks as ordained by the Board. Don’t you know multitasking is a feature of the latest CTO models?" He rolls the generator plan up and bops himself on the head with it, knocking his glasses askew. Then he empties the rest of the blueprints out and begins scrutinizing each one, grunting in approval or disapproval. Some of the projects are low margin and high risk. Reggie’s never been a fan of bittersweet products, even if a rare loss barely dents a brick on the tech temple of South Sydian Incorporated.
I force my loafers on and roll my chair away from the desk, the expansive workstation screens reverting to my screensaver when I cross the sensor line. "I’ve got a lunch date with that writer from the Wall Street Journal. Can you keep the tank running for an hour or so, or do you need me to call in the cavalry?"
"And by cavalry, you mean Lisa?" Reggie runs a hand through his dense red mop.
"She’s an army of one."
"She’s your secretary."
I tug my coat on and button it up. There’s a string hanging from one of the buttons and a stain near the left pocket. A billionaire who can’t remember to buy new clothes. The media loves that kind of crap. I’ll have to remove my coat before the WSJ guy gets a good look at me. "Lisa could run South Sydian better than you, me, Frank, and the Board combined."
Reggie unrolls another blueprint. "That’s because you pay her so much."
"I do pay her like a queen."
"In diamonds, rubies, and emeralds?"
"You see her jewelry this morning?"
Reggie bites his thumb to stop himself from laughing. My door isn’t soundproof. Once he regains control of his voice but not his smile, he sends me a wry glance and says, "Why don’t you take her out sometime?"
"She’s my secretary. Work relationships are never a good idea, man."
"Ah, yes. I forgot. You’d never date a coworker. I mean, it’s not like Anise was your partner on the project that jumpstarted South Sydian."
Anise.
The energy I’ve been collecting to fight the press wolf dissipates in an instant, and I lean against my desk. Limp. Listless. Near exhaustion in three seconds.
Reggie swears. "Sorry. It slipped out. I wasn’t thinking."
"Not your fault." My eyes angle toward the reflective window on my right. A guy I don’t recognize stands there. Pretty good looking for thirty-nine. No impending beer gut. No receding hairline. But there’s something wrong with his face. He’s off kilter, dead walking, soulless. The man in the window has lost something vital to his spiritual health. "I need to get over it."
"No, you need to get past it." Reggie discards the latest plan and rises. "Getting over your wife’s death is not a possibility. And we agreed to pursue no impossible goals when we started this little venture, didn’t we? You need to get past it and keep going. Nothing more, nothing less."
"You’re starting to sound like my therapist, Reggie."
"The one you never visit?"
"I visited last week."
"Sure you did." He assesses me, resets his mental alarms, and sits down again, taking up the abandoned blueprint. "I had Lisa schedule you an appointment for Friday."
"I’m busy on Friday." I snatch my own flex tablet from my desk, fold it up, and shove it in my pocket.
"You’re busy every day."
"If you insist."
"I do."
"Fine. I’ll go." I make a show of storming toward my office door
, but something prevents me from heaving it open and running away from the problem like the peevish child I wish I still was. The frustrating sensation of an important detail skirting the edge of my mind takes full effect. I tap my foot on the carpet and stare at the glossy gray door.
Reggie adjusts his glasses. "What is it?"
"Give me a second." I begin a clockwise three-sixty rotation, analyzing every inch of my office, searching for a clue. My cluttered bookshelf? No. The life-size cardboard cutout of myself the guys bought for my birthday party and had a hoot throwing darts at? No. My desk? No. The workstation on my desk? No. The pencil and pen holder filled with markers? No.
The photograph of Clarissa?
"Oh."
2
Georgette
( 6 Months Ago )
The corpses are beautiful. Arranged in straight lines with arms folded over pale chests, hair falling around faces like halos. They don’t seem dead. More like high-fashion models. Serene expressions. Soft smiles. None of them have a scream of fear etched into their cheeks, the kind of horror you’d expect from a gruesome death. It’s like each went for a midday nap on a warm afternoon in August and died the moment they settled into a dream-filled sleep.
