The Lightcap

by Dan Marshall

  Ray and Monica, Adam’s father and mother, died a little more than two months later in an autocar accident. Adam, with the benefits of age and wisdom—including more than a bit of cynicism—now thought his father naïve about the nature of reality.

  Adam sat in the bar and took another swig of his drink. He reflected that despite his wisdom, cynicism, and knowledge of the nature of reality, the election campaign that year had been particularly troubling. He had voted weeks before via mesh. The choice that year was an easy one, between the incumbent CEO and his challenger, a man who had cut a swath of destruction through the corporate world as an executive at TeleVice, the largest media company in the Metra Region.

  Money bought and paid for both candidates, corporate stooges to their cores. People were, after all, voting for the executive head of the second largest corporate Region in the World, after the Cascadia Corporation, which owned the former west coast of the United States and a few other contiguous properties. The elections that night took place in the Regions of Metra and Cascadia, the Confederated Republic of Texas—Confederacy for short—and what was left of the United States, a conical shaped chunk of land starting north of the District of Columbia and spreading west beyond Colorado.

  The media companies operating in each region had some degree of crossover between board members, as if forming a Venn diagram of influence and power, overlapping areas containing the richest of the rich who made money off everyone else. Having four major elections all within the same night created an ideal situation for ratings. Election night became the most watched video event of every fifth year. Even those who had sold their votes liked to watch, to be caught up in the excitement of the crowd, to be parts of something.

  Adam worked through four glasses of scotch and quietly watched as race after district race was called, trying to guess which group of patrons would grumble or celebrate. He looked back to the large screen in the center of the room and saw the talking heads on the screens preparing to announce the results from the executive races. These results always came last, to provide a climactic end to the foreplay of smaller challenges. Up for re-election were the CEOs of Cascadia Corp and Metra Corp, and the Presidents of the United States and the Confederacy. Money was the deciding factor in all regional races, not just the corporate leadership positions. Politics had been awash in dirty money for years. In the Corporate owned Regions they were just more open about it, considering it a necessary evil.

  The screens had shown each incremental update, “With seventy-eight percent of stations repor—no wait: seventy-nine!” Numbers traded back and forth, one candidate robbed of the lead by another. The crowd was frantic, brought from ecstasy to agony and back every few minutes. The first race announced was that of the CEO position for Cascadia Corporation, whose incumbent won reelection. The second race decided was the President of the Confederacy; a staunch pro-business challenger unseated the sitting President, a theocratic isolationist with dreams of kickstarting Armageddon. The third was that of President of the United States, who drew attention due to nostalgia and a small amount of pity. The incumbent’s challenger lost, failing to make an effective case for his economic recovery plan. The status quo remained for the most part unchanged. Adam was satisfied, if not affected in any way by these results.

  A silence fell over the crowd. The newscaster, with his expensive suit and well-coifed hair, dramatically turned to face the camera. With agonizingly slow delivery, the man recited his opening lead into the election results for Metra Corp, as elbows jostled and necks craned to get the best view. Does the act of observation affect the outcome? Adam wondered. No, he thought to himself as he downed the last of his scotch, there are no such things as quantum elections. The patrons groaned and cheered loudly in response to the results. The exceptionally business friendly candidate, Tim Montery, had unseated the current CEO, Paul Dewey, who had failed to generate profit at a quick enough pace. The current CEO had focused instead on using a portion of the excess to reinvest in infrastructure and pay outstanding debts, acts for which he had now been punished.

  The screen cut to the smug face of the victor, Tim Montery, who began delivering his acceptance speech. The energy of the crowd in the bar started to remind Adam of the cold pressure before a sudden rainstorm. He got up about the same time the first punch was thrown, by an angry, red-faced man who bounded to a cheering man and punched him in the face. The surprised victim fell back. At the same moment his friends pushed away from the table and converged on the attacker. The attacker’s mates were just a step behind. This is a quick storm, Adam mused. Glad I was paying attention.

