The Unincorporated Man

by Dani Kollin; Eytan Kollin

  “Stop the presses!” squeaked Saundra.

  “Well, that is news,” chimed in Michael.

  “How could you have kept this to yourself?” Enrique asked, with a pained expression. “I . . . I thought we were friends.”

  “Ha-ha, laugh all you want, guys,” challenged Irma, “after you do one simple thing.”

  “Name it,” said Michael.

  “Don’t be so quick, Michael. I’m not sure even you could dig up what I need to find.”

  “You willing to bet on it?” he challenged.

  “Absolutely.”

  Enrique straightened up, Michael stopped leaning against the picture, and Saundra got up from the couch.

  Irma smiled. Well, that worked. “Ten shares of stock each in the pot. The pot goes to whoever can get this unfrozen guy’s name in . . .” Irma paused to look at her watch. “. . . one hour starting . . . now.”

  “Your stock has split twice,” challenged Saundra. “Shouldn’t you put in forty?”

  “Have you seen my worth lately?” responded Irma. “I’m being generous, and you all know it. Of course, if you want a different bet . . .” Her question was answered by the team’s mad rush to the exit. Irma knew that they’d all probably cheat and work together to arrive at an answer. It made sense, because they could then split her ten shares, which would be more valuable than all of theirs combined. All the better, she thought. The only reason she’d issued the challenge was because she had just spent the better part of the day in a failing effort to get the name she was now asking them to find.

  Irma had an hour to kill, so she went back to the other mundane tasks she’d ignored—paying bills, making investments, and researching new stories. Of course, as soon as she was beginning to make some headway, Saundra popped her head into the office, clearing her throat to get Irma’s attention.

  “Yes?” asked Irma.

  “Hour’s up.”

  “Well, then, whatcha got?”

  Before Saundra could answer the rest of the team piled in behind her. No one was smiling.

  “All right, smarty-pants,” Enrique said. “Who is he?”

  Irma’s response was honest and forthright. “I don’t know.”

  Her team threw groans and expletives in her direction. “Oh,” said Saundra. “We thought maybe it was some kind of test.”

  “Nope. I really don’t know. And believe me,” Irma went on, “I really want—no, need—to know.”

  The team’s blank stares made her realize it was time for a little coaching.

  “All right, guys, let’s do this a little differently. What don’t we know about this guy, and how don’t we know it?”

  Saundra, as usual, spoke up first. She couldn’t help herself. It was almost as if the information would spoil if she didn’t share it immediately. “We don’t know who he’s insured with. I checked with all the major companies and most of the minor ones. There have been four reanimations in Boulder in the past week, three of them were paid via insurance and one of them paid with cold, hard credits.”

  “Is this just a famous guy trying to hide out?” asked Irma.

  “I don’t think so,” answered Michael. “The list of who could pay credits outright is rather small. If something happened to one of them we would have heard at least the shade of a rumor. Plus, someone wanting to hide out would have used insurance, not credits.”

  “So we follow the money,” said Irma.

  “Fine. But there’s no trail of where it’s coming from. The security on the hospital’s database is as tough to crack as an American Express account.”

  “Strange,” interrupted Irma. “If I’m not mistaken it’s a backwater hospital. The kind of security you’re talking about doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Correctomongo,” continued Michael. “I can hack through pretty much anything. So imagine my surprise. It’s almost like finding the door to the local candy store guarded by ten marines.”

  “Not as strange as you might think, Mike,” offered Enrique. “If I’m not mistaken, the director is a former heavy player named Mosh McKenzie.”

  “As in former member of the board of GCI Mosh McKenzie?” asked Saundra.

  Irma nodded. “The one and only.” I knew that name sounded familiar. “Didn’t we run a piece on him, like, fifteen years ago?”

  “Yea,” answered Saundra, scanning her DijAssist. “ ‘Exile or Retirement: The Perils of Life at the Top.’ ”

  Irma waited while her team called up the data on their DijAssists.

