The Unincorporated Man

by Dani Kollin; Eytan Kollin

  All Hektor could manage was a grumble.

  “And,” continued iago, “anybody who bought in and sold you, including, and most probably, your mom, could demand a psyche audit for your trickery. Your mind would be nanoprobed for any intent or collusion. And while it is your mind to do with as you please, I must admit I’ve kind of gotten used to it—deviousness and all.”

  Hektor twirled the dark amber in his glass, and then polished it off with a swig. “Why thank you, iago. I didn’t know you cared.”

  Iago didn’t take the bait. “I really would like to know the answer.”

  Normally, Hektor would have ignored iago’s request, but avatars had a way of fixing things that sometimes didn’t need fixing. If iago truly thought that Hektor had “lost it,” he wouldn’t report it to the authorities directly—that would be bad form. More likely he’d contact the avatar of an associate or friend of Hektor’s and let that avatar know that a more frequent regimen of calls to Hektor might be in order. The friend’s avatar would then make the suggestion to the friend, and before he knew it Hektor would be receiving calls too frequently to ignore. It was only mildly intrusive, but effective.

  “No, iago,” Hektor finally answered, after a full minute’s silence, “I am not out of my mind. The truth is there was no stock manipulation whatsoever. My stock’s in the dumps, it’s as simple as that, and so I can do with it as I please. Besides, who in their right mind would make a run on worthless stock except perhaps the fool who owns it? No, iago, if anything, a psyche audit would prove my innocence, not my guilt. And as far as my mom’s concerned I don’t think even she’d request an audit, because if I passed it I could always request a counteraudit. Probably wouldn’t get it, but the sword swings both ways, and we both know Mom has just as much to hide as I do.

  “Now,” he said, staring hard at the little block of plastic positioned next to his empty glass, “I swear, if you don’t do as I tell you, I’ll have you set back to your factory settings, so help me God.”

  “Right. Now that’s the Hektor I know,” answered iago. “I feel compelled to warn you that you’ll be going into pretty serious debt without any outstanding assets, and with a very tenuous job, to say the least. Yes, you’ll achieve self-majority but if you lose your current position you’ll have to sell your shares at a loss. And I don’t have to tell you that they can’t really go much lower than they are at present.”

  “Finished, iago?” Hektor asked.

  “Not exactly. I feel it’s my duty to lay it all out.”

  “If it makes you happy.”

  “It doesn’t. But I’ll finish anyhow. You’ll be unemployed. . . .”

  “Two seconds ago it was ‘if’ I lose my job,” interrupted Hektor. “Now you’re telling me I’ve already lost it?”

  “You’ll be in debt,” continued iago, undaunted, “and will probably be left with a paltry 25 percent of yourself by the time you’re done. If you’re lucky, you’ll be earning 25 percent of a janitor’s salary for the next few hundred years. And you’re willing to risk all of that to earn what may very well be a temporary majority? Factory reset or not, it doesn’t make any sense. At least, not from you, Hektor.”

  “Desperate times, iago, desperate measures. Look, just do it . . . and one more thing. . . .”

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “Hang on to Dr. Harper’s shares.”

  “You betcha, boss.” Iago signed out. Within fifty-three minutes, Hektor Sambianco had accomplished something that he had been sure would not happen for centuries. He’d managed to buy enough of his own stock to own 63 percent of himself. It was a huge risk, but Hektor felt confident that he’d emerge from the fiasco. And if he did, it would be from a position of far more strength than he could have ever possibly imagined. In a society that valued personal majority in the worst possible way, Hektor Sambianco had achieved it—in the worst possible way.

  “Yo, wide-eyed boy. You coming or what?” asked Omad.

  He and Justin were standing on the steps just outside the entrance to the medical center. It was beginning to drizzle.

  Justin, Omad could see, was still fumbling with his stuff.

  “For Damsah’s sake, man, you spent umpteen billion credits, managed to suspend yourself for over who knows how many hundreds of years, and didn’t think to bring a purse?”

  Justin shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, you try to think of everything.”

