Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  “Good morning Executive Li.

  Today’s schedule.

  You have a meeting with Mason Katcher and

  Mason Royale to depart for –

  EDEN, SKYSCRAPER ONE at 7:30 a.m.

  Please arrive at the Masonic Offices at 7:20 a.m.

  Expected arrival at Eden City will be 8:30 a.m.

  Boardroom meeting is scheduled to start at 10:00 a.m.

  Anticipated duration of meeting is …”

  He half-listened to the device while he pulled on his new suit jacket. He liked the smell of new material. It gave him a much-needed boost of confidence. He was nervous, but he had promised himself that he would not show it to Katcher no matter how bad things got.

  The conference in Eden was set to last two days. It was to discuss and finalise the logistics of expanding the Genie power grid. He didn’t really understand the specifics. What he did know, like the back of his hands, were the financial aspects. The conference could make or break his career and he knew it.

  A pang of guilt nudged him. He didn’t want to leave Ellie alone for two days and nights, but he had no choice. Royale had organised the conference and he was expected to attend. To make things worse, when Katcher had discovered the news that Jon Li had been called down to a CURE station (because a family friend had been murdered) he had jumped on the opportunity to insist that Jon Li should take some time off to see to his partner. That would of course mean that Jon Li would have to miss the conference.

  Jon Li scowled as he applied his palladium cufflinks. They were engraved with a simple shape of a holographic disk with his initials “JL” in the centre. Katcher’s plan hadn’t worked. Jon Li had insisted that he could cope and that he definitely would be attending the conference as planned. Katcher was afraid. He had been trying his utmost to make Jon Li look as incompetent as possible and now he seemed to be getting desperate. He had doubled Jon Li’s work-load since he had found out that Jon Li had a grieving partner. The pressure was mounting for Jon Li and the cracks were beginning to show.

  The itinerary in his ear continued. The boardroom meeting would be followed by a grand banquet to celebrate the success of the scheme and to honour the two visiting masons. The Mayor of Eden would be hosting the banquet. He allowed himself a smirk as he made last minute adjustments to his fine suit. He was thinking that if they knew what he knew, they would not be planning a banquet, they would be planning a funeral. He checked himself in the wardrobe mirrors. His suit was a perfect fit. He had slicked his jet black hair back, to accentuate his handsome face. He slipped into his shiny black leather shoes (which had an inbuilt cushion that made him exactly one inch taller than Katcher). He looked every inch the part he needed to play. It was time to start the game.

  Jon Li left the penthouse and walked down Opal Avenue towards his workplace at Fin-Sen, the headquarters of the masons, and the site of the vault. Fin-Sen was Sector Zero and it was situated in Diamond Square, directly opposite the newly constructed Phoenix Palace. He had decided against taking the limousine, instead preferring to walk. He would take fifteen minutes to walk from his penthouse (in Opal House) to his office. He liked to arrive a few minutes early for work. It gave him time to clear his mind of domestic issues. These days, ‘domestic issues’ weighed heavily on his mind.

  Royale and Katcher would be waiting for him at 7:25 a.m. in the Masonic Offices, which were situated on the floor above his own office. He walked towards Diamond Square and the looming spire of the Fin-Sen building. His Lecturon chimed in his ear.

  “The time is 6:55 a.m. and you have one new message Executive Li.”

  Jon Li coughed in irritation. He hated the way the device constantly called him Executive Li. It felt patronising to him.

  ‘Play message,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Hey Jon,’ said the recorded voice of a female.

  His heart sank a little when he realised that it was not Ellie.

  ‘Good luck today.’

  The message ended. It was from Angela Bitton the Senior Systems Administrator (or SSA) at Fin-Sen. Her office was to his own. She would be accompanying them to the conference. At the conference they would meet up with Maxwell Blunt, who was Angela’s counterpart in Eden and a firm ally of Katcher.

  Katcher and Blunt had been plotting the demise of Jon Li’s career for a while. Things had got much worse since Jon Li had been invited to the Masquerade Ball as a reward for saving Mason Henson from the lunatic in the Genie plant. Henson’s show of favour had been the final straw for Katcher and since then he had worked feverishly at every turn to undermine Jon Li’s success. Angela Bitton worked as closely with Royale as Jon Li did. What Katcher did not know, was that Jon Li had an ally of his own: one that was very good at keeping herself on a very low profile when it came to alliances. Jon Li was counting on Angela’s loyalty to him.

  Angela had worked very hard to make sure that everything was perfect for Royale: which was an insurmountable task. He understood her frustration at the task, and sympathised with her.

  He walked past the intersection of Sapphire Street and Opal Avenue. The Civil Law Courts were on the right hand side of Sapphire Street and on the left hand side was a large hotel. Opal Avenue was lined with apartment blocks similar to his. In one of them, Cherry Hammond had met her end only days before. He shuddered. What are things coming to? he thought.