  “I see that we leaned toward exile in the story,” said Michael. “Still think so?”

  “I think we leaned wrong on that one,” answered Irma. “My miss. We were just starting out, and I rushed it.” Irma was startled by the dead silence her answer had elicited.

  “I see our names on the byline,” Michael said. “We got paid for the story. That makes the mistake, and I’m not saying there was one, all of ours. Pulitzer or piss, we don’t duck out on what we write.”

  “I take it back,” Irma added. “If I’m right, and I suspect I am, it’s the type of crap only a team effort could have produced.”

  “That’s better,” answered Saundra.

  “Wait a minute.” It was Michael. “Why are we all so quick to call it crap? It could still be an exile piece. I don’t see any proof to dispel that notion.”

  “I don’t think so,” offered Irma. “Think about it. He’s been in the same job for three accounting cycles. If it was an exile he would have either been forced all the way out, as in in-the-asteroid-belt out, or he would have made his way back to the board. I also did some checking. Out of all of his requests for funding over the last fifteen years not a single one has been turned down or even delayed. He hasn’t been asking for anything outrageous, mind you, but still . . .”

  “If it was an exile,” continued Saundra, “he should have faced at least one review, one audit, one refusal.”

  Irma folded her arms and leaned back in her chair. “All indicators then point to our director being handled with kid gloves. He’s never been turned down, I suspect, because the rest of the board is probably content to let the sleeping dog lie.”

  “OK,” admitted Michael. “For now, I stand corrected. While the evidence isn’t what I call solid, it certainly is tantalizing.”

  “I agree with Irma,” offered Enrique. “They’re scared of him, and probably don’t want him angry. Nothing else makes sense. We should try for an interview. That alone would make a great story.”

  “I agree,” said Michael, taking a stab at the headline: “ ‘Chairman’s Dreaded Foe Bides His Time: Boulder Hospital Actually Corporate Fortress in GCI Power Struggle.’ ”

  That got a few giggles from the group.

  “Don’t laugh,” warned Irma. “Stranger stories have made it to the front page.”

  “Like anyone would believe that The Chairman could be threatened,” said Saundra. “You may as well tell our readers that death and taxes are coming back.”

  “Saundra,” said Michael, warming up to what was obviously an old argument for them. “People don’t need to know that The Chairman is vulnerable, only that the possibility exists. It’s that possibility that makes the story interesting.”

  “Facts make the story interesting,” she countered.

  “People read newspapers to be entertained and informed,” he responded. “If they want facts they can download an almanac.” Before Saundra and Michael could begin laying into each other, Enrique silenced the room.

  “I think I know how the reanimation was paid for.”

  Michael and Saundra stared at Enrique.

  “Well?” asked Michael.

  “I couldn’t get into the hospital’s individual accounts either, but what I was able to find, since it was in the public domain, was the account balance for the hospital itself on a minute-by-minute basis from the past week.”

  “And that helps us how?” asked Saundra.

  “Well,” continued Enrique, “right bef
ore the fourth reanimation the accounts were changed due to a credit transfer.”

  “And?” asked Irma.

  “It was not a scheduled transfer.”

  “How much, then?” she asked.

  “Ten mill.”

  “Ten million credits for a reanimation?” Michael exclaimed.

  “I very much doubt that, Mike. But certainly some of it could have gone toward the reanimation. Nothing else makes sense.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t move the decimal over a couple of times?” asked Saundra.

  “I can assure you all that I checked it and rechecked it,” answered Enrique, looking insulted. “It may be that the hospital in Boulder chose to pay for an entirely new computer system at just that moment, but I doubt it.”

  “I doubt that too, Enrique,” agreed Saundra. “It doesn’t make sense. If they were paying for a new system they’d have paid the way everyone else does—credit card.”

  Irma remained silent, content to let Enrique go at his own pace.