  Adam was halfway to the door by the time the fight had begun to ripple through the crowd, a shockwave of destruction sent from the center of the room. He was hit by a bottle, but it bounced harmlessly off his bony shoulder and back into the crowd. Thank goodness for unbreakable glass, he thought. Adam’s lean frame was able to pass unhindered between people, and he made it to the door just as the bouncer from outside became aware of what was happening. Adam reached the door right as the bouncer opened it, a look of surprise on his face as he served as unplanned doorman.

  The bouncer’s wide shoulders took up almost the entire width of the door frame, leaving just enough room. “Thanks!” Adam said as he slipped through, but the bouncer was gone, his attention already turned to the riotous crowd threatening to overrun his burly fellows. If the team of ten bouncers weren’t able to quell the crowd’s chaotic energy, the Blues would be called. Adam wasn’t a fighter, so he had no desire to stay. Due to his distaste for the Blues, he was doubly glad he made it out with minimal incident.

  Adam felt his heart racing again, but once he was outside in the cold air the pounding subsided. His every exhalation visible, he pulled his jacket collar up around his neck, then stowed his hands in the warm wool of his pockets. Adam heard gunshots in the distance, signifying a protest, a celebration, or just a murder. He enjoyed the crisp air during his walk home, icicles forming in his nose with each breath. His feet had trouble with some steps toward his home due to the alcohol.

  Adam eventually stumbled into his apartment, and the soft sheets called to him. He brushed his teeth and drank a glass of water in an attempt to rid his throat of the taste of scotch, then fell into bed and sleep almost at the same moment.

  “Adam,” came a soft voice. The voice seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place it until it continued and he recognized it as his dome AI, saying, “Please make sure you are ready for the presentation this morning.” Then, “Signed by Nate Taylor.”

  Did I fall asleep with my dome on? I didn’t think I was wearing it, he thought. Something about sleeping while wearing the Mind Drive made him more tired than without, and his eyes struggled to adjust to the beam of light that shone through his apartment window. He expected some degree of a hangover from the night before, but he felt clear-headed as he sat up in bed and stretched his legs against the floor. He yawned and scratched his shoulder.

  Presentation? Adam thought with a shock. It had taken him several minutes to parse the message, and he was alarmed when he couldn’t recall anything scheduled for that day. He focused his attention to his dome, thought, Please refresh my memory regarding today’s presentation, and sent the message to Nate, hoping for a quick reply.

  Despite having plenty of time before he was due to work, Adam thought it best to go in early. If he had to present something, he would need time to prepare. The street outside his building was quiet, the city slowed by the stillness of early morning. Instead of his usual tencho playlist, that morning he opted to listen to the sounds of his shoes against the sidewalk and the silence of near-empty streets, something he didn’t often have the chance to experience at the normal hours of his treks to and from the office.

  The tempo of his falling feet matched the beat of his pounding heart as his thoughts drifted between his new role and that day’s forgotten presentation. He was perturbed, not only because he had no recollection of any pitch, but since he couldn�
�t figure out why the message came from Nate Taylor, who had been his boss for years before Adam’s recent promotion.

  As Adam reached the subway on his way to Adaptech, a soft tone rang in his ear, followed by a smooth voice reading Nate’s reply: “Yes, for the Ensyn project. Didn’t you get the memos? Several were sent.”

  No, he thought, sending the response.

  Nate replied quickly. “Don’t put me in a bad spot, Adam. I’m really counting on you for this. Can you come in early so I can brief you?”

  One step ahead of you. I’ll be there in just a few minutes, he thought in response.

  “Good,” intoned the soft voice in his ear. “Meet me at my desk.” Despite the even tone of the dome AI reading the message, Adam detected frustration from Nate.

  The subway brought him to the stop near Adaptech shortly after he received Nate’s message. He ran a mesh query for Ensyn, wanting to be as prepared as possible once he reached the office. As he exited through the train’s open doors, his query’s initial results came to his dome.