To be honest, I’d feel more comfortable if they had ancient mummy screams ripping their faces in half.
I pin each corpse photo to the corkboard on my wall. The damn thing comes unstuck from the hotel’s cheap wallpaper every ten minutes. But I can’t work without my visuals. So every time it falls, I add more poster tape and hang it again. Vain Georgette.
As I’m searching for the next thumbtack, the board clatters to the floor. A few of the photos come loose and slide across the tile, one of them face up—a blond woman.
The tablet my contact gave me contained seven hundred forty-three images. Photos of recruits from twenty years ago. Ten years ago. Six months ago. Faces from around the world—the young Indian math prodigy I idolized in elementary school, the pianist turned physicist Marci Golden, scores of kids with scores of accomplishments. All dead. Gone. Not even buried. Stuck in a cold pit somewhere to slowly rot.
Until what? Until the community runs out of space for dead bodies and starts to burn them all? Dissolve them in acid? Jettison them into space?
I grab the image of the blond woman and pin it back to the board as I dig more tape out of my supply bag. I know her face. I’ve seen it on TV, in magazines, online.
Clarissa Salt.
It was a given such a talented woman would one day receive an invitation to the community that kept the blood pumping through her father’s company. It was a matter of time. The two years it took her to earn a PhD. The additional year it took her to turn eighteen. So when the community reps showed up at her door ten weeks after the birthday party, no one batted an eyelash.
It was expected.
This was not.
I re-stick the board to the wall, finish my pinning, and step away. I stare at Clarissa Salt’s beautiful corpse, covered to its breasts with a plain white sheet. She is the group outlier. No other dead nerd has a visible scratch. But Salt is a soldier who died mid-battle. Face black and blue. Shoulders and chest adorned with cuts. Yet she has the same expression as the others. Like she died in some rapturous ecstasy of combat.
What made her different?
What made her fight?
Because I wouldn’t mind a dash of that spice.
3
Marco
( 5 Years Ago )
Clarissa’s picture beckons.
I shuffle across the room again, round my desk, and press a kiss to my fingers. Then I transfer the kiss from my fingers to the image of my daughter’s smiling face. She’s garbed in graduation gear, holding her diploma to her chest. Eyes blue and bright and beautiful and hopeful like they were the day she was born. How the hell did I almost forget Clarissa?
Reggie lowers the blueprint from his face and asks, "You tell your therapist about that?"
"About what?"
He shifts on the couch, a frown dragging down one side of his mouth. "That ritual you just performed?"
"A man can’t show affection for his daughter?"
Comprehension blossoms in Reggie’s expression. "So you use that as her replacement?"
"I don’t have anything else to use. I suppose I could use a photo at home, if it offends you that I perform a creepy ritual here."
"I didn’t say it was creepy. It’s a bit...odd is all."
"Maybe for you. None of your loved ones are locked up in a science utopia, never to see the light of the nasty outside world again."
Reggie tosses the blueprint toward the coffee table, but he overshoots, and the paper crumples on the floor. There are wrinkles where he gripped the edges. "You don’t want her there?"
"It’s where she wants to be, so I can’t want her anywhere else. That’s how fatherhood works."
Reggie plucks his glasses off and rubs one of his eyes. "You require a lot of effort, you know that?"
"Am I not worth it?"
"If you weren’t, I wouldn’t be here."
"Big hero, aren’t you?"
"No, that’s you. Mr. Risk and Reward."
I grin. "Ah, but you’re the caution to my risk. The glue that holds me together."
"And don’t you forget it." He leans over the coffee table to retrieve the blueprint. "Now go to your lunch meeting before the WSJ guy thinks you ditched him. Good impressions are important for CEOs, Mr. Salt."
I stifle a laugh at Reggie’s impression of old Prof Flannigan. "Yes, sir. I’ll remember that when I frolic in my bed of hundred dollar bills tonight."