  Omad smiled—exasperated—then reached into his pocket and took out what appeared to be a pocketknife, flask, and some sort of eye patch. He sorted through and then returned the knife and flask back to his pocket. He plucked the eye patch out of the palm of his hand and started shaking it. It grew into what appeared to be a heavy-duty black canvas side satchel, which he handed over triumphantly. But before Justin could comment on the “trick” he’d just witnessed, something caught his eye.

  They have the flying cars.

  Justin grinned. It was one thing to have a noncorporeal voice in an avatar tell you that flying cars actually existed, but it was quite another to actually see them. And there they were. Not a lot, but certainly enough—in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and colors. It was clear there was a method to the madness. Justin surmised that there were definite “lanes,” if such a word could be ascribed to a third dimension. What there didn’t appear to be was any stopping. It was all one constant movement. Cars would pull up and out of the traffic flow every now and then, either disappearing into adjacent buildings or coming to full stops on the ground, but the lanes . . . well, the lanes just seemed to keep on moving.

  Justin put his belongings in the satchel while keeping one eye on the traffic. Omad, he could see, was growing impatient.

  “All this stuff,” Justin said, arm extended, “may mean nothing to you, but it’s sure cool to me.”

  “I’m sure it is, Justin, but neither you nor I have envirosuits on, so guess what? We still get wet out here in the future. And if you’re going to stop and gawk every time you see something ‘cool,’ whatever that means, we’ll probably drown out here before we ever make it to the pawnshop.”

  Justin wasn’t particularly swayed by Omad’s argument but figured he’d have plenty of time to gawk. It was more important to start getting his financial affairs in order.

  “Fine. Do we get to go in one of those?” he asked, as a flyer passed overhead.

  “No, we’ll walk,” Omad said, as if that were somehow unusual. “It’s pretty close by.

  “Besides, it’s a freak town, Justin. Here walking is part of the nostalgia. Just like all these buildings you’re looking at. You think the future looks like this?” he asked, pointing to no building or structure in particular. “They make no economic sense. A two-story structure? Where’s the profit in that? Tourist town, friend. Nothing more, nothing less . . . And by the way,” he said, pointing up at the traffic lanes with a snicker, “this ain’t traffic by any stretch of the imagination.”

  Justin shrugged. “Well, take it from me, Omad, it still looks plenty futuristic.”

  Omad sighed and pulled out his DijAssist. “Deb, get me a New York City visual for wide-eyed boy, please.”

  “Certainly, sweetie,” answered the avatar. “Any shot in mind?”

  Justin mouthed the word “sweetie” to Omad, laughing quietly as he did.

  Omad ignored him. “Yeah, Drexler Plaza. Do a bird’s-eye drop down to ground level, and throw in a little subway to boot.”

  “Got it,” the avatar answered. When Omad was satisfied with the result he shoved the DijAssist into Justin’s face. “Now that, my friend,” he said, with no small amount of pride, “is the future.”

  It took all of nine seconds to view. It started with a dizzying drop down the face of what must have been a three-hundred-story building, swooping onto a street the likes of which Justin had never seen. Organized chaos, was all he could think. Before he even had a chance to take in the street’s vast expanse, the camera flew down a tube into a brightly lit subway system. Nothing abo
ut the subway, from what little he saw, indicated that it was underground. In fact, it seemed more “outside” than the street he’d just left.

  “Impressive, Omad,” Justin said, handing back the DijAssist. “But if you show me more stuff like that we’ll most certainly drown.”

  Omad laughed. “This way, then.”

