The Unincorporated Man

by Dani Kollin; Eytan Kollin

  Once again the room was filled with the sound of a soothing ring.

  Though SD Wots had called right on schedule, it soon became obvious that things were not going according to plan.

  “Sir,” said the SD uneasily, “can I talk with you again about your plans to meet personally?”

  “Not unless you mind losing your job, SD.”

  “If that’s what it takes, sir,” answered the man, unblinking.

  “Brave man, are you, SD?”

  “Not exactly, sir, but you hired me to do my job, and my job is to protect you to the best of my ability.”

  “Very well,” fretted The Chairman. “Your job is secure . . . for now.”

  “Thank you, sir. Sir, we can’t guarantee your safety.”

  “Of course not,” snapped The Chairman. “You’re paid to improve it.”

  “Which is why,” answered the unflustered security director, “my staff feels it would be safer to have you come down from your suite rather than to let the board come up.”

  “I dislike leaving my suite, you know that, Franklin.”

  SD Wots did not like the fact that The Chairman used his first name. It was clearly an emotional play.

  “I dislike it as well, sir, but I would ask that you consider the security needed to move over two dozen people into your suite.”

  “It’s certainly not easy,” agreed The Chairman, feeling his blood begin to boil, “but GCI supposedly has the best security in the system, recent events notwithstanding, and if it doesn’t I’d like to know who does . . . so that I could hire them to replace ours!”

  The SD didn’t flinch in the face of the barrage, though he did manage to raise an eyebrow. “I would connect you myself, sir, if I knew of anyone better.”

  The remark brought The Chairman back off the precipice. He realized he was being unfair, and that it probably wasn’t the wisest of moves to insult the very people charged with his personal security. “My apologies, SD,” said The Chairman. “I’ve been on edge since Hektor’s death.”

  “None needed,” he answered, though the look of relief on his face belied his response.

  “But that’s the crux of the problem,” The Chairman continued. “We don’t know how Mr. Sambianco’s murder was triggered, nor how someone managed to sneak a nanovirus past our sensors, and, last but not least, who caused it. We have to assume that it was an inside job, and that any one of the two dozen or more people coming up to meet you will try to kill you—perhaps in a way just as ingenious as that used to kill Mr. Sambianco and his assistant.”

  “And my going down the beanstalk?”

  “Is safer, sir. But only marginally so. Again, I reiterate; it would be best for all to just have you speak with them holographically.”

  “Yes, SD,” nodded The Chairman solemnly, “but that’s not an option.”

  The irony, mused the real assassin, was that he knew himself to be completely safe from harm, yet to act in that manner might arouse the suspicions of those already inclined to be suspicious—indeed, he thought, paid extremely well to be suspicious.

  “I’ll meet the board personally, SD Wots, and I’ll trust your judgment. Down it is. I want it to start tomorrow morning at eleven sharp.”

  The SD seemed only somewhat relieved. “I’ll see to it myself, Mr. Chairman. Are there any large items that you’ll be bringing with you, or any staff required?”

  The Chairman thought about it for a moment and decided not to make his visit too big a deal. The more personal he could be—especially at a time like this—the more effective he’d be at putting the board at ease. “No, SD,” he answered, this time more calmly, “you need only concern yourself with me.”

  “Very good, sir. We’ll be in touch in the morning.”

  The Chairman watched as the SD faded from view. He thought about doing some more work, but then thought better of it, and decided to get some rest. He went to sleep content that GCI would eventually stabilize and give Justin Cord the decades needed to evolve the mess of humanity into something they would both be proud to have fathered. For the first time in many years, The Chairman slept well.

  The next morning he took the lift down the beanstalk. It was such a rare occurrence that the lift’s gregarious avatar, riser, seemed genuinely pleased to have him on board again. As he descended from his perch, The Chairman stared sadly at the devastation still evident below, but knew that, at least in time, it would all be repaired.