  Three quarters of a century before, several companies raced to replace the keyboards, mice, and screens that had dominated computer interaction for the preceding decades. New interfaces were developed, large and miniature touchscreens incorporating gesture input—two, three, and four fingers used to draw intricate and specific patterns—to perform desired tasks. Eventually lasers replaced screens, lasers that fired directly into the retina, overlaying virtual data atop the data absorbed by the senses from real world. Though they had been heralded as new and novel ways to interact with computers, the touchscreens led to worker fatigue, arms raised instead of planted firmly against desks while typing on keyboards, and heads-up displays quickly led to collisions for pedestrians and drivers alike. No one could accept such a state of affairs for long. A public-relations nightmare resulted.

  Audio came to be accepted as the safest medium by which to transmit data to users on the go before the Mind Drive debuted, which smoothed its pathway to success. A domer could transmit video signals wirelessly to a nearby notetab or vid screen. Adam felt thankful for this as he made his way up to the ground level, his eyes closed, his hand trailing along the icy cold railing bolted into the wall of the stairwell.

  The voice in his ear read the first result, an About Us page from the Ensyn Energy public node. “Ensyn Energy was founded by Doctors Freeman and Graeme. Originally specializing in biomass petroleum, the company diversified into other areas after an investment of capital from Luminus Industries, eventually bringing a high yield solar panel to market incorporating energy production via photosynthetic biomass. We are now providing electricity to seventy percent of the Region and growing. We at Ensyn Energy are happy to serve and to provide the technology powering our lives.”

  Typical PR speak, thought Adam. Other results filled his dome with stories about how Ensyn had used past-due utility bills to obtain liens against debtor property, foreclose, then rent it out at twice the rate—sometimes to the original occupant. Those unfortunate enough to make the transition from mortgage holder to tenant were typically forced to get another job or even indenture the mortgage to their children, payment for keeping houses in families funded by economic bondage passed from one generation to the next. Adam felt a wave of disgust and revulsion at such predatory practices.

  Adam didn’t have time to sort through most of the reports, but he saved the search to study it in greater detail later. He went inside the Adaptech building and up to Nate’s floor, taking two stairs at a time with little effort, unusual for him. The security department, consisting of Adam’s old colleagues, was a handful of floors from the ground. A typical corporate cube farm, each homogeneous grey wall blending into the next. Adam walked down three rows, then turned to the right and went to the end to seek Nate.

  Adam had been many times to Nate’s desk, the largest one at the end, a perk of managerial excess. Truth be told, there was an extra square meter, not much difference for a man of Nate’s girth but enough to cause envy in many others. The extra desk space at both ends, most of which was taken up by stacks of paperwork and memos, provided enough room for an extra picture of his children. Nate Taylor was a family man, and a family man was a good company man.

  Adam was surprised to clear the cubicle wall and see an empty workspace where Nate usually sat. No chair, no light, not even a vid screen. Boxes covered the inoffensive geometry of the carpet, stacked under the curved plastic desk and out into the center, leaving just enough space for Adam to kneel down at the desk in front of them. He opened the closest box and was surprised to see stacks of lined and printed. Almost all records were digital due to ease and cost. Paper was uncommon and indicated a particularly old or important document.

  Adam felt a spontaneous wave of respect and stopped looking at the papers, instead pushing aside his confusion long enough to send a message to Nate. He thought, Where are you? I’m at your desk. Did you move? After waiting several minutes for a reply, his curiosity overcame his patience and he started to thumb through the documents. The first he pulled was a court judgment of a foreclosure filed by Ensyn Energy, but it included notes from the corporate attorneys, scratched words in the margins suggesting Ensyn had influenced the decision by acting through a Metra Corp proxy controlling that particular district court. Each case Adam flipped through showed similar behavior, odds stacked against homeowners from the beginning.