Reggie bursts into a fit of snorts and giggles, and he’s still wheezing when I exit the office. Lisa glances at the closing door and arcs an eyebrow.
"You got a lunch meeting in ten minutes, Mr. Salt," she says.
"I know."
"Lunch traffic is in full swing. You’re better off walking."
"Advice accepted, Lisa."
"Better be."
I throw her a deferential nod as I wait for the elevator to arrive. Just as the doors begin to open, my tablet vibrates. I fish it out of my pocket and glance at the quarter-width screen, spotting the icon for a text message. Stepping into the elevator, I hit the lobby button and unfold the tablet. The screen extends to full width, but the additional information doesn’t reveal the sender of the message. The ID is listed as blocked.
Strange. I run a virus scan.
It comes back clean as the elevator reaches the lobby.
Chewing my tongue, I stroll out into the buzz of the midday crowd and open the message.
There are four words.
Dad, I’m in trouble.
4
Georgette
( 6 Months Ago )
Attending the Heights orientation ceremony told me little I didn’t already know. From the outside, the community’s façade is nearly flawless. Beyond Q’s haggard appearance, nothing seemed amiss. The only evidence I have of wrongdoing are the pictures on my corkboard, my contact’s evidence. I don’t like moving forward without self-collected proof, but the corpse pictures are abnormally compelling for contact-supplied dirt. So I’ll bite.
Time for Phase Two of this grand adventure.
My purse is tucked into the wrinkled sheets of the stiff hotel bed. I grab it, dump the contents, and dig my flex tablet out of the lining. There’s a special bottom section sealed with Velcro.
The next recruitment session is exactly six months from now. I need to be in the lineup. Not as myself, of course, but as a bright young thing with a mind attuned to science and math. Like the nerds I ridiculed in high school. After I realized I would never be on their level. Not even on the same playing field.
Dumb little Georgette. Straight C student.
The first time I drew blood in my life was the day I punched out a boy twice my size for calling me a dumb whore. Nice tits. Slow brain. Going to be a stripper when you grow up, honey? Give me a little tease.
Dick lost four teeth. I lost a school.
Worth it. So worth it.
Spent the rest of my high school years as the tormenter instead of the tormented. I may have been a bit of a bitch back then. Hormones. Peer pressure.
According to a certain California tabloid, I’m the world’s biggest bitch now. Skills. Success.
Works for me.
Dialing the last number in my contacts, I wait. One ring. Two rings. Three rings.
Alex Watson answers in the voice of a disgruntled salesman who hasn’t shaved his beard in a month. "The hell do you want, Georgie? It’s two o’clock in the morning."
In New York. Not so late here. But dark and blustery and somber. Light gray snow stalked me out of Jackson City. I’d waited until the sun dipped low in the hazy sky. Waited for the grumbling protestors to shuffle away with their gripes. Waited for the proud parents to get in their cars and drive off, minus one kid. Permanently.
Not so late here.
Too late here.
"I need an ID job, Alex."
"Another one? You’re not going for that fake FBI gig again, are you? They almost traced that one back to me because you dropped the damn card. I had to move to a different apartment."
"No, not a government agency ID. In fact, I don’t need cards at all. The ones I need already exist."
"Oh." He slurps something that sounds three days old through what I know is a chewed-up plastic straw. "What, then?"
"A challenging one. A test of your true abilities."
He drops the lazy basement dweller act. "Explain."
"It involves research on your part."
"What kind of research?"
I slink off into the cramped bathroom with its faded walls and bowed mirror. There’s a spot of rust on my manicured nails, now chipped from my climb and descent at the tenement. I wet a washcloth with cold tap water and rub at the orange mark, listening as Alex’s dull interest builds into a pressurized piss pot of must-know-or-I’ll-die.
A moment before he bursts, I say, "I need you to do three things. One, obtain the roster for the next Arcadian Heights recruitment. Then—"