  “Anyhow,” continued Enrique, “an amount of money that large usually leaves fingerprints, records . . . something one can work with. This transfer did not. It was a cash amount put in directly and stealthily. Whoever did it wanted to remain anonymous, and has so far succeeded brilliantly.”

  “Well, well,” Irma said, suffused in triumph, “think there’s a story now?”

  “Forgive us our doubts, O great one,” Michael said, half bowing. “How can we be restored to your grace?”

  “Get me that story, guys. Get me the story.”

  The second round of research took more hours than the first, because now there were some very real leads to pursue. The team chose to meet in the conference room. It was bigger, and besides having a few very comfortable couches, it had an ample amount of what the group had affectionately called “brain planes.” They were simple floating devices that allowed the user to configure a chair style, lean back, and go. Not that there was a lot of room to maneuver, but for some reason thinking was made easier by the simple act of floating in patterns. Irma likened the patterned floating to the simple act of pacing back and forth to stimulate thinking. Which is how the little squares acquired their moniker. It seemed as though the best ideas the group produced had come via a few short trips around the conference room. Irma set her brain plane to “cushy bar stool/no back,” and settled in.

  “Wow me, people.”

  “Me first,” blurted Saundra, waving her hand, “me first.” After looking around and seeing that, as usual, no one objected, Irma nodded. Saundra always went into great detail not about what she’d discovered but about how she’d managed to discover “it.” And she always saved the “it” for last. A less patient mentor would’ve robbed her of the joy of the telling. Irma not only humored her in this area, she encouraged it.

  “OK,” Saundra continued, “I tried getting a mediabot into the hospital to check out what was going on, and it lasted all of four seconds.”

  “Suppression field,” Michael stated, as fact more than a question.

  “Yes,” answered Saundra, “and a darned good one, too.”

  “Looks like more marines at the candy store,” Enrique offered.

  Saundra nodded in agreement. “Yup. So I got one of my boardroom specials.”

  Everyone smiled. Saundra was well known for having specialty mediabots modified for all occasions. Her “boardroom specials” were made specifically to infiltrate the toughest electronic disruption nets and suppression fields, as well as take on a whole array of devices designed to keep the media out.

  Saundra frowned. “Worked for twenty-eight seconds.”

  “A lot can happen in less,” said Irma.

  “Funny you should mention that,” Saundra said, drawing everyone’s attention to the room’s screening area. “Anyhow, I’ll get to that. The unit got zapped, of course, and I mean actual physical termination, including its accompanying security floater.” On the center screen the team could see the last few seconds of the mediabot’s life as recorded by the security floater. A moment later the security floater’s screen went blank.

  Enrique scratched his chin as he stared at the images. “They knew to take out the meat before the potatoes,” he said, referring to the order of the kills. “So much for diversionary tactics.”

  “Like I said, Enrique, this ain’t your momma’s security system.”

  “You’ve never met my momma,” Enrique fired back, grinning.

  “Not sure I’d survive,” Saundra agreed. “Anyhow, the zapper that got mine was very high end—a Brinks model 471. Top-of-the-line unit.”

  “Aren’t those babies like thirty-five grand apiece?” asked Irma.

  “For the Terran-made ones. The space-based models go for around fifty.” One always paid a premium for sophisticated devices assembled without gravity’s interference.

  “Anyhow,” continued Saundra, “it gets better. Before my baby got zapped she was able to pick up the info patterns on twenty-six more.”

  “Twenty-six 471s for a hospital in Boulder?” Now it was Michael’s turn to be perplexed. “What is it, GCI system headquarters?”

  “Actually,” answered Saundra, “GCI HQ probably has thousands, but I do agree, it is a bit heavy-handed.”

  As Saundra seemed to finish, Irma slowed her floater to a halt. “Thanks for the information, Saundra; the 471s are the smoking gun we needed. Enrique, did you find out anything else on the money trai . . .”

  “I’m not done,” Saundra said, bursting with excitement.

  Irma gave Enrique an apologetic look and motioned for Saundra to continue.