  He was met in the corridor by SD Franklin Wots, who then informed him that he would be The Chairman’s personal escort to the lower boardroom. The plan, The Chairman was informed, was that he would arrive first and be seen by each member of the board as they entered—which would not be what they were expecting. This, explained the security director, would allow him to scan the board members with near total scrutiny to see if they would give away any biometric indicators about possibly harming The Chairman. Though The Chairman wondered why the same exercise couldn’t have been done atop the beanstalk, and thought the whole charade a terrible waste of time, he once again reasoned that he would have to play along with Security to keep them looking out and not in. He entered the boardroom and heard the wall seal behind him. He was surprised that SD Wots had not followed him in. He also saw that one of the chairs—his chair—was turned away, back facing him, with someone’s legs dangling underneath. Before the “legs” could speak, The Chairman knew he’d been played—by his own board members, his own security apparatus, and the intended victim himself. He also knew at that moment that he was a dead man.

  The chair suddenly swung around. “Good morning, Mr. Chairman,” said Hektor Sambianco. “Thank you for coming.”

  The Chairman could feel the effects of the immobilizer immediately. He didn’t bother to move. Doing so would only prolong the agony.

  Hektor got up from the chair and approached his kill slowly. Hektor didn’t appear angry or, for that matter, in any great hurry. He was studying The Chairman as a man would a perplexing painting. He continued to circle his victim as if viewing him from all angles might clear things up. It didn’t.

  “I have many answers, but not all of them,” Hector said calmly.

  The Chairman would have shrugged if he could have. Instead he waited.

  “Did you think you’d be able to keep it secret from me forever?”

  “Obviously not,” answered The Chairman. “That’s why I attempted to kill you.”

  Hektor laughed. “Stupid question.” Then, “More please.”

  The Chairman began to feel a heavy pressure on his chest as the immobilizing field complied with Hektor’s orders.

  “That’s why,” continued Hektor, almost face-to-face with the man he was in the process of torturing, “you never promoted anyone to head Special Operations who could be a threat.”

  “Partially,” gasped The Chairman, trying to buy some time, “but mostly my best defense was . . . that no one bothered . . . to look . . . until now, that is.”

  Hektor looked away in disgust, then turned back once again. “Answer me this one question and I’ll show you mercy.”

  The Chairman wasn’t buying it, but felt that, even if there was the remotest possibility he could make it out, billions of souls demanded that he take it.

  “OK,” he managed.

  Hektor’s glare turned sorrowful, as if the question he was about to ask was causing him pain. “How . . . how could you?”

  Now it was The Chairman’s turn to scowl. “How . . . could I not? This . . . this . . . system will . . . enslave the vast majority of . . . humanity for the rest . . . the rest of eternity.”

  “If they can’t rise above their own petty limitations,” Hektor shrieked, “then they should be enslaved. That’s the beauty of the system. You taught me that! Incorporation enslaves the weak and allows the strong to rise!”

  The Chairman looked at Hektor and didn’t bother to answer. Arguing was futile. It seemed, too, that Hektor had the same idea.

  “And what . . . o
f your mercy?” asked The Chairman, still hoping against hope.

  Hektor answered with a malicious grin, then slowly produced the third Davidoff Aniversario from his inner pocket.

  “Tell you what,” Hektor said, indelicately shoving the cigar between the lips of his immobile prisoner, “smoke this and I’ll spare you the long, slow suffocation I’d had planned. Either way, you’re dead.”

  The Chairman used every last fiber of his strength to thrust the cigar from his mouth. It bounced harmlessly off of Hektor’s chest and fell to the floor at his feet.

  “More,” said Hektor, “much more.”

  The immobilizing field acted on command and further tightened its viselike grip. The pain was excruciating, and The Chairman’s lips could no longer form words, but his eyes told Hektor everything he’d wanted to say.

