I find myself shaking my head.
“There’s an Everest resistance movement, Gus?” I ask, genuinely shocked to hear it.
Again, he looks over both shoulders.
“And if I was you,” he says in place of answering my question, “I’d park your ride somewhere else. Somewhere away from prying eyes.”
Having grabbed my bag out of the Jeep, I head around back of the shack while Tony parks the Jeep further up the road in the residential section of the village. He takes a dark alley located behind a long row of commercial buildings and meets me in the back of Gus’s shack. The small space is surrounded by a privacy fence cobbled together with old wood slats and some rusted tin panels. Barbed concertina wire tops the fence as though Gus is worried about intruders. A couple picnic tables have been set up, but they remain vacant.
“What the hell is going on, Tan?” Tony says, stuffing his hands in his jean’s pockets. “I get the feeling that Gus is truly afraid.”
“You think?” I say. “This is precisely what I’ve been talking about. Everest is not the friendly, worry-free, mega corp. they want us to believe. Something’s not right here. It’s almost like Gus feels he’s one step away from something terrible happening to him. You heard him. He said the word slavery. A dude like Gus—an African American dude—does not just toss that kind of language around, Tony.”
He nods, bites down on his bottom lip.
“Would it be entirely insensitive of me to say I’m still starving?”
I can’t help but grin. Tony’s still feeling the effects of the wine. My guess is, otherwise, he wouldn’t allow himself to be here. While it pains me to admit this, he’s way too ingrained in the Everest system for him to risk messing things up with the corporate giant. Everest is not only his publisher, but they are his meal ticket and his life. He disrupts that situation in anyway, it spells disaster for him.
“I’ve gone ahead and ordered for us,” I say, my grin now wiped from my face. “But I gotta tell you, Tony, I’m not the least bit comfortable. Let’s get the hell out of here ASAP.”
He gives me this squinty-eyed look like, I told you this wasn’t a good idea in the first place. And he’s absolutely right. But just because he’s right, doesn’t make the situation right. The United States of America used to be a free country. That was before the social networks and search engines stole our personal data . . . before Everest bought it all out, essentially crushing the social media behemoths, leaving only one search engine giant standing in its way of total internet dominance. But on a micro-level, this whole thing . . . this visit to Gus’s . . . was my idea. Mine and my empty stomach’s idea.
“Let’s grab our food and run,” Tony says. “You’re right. This is no longer a healthy place. And I’m not just talking about clogging our arteries.”
Gus emerges from the shack’s back, screen door. He’s carrying a big paper grocery bag in his hand. He hands it to me. It’s filled with hot food. Tony pulls out his wallet and slides out his Everest credit card.
“’Fraid all I got is E-credits, Gus,” he says.
“Wait a minute,” I say.
Like Gus before me, I find myself looking over both shoulders before reaching into my bag, pulling out a stack of tens and twenties.
“Good ole U.S. currency,” I say. “What’s left of my once hefty bank account. I’m supposed to surrender these to an Everest kiosk at some point, I guess.”
Tony’s expression is best described as shock and awe.
“Where the hell did you get that, Tanya?” he says, his voice tense and suddenly quite sober.
“I only became an Everest Primary member last night, Tony,” I say. “I haven’t had time yet to clean the coffers, as it were.”
Shaving off sixty dollars, I hand them to Gus.
“This cover it, Gus?”
He nods.
“More than enough,” he says. “Now skedaddle. You never know who’s watching you these days. Soon, Everest will have a Jacquie satellite that will monitor our every word and movement indoors and out. These are dangerous times, kids.”
I feel the urgency in his voice, and I hear his warning loud and crystal clear. One day, in the not so distant future, an operation like Gus’s Hotdog Shack will be considered an illegal operation even for those who don’t belong to the Primary Program. Who knows what kind of punishment will go with operating an enterprise independent of Everest, but I can bet it won’t be just a slap on the wrist. At least, if this were a novel, that’s how I’d write it. God help the poor little kid who starts a lemonade stand.
Taking a step toward Gus, I give him a kiss on the cheek.
“It was so good seeing you again, Gus,” I say.
I swear, his eyes fill up.
“You were always good kids,” he says. “Now go. Go.”
Turning, we leave Gus’s Hotdog Shack for what I fear will be the last time. We head into an alley that’s dark, cold, and foreboding. Why does it feel like the perfect metaphor for what might lie ahead?
We don’t chance bringing the food back to either Tony’s or my house. Not with Jacquie’s all omniscient presence inside both residences. That’s omniscient, as in God Himself. Instead, we drive to the old abandoned Port of Albany and pull up to one of the old concrete docks which allows us to gaze out onto an unobstructed view of the Hudson River. On the way, Tony stopped at a beverage store and picked up a six pack of Bud cans with his Everest credits.
“You gotta drink a cold Bud with this stuff,” he insists, stealing a huge bite out of the first of two mustard and relish covered foot-long hotdogs, and following up with a deep drink of beer. “This brings back a ton of memories, Tan.”
I take a bite out of my sausage, onion, and pepper sandwich. It’s as good as I remember. My eyes focus on a flock of seagulls catching some wind drafts over the swift moving river. One of them suddenly nose dives into the water and comes shooting back out with a fish in its mouth. Survival of the fittest incarnate.