  They made their way down a few side streets until they came to a large thoroughfare. As they walked, Justin took in the tantalizing scenery. While the town itself was structured very much in the mold of a new millennium city, there was so much about it that was not. There were fire hydrants, but they weren’t colored in the traditional bright colors he remembered. These hydrants appeared to be sculpted out of some sort of blue crystal—almost as if they were meant to blend into the surroundings rather than stick out. In fact, he doubted very much that they worked at all, or even that they were truly needed. There were also no protruding wires or cables anywhere. Strewn telephone and power lines had become so normal in his lifetime that their very absence now somehow made the city feel naked. The buildings were consistent with what he remembered—even, he noticed, down to their real doors. The streets had the familiar signs, lights, and even billboards. He took a moment to read one: GET YOUR NEW TRANSBOD TODAY BECAUSE MARDI GRAS IS JUST 63 DAYS AWAY! What is a transbod? he wondered, and what does it have to do with Mardi Gras? He was searching for a word to describe what was throwing him off about this city. He noticed a cop wearing a uniform from the 1950s with a billed four-pointed hat and brass buttons up the side of her jacket, but she had on sunglasses far more reminiscent of his millennium than hers. The cop, like the town, had gotten her eras crossed. The only thing he could liken it to was the retro styles of his time period that also attempted to emulate the past. And like this town he was now canvassing, those past attempts succeeded only marginally. It seemed that one generation’s perception of another’s would always be reinterpreted to fit current stylings and realities. The town, he realized, was not so much a blast from the past as much as it was a splash from the pasts.

  Will you just look at the flying cars, he thought again. In the three blocks he’d walked there must have been a few hundred of them. Still, the part of his mind that was forever analyzing did notice that there were no flying buses or trucks. He also saw, with some relief, that there were still regular old “motor” cars. In fact, many of them almost looked like they came from a “cars of the ages” auto show. He saw Model Ts and Mustangs, and even an old Honda Civic hatchback. But just like the string of other inconsistencies he’d picked up, these cars, too, were out of place, in that they emitted almost no distinctive sounds or exhaust at all.

  “There it is,” Omad said, indicating a sign that read FREDDIE’S FAST FINANCE. Justin saw a small storefront nestled in between a not too busy café and what he guessed was some kind of hardware store. They made their way to Freddie’s by sidestepping a group of singing troubadours accompanied by a small flotilla of harmonizing, color-changing drones.

  As they entered the store, Justin was surprised at the feeling that overcame him. It was relief. Relief that the pawnshop Omad had dragged him into looked remarkably like . . . a pawnshop. It even sounded like a pawnshop, with their presence announced by the jingle of a string of silver bells strung from the top of the door. Though Justin had worked his entire life and, even, to some extent, his death in the anticipation of just the type of day he’d already had, there was only so much Brave New World a man could take. And Freddie’s Fast Finance, silver bells and all, was just the respite he needed.

  The shop was long and narrow, with the door at one end and a steel bar–enclosed counter at the other. In between was a wide array of used merchandise, much of which Justin recognized, and the rest of which he hadn’t a clue about. For example, the guitar selling for 30 AE credits he could understand. The cylinder of lipstick seemed innocent enough. That it was selling for 1,000 AE credits, 1,100 SCV credits, or 1,193 GCI credits was beyond him.

  Omad greeted the young, attractive blonde with obvious delight. “Hey, Fred, how’s business?”

  “Omad, you bastard.” The harshness of the response was ameliorated by the fact that the woman came around the counter and gave Omad a friendly hug. “Heard you made majority, is that true?”

  “Absolutely, and right on schedule,” he answered, with a toothy grin.

  The woman gave him a pout.

  “And you didn’t let me know personally? I had to hear it from . . . from my avatar?”

  “Fred, Freddieeee. C’mon. It’s me,” pleaded Omad. “I’ve had majority for less than twenty-four hours. And if it weren’t for Justin here and his, um . . . special circumstance, you woulda been the first to know. I swear.”

  Fred eyed Justin with suspicion.

  “Look,” Omad said, “I found a guy who needs some help. You know the deal, Freddie. I help him, you help me, he helps you, and maybe, just maybe, you get a little closer to majority.”

  “Yeah, right. Not with this dump. Do you have any idea how many times a year my shareholders request an audit?”

  “As in psyche?” Omad half joked.

  Fred’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t even kid about something like that.”

  She continued studying the stranger.

  “Hey, Omad,” she continued.

  “What?”

  “Since when do you hang out with DeGens?”

  “Since when have you become a discerning bitch, as opposed to a regular one?”