  He opened a box containing pictures and field reports from an Ensyn plant outside Boston, a reclamation facility for processing sewage sludge into biomass to be later refined into petroleum. An accident had apparently resulted in contamination of drinking water sources, and Adam even found evidence suggesting a blackmail had occurred. Several of the pictures showed a woman and a man with a ring whispering to one another in the quiet corner of an elegant restaurant. Two more with the same pair entering an ornamented hotel. Any investigation was over before it started, and it seemed clear to Adam this was a result of bribery, not justice being served.

  In the last box Adam found financial documents. These records showed Luminus Industries had become a Metra Corp shell company over twenty years before, a fact hidden from shareholders of both organizations. After its significant investment, Luminus controlled Ensyn Energy, and bank statements showed dividends from Enysn had been diverted into offshore accounts instead of disbursed, millions of dollars of profits siphoned off and gone forever. Stealing from stockholders was one of the most heinous financial crimes in Metra Region, punishable with up to several decades in a hard labor camp. Whoever knew about these documents would take action to keep them from coming to attention, whatever the cost.

  Adam wasn’t sure what he was experiencing. Nate still hadn’t answered him. Five minutes had already gone by, or had it been ten? Twenty? Adam had no idea how long he’d been digging through boxes. He queried his dome for the time. Minor tritone, command not recognized. He tried to access the messages from Nate. The sound repeated. He stood and took two steps outside of the cubicle, fingers against the bubble under his right ear in a vain attempt to improve the recognition. No commands worked.

  He turned and stepped back toward where the boxes had been. He was shocked to find that the floor had disappeared. His left foot passed through the plane where it expected to find purchase, the rest of his body following close behind. Adam fell rapidly down a dark, hollow cylinder until a round light appeared in the distance below him, painful and brilliant, directly in his path. He closed his eyes instinctively as he rushed toward the surface, but his eyelids did nothing to block the terrible pain as the intensity increased.

  When Adam was sure he could take no more, the light vanished into darkness. He opened his eyes and at the same moment inhaled so sharply that the back of his throat felt as if it were being raked with a stick. After Adam blinked several times he noticed a taste in the back of his throat, raw and earthy, almost a smell. He found himself on his back, his head against his pillow, at home with his arms at his sides. He reach
ed up and found he was not wearing his dome. He saw it next to him on the table by his bed, beside his notetab, where he had apparently left them, though he couldn’t recall doing so.

  Not wanting to aggravate the headache he felt forming at his temples, Adam grabbed the notetab and pulled up the page about Ensyn his dome had read to him in the dream. Adam shuddered as he read the words on the screen:

  “Ensyn Energy was founded by Drs. Freeman and Graeme. Originally specializing in biomass petroleum, the company diversified into other areas . . . ”

  Adam looked up several court cases he remembered from the dream and they all seemed to exist. He wondered what that meant. He also wondered how deeply he should investigate, worried his search might raise a flag of suspicion in some data-mining algorithm scanning for illicit mesh activity. Adam confirmed enough details from the boxes in his dream to imply that the rest of what he had seen in them was also true.

  Are those documents real? Adam could not help but ask himself as he lay staring at the ceiling. The last time he’d dreamed about paper it turned out not to exist, and he had no idea why this paper would be any different, except the things he’d seen referred to actual places and events. The documents—documents he didn’t possess and couldn’t prove as real—also showed corruption was coming from the top down, through Metra Corp and its subsidiaries. Are the boxes really at Adaptech in Nate’s cubicle, Adam wondered as he lay in bed, or was that symbolic imagery of an authority figure?

  Adam finally fell asleep in the beginning of the morning, three hours before his alarm was set to pain him. He went into work early the next day to go straight to Nate’s desk, only to find it was where it had always been, arranged exactly as he remembered it from when he worked in that department. There were no boxes in sight. All he found was Nate Taylor, as pleasant as ever.

  “To what do I owe this occasion?” Nate asked with a look of delight. “You really should come to visit more often.”