  “It just so happens that I, too, have a Brinks model 471 in my collection—Terran-based, but just as good, believe me. Anyway, I had it specially modified at great expense in both time and credits for just such an occasion. I was saving it for a proxy fight at GCI, but my gut told me to send it in. The nice thing about the 471 is that, besides being built tough, they can often fake out their well-armed brethren . . . .”

  Irma scrunched her eyebrows. “Fake out?”

  “Yup. A 471 will recognize another 471 and often won’t destroy it immediately.”

  “Right,” continued Michael. “It’ll question it first.”

  “Correct. Any other unit it would have shot to kill on sight; a similar unit confuses it. In the time it took to interrogate its ‘cousin,’ I managed to get off a bunch of pictures.”

  Now Saundra had everyone’s attention. She called up an image on the main view screen. The screen came to life in a vivid holograph engulfing the room and its occupants with the selected imagery. The holograph showed various scenes of the hospital corridors and personnel.

  “Now you have to understand,” Saundra continued, “that the jamming was cutting-edge. So I sent the floater in with simple instructions. ‘Go to the place with the highest concentration of 471s and send back whatever images you can.’ In all I have thirty-seven seconds of images spread out intermittently over a four-and-a-half-minute period.” More images flew by in bits and pieces. It was, as Saundra had stated, a hodgepodge.

  “Most of these images,” continued Saundra, “are probably useless. I’ll try a detailed analysis of every person shown and see if I can contact the useful ones. But I saved the best two images for last.”

  A three-dimensional image of an enormous black and crimson box appeared before the team.

  “That thing’s huge,” Enrique whispered, almost to himself.

  Michael’s eyes remained fixed. “What on earth is it?”

  “Jeez. Patience, guys. I’m getting there,” snarled Saundra. “Besides looking for where the 471s were concentrated, I also programmed the mediabot to seek out anything in the hospital space that it had no records of. So, basically, it knew every accounted-for item within the structure. That I got from open databases. This,” she said, pointing to the large black structure now filling their conference room, “was not on any database.”

  “What part of the hospital
is this thing in?” asked Enrique, circling the holographic suspension unit.

  Michael walked around one side of the holograph. “If you ask me, I’d say it looks like a loading bay.”

  Saundra touched her nose. “Bingo!”

  Michael smiled at his lover and winked.

  Enrique frowned. “Fix.”

  “Anyway,” answered Saundra, ignoring the slight, “after this shot they destroyed my baby.”

  Though it was only a piece of machinery, Saundra’s expression of grief could have led one to believe her defunct Brinks 471 was an actual living, breathing being. She didn’t mourn long.

  “As you can see, I captured enough visual data to reconstruct the image on all sides except the one facing the floor.”

  Saundra looked around the room. She was done.

  “I did good?”

  “Saundra,” answered Irma, “you did very good. We’re talking the ‘will you marry me?’ kind of good. Now,” she said, looking around the room, “does anybody have any idea what that thing is?”

  “Oh, right,” answered Saundra. “I forgot to mention that. It’s a suspension unit.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself,” challenged Michael.

  “You would be, too, if you could read.” She directed everyone’s eyes to the part of the structure where THIS IS A LIFE POD was engraved in scarlet letters. The group flocked to that part of the holograph and pored over every discernible detail, and read as much as could be gleaned from the captured image. When they were all satisfied with what they’d just read, they spent a moment considering what it meant.

  “Is it real?” asked Irma, playing devil’s advocate. “For all we know this may be an elaborate hoax.”

  “If it is a hoax,” answered Enrique, “someone spent ten million credits on it, and probably almost as much covering their trail. It may not be the record spent on a hoax, but it would be close.”

  “Besides,” interjected Michael, “the hoax has a name.” This shut the group up.

  “It’s Justin. I didn’t put it together until now. But it fits. One suspension unit. One mysterious reanimated guy. Anyway, Justin’s the name he supposedly gave.”