  Most of the apartments were homes to the scores of workers who worked in the financial districts, including Angela Bitton (who lived in the third apartment block from his). He knew that Angela would already have walked past the office blocks where Emerald Avenue crossed Opal Avenue. He wouldn’t see her on the way in to work, because she would have left even earlier than he had. They had never actively socialised, but had worked out some mutually beneficial business transactions between them. He rubbed his hands thoughtfully at the idea of their plans coming to fruition.

  Angela lived with her husband, who was a Barrister. He worked in the Civil Law Courts on Sapphire Avenue. He wondered why she had chosen to give up her promising career as SSA at Utopia’s main centre for administration and communications. He had thought that perhaps it was to work closer with the masons, but he had been wrong.

  Jon Li had been at a staff meeting one evening. It had stretched on far too long. He had been leaning back waiting for it to end when one of Angela’s work colleagues had approached him. She let it slip to Jon Li (after drinking far few too many cocktails) that Angela only left because she had walked in on her boss having sex with another man in the office late one night and things had got a little awkward. She had gone on to describe in detail what it was that Angela had seen. Jon Li recalled feeling disgusted, but he had acted as professionally as possible, under the circumstances, and had politely excused himself from her company. He had never mentioned anything to Angela about the comments. He considered her work colleague to be ‘unprofessional’ and had avoided her after that.

  He was still thinking about Angela Bitton, when he crossed over Ruby Avenue. The main centre for administration and communications were located in a huge building on the right hand side of Ruby Avenue. It was a monstrous building. He hated the look of it. To him, it seemed squat, ugly and out of place, compared to the glittering tall buildings of Sector One. The building was round in structure, with large pillars at intervals around the sides. It had the appearance of a windmill lying on its side. There was a huge screen at the front of the building. It projected constant, newscast images which were fronted by Mason Henson who ran all of the news casting.

  Angela had told him that when she worked there, they had a nickname for it, they called it The Wheel. Angela also said that they used to joke about it being ‘always spinning’ and that Mason Henson was secretly referred to as The Spinster of Spin. He thought about Angela’s description of Mason Henson, and remembered her spiel on the day that he and Ellie had attended the tour of Genie. Henson certainly could talk, he thought.

  He continued on down the street, thinking about Mason Henson and
the incident down at the Genie plant. For him, it wasn’t the first time that he had seen something like that. He had been working in Fin-Sen for several years when the first incident happened. He had worked his way up the Fin-Sen building, until he was situated on the 98th floor which was underneath the chief executive offices. He had patiently waited for an opening in the chief executive positions, for almost two years. Privately, he knew that he was penned as a favourite to take up the mantle of one of them when they eventually retired. His problem was that none of them looked anywhere near close to retiring. The oldest person in the executive office was a mere forty. It was a side effect of the rapid creation of Utopia. Only the young had survived. That had all changed the day executive, Ethan Bridges, had come into work one day to see Mason Royale.

  He hadn’t been in the executive office suite, when Bridges had pulled the gun, but he had certainly heard the shots. He had seen the man dragged out through the offices by security and the entire building had been placed on lockdown. Bridges had been as white as a sheet and screaming when they had dragged him past his own cubicle.

  “She’ll kill us!” Bridges had screamed. “She’ll kill us all!”

  Bridges had been committed to a psychiatric hospital with a nervous-work-related-stress-condition. That is how he had finally gotten his promotion to Ethan Bridge’s old office.

  Angela Bitton had landed the job of Royale’s new SSA after her predecessor had been unfortunate enough to be in the way of Ethan, when he had pulled the gun. He tried not to think too carefully about it. He deliberately avoided telling Ellie just how he had managed to get the position of executive at Fin-Sen. He didn’t want her to worry. Ethan Bridge’s attempt to shoot Royale was never reported. It was hushed up – just like the incident at the Genie plant had been.

  Jon Li continued to think about both incidents as he walked to work. He looked over to the opposite side of the street where the Bank of Utopia was located. The Bank was actually two, tall, thin buildings, linked by a glass bridge. One half of it was the Bank and the other half was the headquarters for TAU. The building was designed to be as energy efficient as possible. The same architects that had installed the glass-house at Plastic Paradise had incorporated a system of large growing tanks for algae, along the whole of one glass side of the TAU building. The algae were converted to a food protein, which was introduced back into the food production systems. The systems used in most of the new buildings in Coney City were designed to maximise energy use, using advanced technology.

  Jon Li crossed Ruby Avenue and entered Diamond Square. The Fin-Sen building towered in front of him. It was exactly one hundred stories high (not including Royale’s private luxury penthouse), which was on the roof. He had noted on his first day, that Katcher did not seem to have a penthouse. Part of the building was underground. Somewhere far below the tiled slabs of Diamond Square was the Vault, and the primary administration computer core. Jon Li and Angela worked in the executive offices on the 99th floor. A glass elevator, located by the main entrance, ran up the side of the building, until it reached the 99th floor, where it terminated. The Masonic Offices, where Katcher and Royale worked, were above them on the 100th floor. No public elevator ran up there. The Masonic Offices could only be reached via the executive offices. That is what had foiled Ethan Bridge’s assassination attempt.