  “And to you as well,” spat Hektor. “And, by the way, you’re fired. As for your precious Justin, I’ve sent orders to have him and his deviant girlfriend arrested on Ceres. So now you, your revolution, and its vainglorious leadership will all soon be dead.”

  The Chairman, realizing the enormity of Hektor’s mistake, knew that the only thing he could do to help was die. He baited his number two once more with a challenging glare. It would be his last. He then watched helplessly as Hektor picked the cigar up off the floor and shoved it back into his now fully paralyzed mouth. Hektor then pulled a mask over his own face, struck a match, and lit the end of the death stick. Then, with sadistic glee, Hektor mouthed the word that sealed The Chairman’s fate.

  “Less.”

  The immobilizer suddenly released all pressure, forcing The Chairman’s body to involuntarily inhale as it reflexively grabbed for air.

  Sorry, Justin, thought The Chairman, as his innards began to writhe, looks like revolution wins.

  The view out of the forward observation deck was pretty much what Justin had expected—at least based on his research. Ceres, once a desolate hunk of stone, now appeared as a multifaceted diamond twinkling against a canvas of black velvet. Bright, shimmering lights emanated from beneath its ice-covered surface.

  As Ceres had become more populated, it was decided that the planetoid would need to create more gravity—two-thirds that of the Earth’s, to be precise. But that amount of centrifugal force would have caused the planetoid to at first deform and then explode outward. A massive molecular construction project was proposed. An outer shell would be formed with nano scaffolding using nanocarbon Bucky tubes inserted into the planetoid’s ice layer. The scaffolding endowed each square meter of ice with a tensile strength equivalent to that of 100 giga-gees, more than enough to quite literally seal the deal. Considered one of the great accomplishments of nanoengineering, the newly created phase of ice encapsulating Ceres became known as “the Shell.” Having solved one seemingly insurmountable problem, the Cereans soon found themselves facing another. The attractiveness their now stable ’s gravity made the large rock quite popular. Docking anywhere on the surface became difficult for most ships in the belt, unaccustomed as they were to operating in anything but microgravity. By necessity the ships gravitated toward the poles. These axis points were small areas in and of themselves, but at least they could offer a few precious miles of near zero gravity in which to operate. As the population continued to grow, so too did their insatiable appetite for all manner of goods. There was simply not enough space—with low enough gravity—to handle all the traffic necessary to sustain the fledgling metropolis. Rather than forcibly limit Ceres’s growth, the original settlers had once again shown true pioneering spirit and came up with another novel idea. They bored a two-mile-wide cylindrical tube straight down the center of the massive rock and named it, aptly, Via Cereana. This effectively gave them almost nineteen hundred cubic miles of microgravity surface to work with. Docking space was no longer an issue, and traffic control became simplicity in itself—enter from one end, exit from the other. After that it didn’t take long for Ceres to become the unquestioned hub of expansion to the outer orbits and a renowned city in and of itself. With over forty million inhabitants and hundreds of thousands of transients, Ceres had indeed arrived.

  Interestingly, noted Justin, the port city was not alone. The value of real estate, sebastian explained, had become so great that many other smaller meteorites had been moved into synchronous orbit just to be near their larger cousin. Even though Justin was well aware that they were nothing more than the belt’s version of the ’burbs, they all appeared to him as little gems designed to complement the magnificent spinning centerpiece.

  The amount of traffic was considerable and apparently the cause of Justin’s ship being put into a holding pattern. “Sorry, mate,” the ship’s captain had said, “we can get yer here in a hurry, but we can’t get yer in in a hurry.” The captain had had a good laugh at his own joke, though, judging by the nonresponse of the other crewmembers, it had been told once too often. Justin watched as ships of all shapes and sizes lined up and waited to enter.

  Theirs was finally given clearance, and soon thereafter found its docking clamp some 126 miles into the heart of the rock. Justin sent his luggage ahead and tepidly walked, in his nanomagnetized state, to a tube that would take him to the higher gravity levels found closer to the surface. It was a relief to finally feel gravity resume as he approached the upper level. His goal was now simple: Find Neela.