“What do you think Gus meant by a resistance, Tony?” I pose after a time.
He shrugs his shoulders.
“Who knows,” he says. “Maybe it’s just the ramblings of a paranoid late middle-aged man who just can’t get himself to change with the times . . .”
“I’m sensing a but here.”
“Yes,” Tony says, taking hold of his second hotdog, “what on earth would a writer do without a but sentence?”
“So,” I go on, “what if Gus’s mentioning of a resistance isn’t exactly the ramblings of a crazy old dude? What if Everest is threatening him somehow? Threatening him directly?”
“Threatening him how, Tan? You’re beginning to sound like you’re plotting your new thriller.”
“Gus looked scared, Tony,” I say. “You can’t deny it. You could see it in his eyes.”
In the distance, a tugboat is slowly making its way upstream. The seagulls continue to circle in the blue sky, hunting for fish. Tony finishes off his second hotdog, drinks more beer.
“Yeah,” he says, solemnly. “He did seem scared. I mean, we had to use the back door for God’s sakes. Why even be open for business if he fears for his . . . . . . safety.”
“There, see?” I say, nearly jumping down Tony’s throat. “You were gonna say life, weren’t you?”
“What are you talking about, Tan?”
“I’m an editor,” I say. “I can spot these things a mile away. You were originally gonna say, why even be open for business if he fears for his life. But the editor inside you made you change your adjective at the last millisecond.”
He cocks his head, drinks some beer, looks out onto the river.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But I will admit there are times I think Everest is just a mega-corp. no different from our government. But I guess there are times I don’t think of them as the worry-free saviors they make themselves out to be. Times I believe their takeover is very dangerous. That if you don’t follow their program exactly as prescribed, it could lead t
o some pretty bad things.”
He looks away, like he’s being coy . . . like he knows precisely what those pretty bad things are, but he’s having trouble believing that they do indeed exist. My stomach sinks a little.
“Not exactly a comforting thought, boyfriend,” I say.
He squeezes my hand, smiles at me.
“That what I am now?”
“Maybe,” I say. “I’ll have to think about it.”
For a time, we remain quiet, our eyes fixed on the river. I manage to eat half my sandwich until I’m so stuffed, I can’t manage another bite. My, how times have changed. When I was a teenager, I could eat two sausage sandwiches and have room for more. Or maybe it’s just the result of all this Everest talk. I’m not sure what prompts it, but suddenly I’m picturing Tony’s extended family. His parents and his little brother, Mike. Why hasn’t Tony mentioned them at all?
Handing the second half of my sandwich to him before he asks for it, I say, “How’s your family, Tony? You haven’t spoken a word about them. How’s Mike? Did he ever become a stockbroker?”
He hesitates for a long beat, as if he doesn’t want to talk about Mike. Then, before he can offer up some sort of satisfactory answer, a mechanical buzzing noise shatters the quiet. Something wizzes past, not far above our heads.
“What the hell is that?” I ask, startled.
Tony is already munching on what’s left of my sausage sandwich.
“It’s a drone,” he says, his eyes going wide. “A newer model, if I’m not mistaken. What the hell is it doing here?”
The drone looks like a flying X. It’s got cameras mounted to its bottom. Probably listening devices, too. Drones are all over the place now. The Everest police use them, especially in large gatherings to sniff out terrorist attacks. The media uses them in their filmed reports and commercials (the happy couple in the Everest Primary Program commercial was clearly filmed by a drone-mounted camera). Engineers use them for surveilling property and construction sites. And of course, the Everest Corporation uses them to deliver billions of packages to billions of satisfied customers.
But this drone isn’t transporting anything, least of all, an Everest box. It cruises over our heads at a pretty decent rate of speed, until it comes to stop at the edge of the dock where it hovers in mid-air, maybe ten feet in front of us.
“That thing is definitely meant for us, Tony,” I say, my heart now jumping into my throat. “It’s taking our picture.”
Tony carefully wraps up what’s left of the sandwich and sets it on the center console.
“Start engine,” he orders the Jeep AI.
The engine roars to life. The drone continues to bob in mid-air, its camera no doubt filming us. Tony seems sober enough now to switch over to manual mode. He throws the Jeep in reverse and backs away from the dock. Turning the vehicle around so that we face away from the dock and the drone, he punches the gas. We speed across the empty parking lot toward Broadway.
But here’s the thing. The lot isn’t entirely empty. A black sedan is parked directly ahead of us. A man is standing outside of it. The closer we come to him, the more I can see that he’s holding a pair of binoculars in his hand. I can also make out his face.
Matt Tyrel.
“It’s Tyrel!” I bark while the wind whips my face.
“You mean that creep from Everest who spied on us earlier?”
“That’s him,” I say.
The Everest higher up is dressed all in black, just like he was when we saw him at the coffee shop. He’s not acknowledging us. He’s not waving. He’s not doing anything but staring us down, his eyes hidden behind his dark sunglasses.
Tony races passed him.
“That drone’s on our tail,” he says.