  “Gimme a break,” she snapped back. “You’re the one who wants them off this planet, terraforming the outer ones. And if I’m not mistaken, it was you who told me the joke about the DeGen who was sent to terraform Mars . . .”

  “. . . Yeah, yeah, and ended up cleaning Uranus!” Omad laughed, almost as if he was telling it again for the first time.

  “Of course, you were drunk at the time,” added Fred, as an afterthought.

  “They still tell Uranus jokes?” asked Justin, of no one in particular.

  “Well, this guy is different,” continued Omad, ignoring the query, “and I think you’ll like what he has to offer—real antiques.”

  “Well,” she said, finally deigning to address Justin, “what have you got?”

  Justin took out the thin Tiffany box he’d shown Omad earlier, and snapped it open gently to reveal the five flawless diamonds still resting comfortably on the twin velvet dowels. Even in the poor light, they shimmered brilliantly. Satisfied, he rested the package on the counter. Fred went all business, making her way back around the counter and sitting herself down to examine the product. She took the box and emptied its contents onto a soft, velvety pad. She pulled a scannerlike contraption from some hidden nook and proceeded to run it over the box. It didn’t take long for the results. Fred took a moment to weigh her offer. “Four hundred standard credits, take it or leave it.”

  “Aren’t you going to examine the merchandise?”

  “Jesus, DeGen, where did they dig you up from? I just did.”

  “The name is Justin.”

  “DeGen, JusGen, think I care? Take it or leave it.” Justin looked toward Omad, who nodded slowly.

  The idea of making a deal without understanding all of its facets went against every fiber of Justin’s former CEO self. But he was now in a situation where he had little choice. He was also comforted by the fact that that would be rectified shortly. For now, at least, he had something of value. Whatever value one could garner from four hundred standard credits.

  “I’ll take it,” he sighed.

  “Good,” Fred answered. She picked up the small Tiffany case gingerly, and with one swipe of her arm flung the diamonds off the table like so many worthless pebbles. They scattered across the floor and landed at Justin’s feet, where they stood shimmering amid the dust and debris on the pawnshop floor. Justin first looked down at his feet, and then up at the proprietor, his mouth agape. Fred was too busy eyeing the Tiffany case to notice the shock on her customer’s face. Justin saw Omad keeled o
ver by the counter, laughing so hard it appeared he was having trouble breathing.

  “You knew they were worthless all along . . . from the second I showed ’em to you . . . you son of bitch.” Justin grinned. “And you just let me walk right on in.”

  “Well, uh . . . yeah,” Omad answered as best he could through tears of laughter.

  “Do you have any idea,” asked Justin, “how much those things cost back in my day?”

  Omad could hardly speak, and just managed to shake his head.

  “A bloody fortune—that’s how much!” Justin thought about it for a moment. “Of course, a chance for a joke like this only comes along . . . ,” and he himself started to laugh, “. . . once every three hundred years.” That got Omad laughing all over again, and soon the both of them were on the floor keeled over. The release was exactly what Justin needed. His first few hours of his new life had been so thoroughly intense he’d almost forgotten what it was like to let his hair down. Well, it was down now. Omad had seen to that. They both sat there on the floor bellowing so hard neither of them noticed Fred. Her eyes were riveted on Justin’s wrist, only now exposed because of the crouched position he’d assumed while leaning against the display case.

  “Damsah’s balls!” she exclaimed. “Is that a mil one Timex? I mean, a real mil one?”

  Justin held up his wrist, still laughing, while acknowledging and answering the question in the one motion. However, that quickly subsided when he saw that Omad, too, was staring at him with a look of total seriousness.

  “Jesus, man,” Omad almost huffed, “you didn’t tell me that thing was a Timex. What are you doing wearing it? Take it off . . . carefully.”

  “Hey, it’s just a watch, for Christ’s sake,” Justin said. “Not even a nice one, at that.”

  “If it’s authentic mil one,” Fred said, biting her lower lip, “twenty thousand credits.”

  Both Justin and Omad looked at Fred in disbelief.

  “Fine,” she said, before anyone could answer, “twenty-five thousand, then. But not a credit more.”