  There were three grand thoroughfares: Damsah, Smith, and Singh. According to The Chairman’s instructions, Neela would be waiting on Smith with Eleanor and Mosh. They’d be next to an almost two-story-tall statue of the first human to ever set foot on the planetoid, Cardori Singh. As Justin emerged from his ride and entered Smith’s main thoroughfare he was momentarily struck by the intensity of the daylight in the immense cavern. He quickly put on his oversized shades and adjusted the lenses to diminish the glare. The glasses, he realized, would also help cover his face. Even on Ceres the most famous face in the system would certainly be recognized. He lowered his profile and only occasionally looked straight up. The street was a cacophony of commerce, vehicles, and all manner of conversation. The smell was decidedly different. A combination, decided Justin, of rock, forced air, and steel. The ceiling—or floor, depending on ones’s orientation—was mostly bare rock with some platforms built in for those inclined to bungee jump, parachute, glide, or fly.

  With Justin’s permission sebastian had taken on the role of tour guide as he led his master toward the statue. “The inhabitants of Ceres felt that a faux sky would be too imitative of Earth. Turn left here . . . they did not want to create a perfect replica. Cereans take pride in the fact that they’re not of the Earth, turn right . . . this translated into the desire not to hide their rock-bound existence, but to emphasize it.”

  “Thank you, sebastian,” Justin replied, only half listening. His heart was beating quicker as he anticipated seeing a woman he had had no reason to believe he’d ever see again. A woman for whom his love had grown stronger with each passing mile of the many millions he’d recently flown.

  He could now make out the large statue in the distance. The crowd thickened as Justin got closer to his destination. He’d apparently arrived in the middle of some sort of gathering, the mood of which was not celebratory. He’d had enough of demonstrations, and decided then and there that, as soon as he could, he would gather Neela, put her on the transport, and get the two of them back to Earth.

  “Justin!” Neela shrieked, from somewhere in the mass.

  The crowd broke once they realized who was in their presence.

  “Neela!” Justin shouted back, turning toward the noise.

  He began to run toward her voice, pushing past anyone in his way. In an instant the two found themselves standing face-to-face. And then, just as suddenly, they grabbed one another and held on tight, neither letting go.

  There were no looks of shock, or even of condemnation, not that either of them would have noticed. Cereans considered themselves a tough and pragmatic people, but were known to hav
e a soft spot for romance, especially if it defied convention. Justin and Neela’s fit the bill perfectly.

  Justin pulled back for an instant and stared hard into the eyes of his lover. “I will never let you go again, never.”

  Neela smiled tepidly and looked up at the man she’d all but given up on. She’d spent the last few months thinking about her final words to him . . . words she’d regretted every day since.

  “I’m sorry, Justin,” she said. “I . . . I tried to make you into something you weren’t. I was afraid you’d hate me for that. It was wrong. You do what you have to do. I promise I won’t leave you ever again. I . . .”

  Justin kissed her hard on the lips—crowd and media be damned. Neela, feeling it was better to be hung for a wolf than a sheep, reciprocated in kind.

  The crowd broke into applause.

  The reunited couple acknowledged the gathering and began to walk away, arm in arm. Mosh and Eleanor soon joined them. After cordial greetings, Justin couldn’t help but notice the medical director’s look of concern.

  “Don’t worry, friend,” Justin said, grinning. “I intend to marry her, if I can get the law changed and she’s stupid enough to say yes.”

  “I’ll have to before you change your mind,” Neela shot back.

  “It’s not that, Justin,” answered Mosh, as he hustled them through the gathering. “It’s this crowd. We should leave.”

  “Why?” he asked. “What’s going on?”

  “Since the assassination of the president the powers that be have been cracking down in the outer system. The law’s usually handled locally—as it has been for centuries.”