I turn around in my seat, spot the drone flying directly behind us. Only about ten or fifteen feet separate us from the unmanned flying device. Facing the front again.
“It’s the Everest Corporation, Tony,” I say, my stomach so nauseous with desperation I feel like I’m about to lose my lunch. “They after us. They’re going to terminate us.”
Tony’s face goes so tight, I can make out his cheek bones. He makes a fist and punches the steering wheel.
“I knew it!” he shouts. “I fucking knew it. We should have never gone to Gus’s.”
“Why would they care if we buy a stupid hotdog for Christ’s sakes? It’s not like we tried to assassinate the Everest CEO.”
“It’s not about the hotdogs, Tanya,” he says. “It’s what the hotdogs represent. We cheated the system. We signed a contract to purchase products only from Everest and we cheated.”
“Wow, a couple of hotdogs. Big fucking cheat.”
“Doesn’t matter. The smallest infraction will get you terminated from Everest. Take it from one of their authors. They find my books being sold anywhere but on Everest, even if it’s not my fault, they can terminate my author platform just by pressing a single button. That’s how powerful they are.” He shakes his head. “You remember that story in the Bible where God tells Abraham to kill his only son with no reason given as to why? That’s Everest. If they tell you to kill your son or you’ll face termination, trust me, you’d better kill your son.”
My head is spinning. I don’t know if it’s because of all that wine, or because I’m being chased by a freaking flying robot, while listening to my old boyfriend compare the Everest Corp. to God, but I feel like my world is being turned upside down. And it is.
“The rumors are true then,” I say. “Primary Termination is real. But I still can’t believe they’d go to this length over a stupid hotdog.”
Me, glancing again at the drone. Eyes back in front, I watch us come up on Broadway. Tony only toe taps the brakes before making a sharp right onto the main road. For a split second, I’m convinced we’re about to flip over. This is a Jeep after all, and from what some of my authors have told me, it doesn’t take all that much to make a 4x4 flip onto its side.
“They’re going to this length over a stupid hotdog because Gus is a part of the Resistance,” he explains. “It’s got to be the only explanation. Either that or they had you pegged from the start as someone who would question the system . . . maybe fight the system. Resist it.”
His words hit me like a baseball bat to the head, because he’s right. Not only did we violate our Everest contract, but it’s entirely possible we conspired with a member of a resistance movement that I had no idea about until only an hour ago. Jesus, take it from an editor, you cannot make this crap up.
Tony’s eyes going from the road to the rearview mirror and to the road again.
“We’ve got to lose that damned drone, Tan,” he insists.
“We can’t just tell it to go away,” I say.
Up ahead, a tractor trailer is going way too slow, like he’s stuck in first gear.
“Gotta get around this guy,” Tony insists.
Turning the wheel sharply to the left, he veers around the trailer and into oncoming traffic.
“Are you crazy?” I shout.
“Out of my mind!” he barks. “Look for the goddamned drone.”
Glancing into the side-view mirror, I don’t see anything but blue sky. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. I turn around in my seat. Sure enough, there it is, coming around the tractor trailer. I once more face the front
“Still there,” I shout.
Then, spotting the car that’s coming directly for us.
“Tony, look out!”
He guns the Jeep. We head directly for the oncoming car, but at the very last second, before we collide front grill to front grill, he turns the wheel sharply to the right. We swerve directly in front of the tractor trailer. The driverless truck’s AI hits the horn, but Tony ignores it. He’s glancing into the rearview.
“Shit,” he spits, once more punching the steering wheel. “That thing is wearing us like underwear.”
“Any more ideas, Tony Smart?” I beg.
He nods slowly.
�
��Yeah,” he says. “Hold on.”
Speeding along Broadway in the direction of North Albany, Tony turns off onto a narrow side road that once accessed a massive square-shaped, twenty-story refrigerated concrete building. Far as I recall, the structure has been abandoned since at least the early 1980s, before I was born.
“What are you up to?” I ask, my right hand gripping the roll bar tightly.
“There’s tunnels under that building that access the old delivery bays.”
“How do you know that?”
“I used to party down there when I was a kid.”
“Must have been before my time,” I point out.
“Me and the fellas would ride our bikes down there and smoke pot. It was way before your time, Tan.”
“I never took you for a pot smoker,” I say. “You were always the athlete . . . the athlete writer guy.”
He shoots me a glance and a quick grin.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he says.
Just ahead, a tunnel is blocked off by a series of boards painted red and yellow. A red STOP sign is nailed to the boards.
“This is gonna hurt me a lot more than it’s gonna hurt my Jeep,” Tony goes on. “But hang on.”
He plows right through board barrier. We enter a narrow tunnel that would be blacker than even the darkest night if not for the Jeep’s LED headlamps. The air suddenly turns much cooler and the odor of rotting garbage and cat pee slams our senses. Ahead, a skinny gray-bearded man runs for cover. I can make out his screams over the roar of the Jeep engine.
“Vagrants live down here now,” Tony informs. “Let’s pray they’re not so drunk I run any over.”
“Maybe if you slowed down,” I say. But that statement just might qualify as one of the stupidest things I’ve ever said. Then, “So, where do these tunnels come out?”
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