  As far as Jon Li knew, there did not seem to be any direct way to access the Vault. He had never seen an elevator, or any stairs. Quite how the masons entered it remained an enigma to him. He began to think about how things had become very fraught of late. He recalled that Royale had come into his office the day before and had been extremely angry about something. Angela had told him that Mason Henson had been to visit Aarif earlier that day and afterwards, Mason Henson had gone to see Mason Royale about it. Neither he nor Angela knew why Mason Royale had been in such a foul temper since her meeting with Henson. However, they had overheard Royale having a heated argument with Katcher shortly afterwards. Jon Li couldn’t help feeling a hint of smugness at hearing that argument.

  Mason Deckler had come into the Fin-Sen building not long after the heated argument between Royale and Katcher. Deckler had spent some considerable time in Royale’s private office suite. When he had finished, he had walked out through the executive office and past Jon Li. They were all given early leave that day and the immediate area had been cleared of visitors. There were rumours that the masons were holding a meeting in the Vault. That could only mean that the Coney Twins would be on site. Deckler would take no chances with their security, if that were true.

  Deckler’s presence at Fin-Sen the day before had only served to feed the rumours and Jon Li wondered if it had something to do with Aarif, the visiting diplomat. He knew that Aarif was instrumental in the mason’s plans to expand the Genie grid. If there had been some kind of screw up with him, it might have been enough for the masons to hold an emergency meeting. He had theorised that the grid expansion was necessary for the mason’s plans for their new city, Sanctuary. Although, he did not understand what Aarif could possibly have to do with that project. The way Fin-Sen actually managed to conduct business, in terms of functionality, remained a mystery to him. Each floor seemed to operate independently of the others. They were each given very specific tasks without truly knowing anything of the whole. He suspected that it was to guard against any form of industrial espionage, so that no one employee could scupper them. He supposed that it was the masons that would be responsible for putting all the pieces together and that they would do that, down in their Vault, away from prying eyes. He just kept filling in the reports and completing his tasks, one after another – him, and hundreds like him, all working away on some ‘great unknown’ whole. He liked it that way.

  By the time he had finished thinking about how he had arrived at his current career path, he had also arrived at the bottom of the white steps leading up to the main entrance of Fin-Sen headquarters. The massive columns that ran across the front of the building were made of white stone, which had been mined on the outskirts of Utopia and transported to the industrial area of Sector Six for cutting and shaping. Mounted on the columns, were two, huge, 360 degree cameras. They revolved around like the eyes of a giant chameleon.

  His Lecturon buzzed lightly in his pocket.

  “You have a meeting with Mason Katcher and Mason Royale.

  Depart for EDEN, SKYSCRAPER ONE at 7:30am.”

  He flicked the device off. He did not need reminding of schedules. He was ready.

  He looked up at the towering building. The beady eyes of the ‘electronic Chameleon’ stared back at him through dark lenses.

  It seemed to him, that if the building could talk it would say, “Enter my Kingdom Jon Li and sense the power of Utopia.” He imagined his mother talking to him, “Little Emperor. Be true to your conscience and listen to the voice within. Always live by our code of honour. Don’t be afraid.” The image of her pale face faded in a passing cloud, along with the worrying thoughts of Ellie.

  Time’s up.

  He made his way up the steps and past the security guards who were standing near the main doors. Body scanners silently checked him as he passed through. The ground floor lobby was like a museum. It was cold. The stone floor echoed under his feet. The ceilings were the proportions of a large church. Suspended from the high ceiling, on an invisible wire, was the symbol of the masons. It was a shining, silver key. It glinted as the platinum rays reflected the light across the walls. Lining the walls of the lobby, were eight, colossal, holographic screens. Each one had a portrait of one of the masons. He walked down the lobby, towards the glass elevator and looking at the holographic portraits of Masons Henson, Deckler, Katcher, Royale, De-Barr and Batide, as he passed by. At the far end of the lobby, sited between the last two holograms of the Coney Twins (Jonus and Alexis) was a fantastic scale model of Coney City and its satellite sister city, Eden. The doors to the glass elevator were situated next to the scale model. The model stretched the whole of the
length of the back wall. It was exquisite in detail. It was animated with a moving monorail system and was complete with cars, miniature people, light, and sound. The whole model had been placed under a glass dome to protect it. He looked at the model. He had admired it many times. It changed weekly depending on how things were being reformed in Coney City. He like its complexity and tried to imagine the logistics of how some of the buildings were created. He could pick out his apartment block at Opal House and trace the walk he had taken earlier. He looked at the arrangement of the Sectors. The plan was impressive and he marvelled at the intricacy of its creative genius.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a party of school children who were all dressed in black and white uniforms. They were accompanied by a young woman who was carrying a clipboard. They were heading in his direction like a small flock of noisy penguins, trying to make beach before the next big wave. He stepped away from the model and pushed the lift button, in the hope that it would come before they got to him. It did not. The lift was coming down from floor 98.

  ‘It would be,’ he muttered.

  He had nasty visions of sticky fingers on his best suit, before he could get out of their way. He hugged the wall as near to the lift as possible. The children crowded around the model. They were taking pictures, and jostling for position in their excitement to get a better look at the model.