by Anthony Puyo
I sit up to examine the paper. It has the Matson seal and the signature of Michael Scarp, my boss, at the bottom. I can’t believe it. It’s a resignation letter. And all that is needed is my signature next to Michael’s.
“Wait! This doesn’t say I need to get any chip. It’s just a resignation letter. What are you trying to pull? And who the hell is behind that door!”
Phil smirks to the side of his cheek. “Are you in or not? You have ten seconds.”
“I won’t sign.”
“Is this about your grandmother?”
“Wha—”
“Her disdain for future technologies? Her radical ideas and the clubs she was involved in?”
What the fuck is he talking about? How does he know what my grandmother believed? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I just don’t want it.”
“Are you sure you're not like her? Involved with rogue activist groups?”
I don’t know what Phil is talking about. But could it be true? Could my grandmother have been an activist, like me?
“I don’t have to answer to you! I’ll get an attorney. This is intrusive!”
“You have seven seconds.” He remarks dry in tone. His arrogance makes me sick.
“You can’t do this. I’ll sue.” I argue.
“If you have more money than Matson, good for you. You have four seconds till that door opens up and you won’t be here anymore.”
Myra flashes in my mind. I’ve just barely gotten to know her. Do I want to lose her over legal issues with her father’s company? I’m confused, this asshole isn’t giving me much time to process anything of value.
“Why do I have to do this?!”
“Because this is a family company. How can Matson show the world what’s good for them, if its employees don’t even want their product? Image, Jason. Sometimes image is the most important thing. It’s what makes people desire when they don’t know anything else.”
It’s against everything I believe. Everything I stand for. How dare they force their evil on me!
“Time’s up, Jason. What’ll it be? Chip, or no chip?”
I stare into the blinding fluorescents above. My world is in there somewhere; I just have to gaze harder.
I sigh and peer into the sonofabitch’s eyes. I want to tell him he’s a liar. That he doesn’t work for an outside entity. And that I know because I signed off on his check. But I can’t. Not yet. Again—Myra comes to the forefront of my thoughts. There’s still too much I don’t know about her, or her father’s company. By blurting what I feel and what I know, I could halt all progress. I must keep who I side with a secret. Especially since he knows there’s a leaker. PAC’s informer. For the cause, for Myra—I sigh in utter defeat and wave goodbye to what I believe in.
“You win . . . Give it to me.”
Elation from the victor. “Welcome to the club, Jason. Get ready for power beyond your wildest dreams.” His head goes over his shoulder as he shouts, “Tools please!”
A woman walks in. Very conservative, busty, dressed in a brown skirt suit. She hands Phil a kit, and smiles at me. I almost feel like I’m selling my soul. I hate Matson for this. The woman opens the door, but then she turns as if she can feel my anger.
“Relax, Jason. This will be the best decision you ever made.” She then turns and steps out.
Phil opens the ten by six-inch black box he was given. Inside are a pair of green latex gloves. He puts them on. Next, he pulls out a little glass tray and a little vial of red liquid from it.
“This will turn the chip into nearly a liquid itself. It will be fluid enough to move through your body with ease.”
He pulls some tweezers and sprays them with another liquid. “This is for sanitary reasons.”
Phil uses the tweezers to move the chip around in the liquid, soaking it. He then pulls the first syringe already filled with a clear liquid.
“And this is for the uncomfortableness. Without it, you will feel the movement in your bloodstream to some capacity. Depending on how thin some of your veins are, you could feel pressure, similar to when there’s an IV needle placed in your arm. The heart is the worst. The chest pain could make you think you're having a heart attack.”
He cleans a spot on my wrist and injects. Next he grabs the empty syringe. He sucks in the liquid and the chip with it. Tapping the air bubbles down to the base, he squirts the excess into the air.
“And now for the finale.” He says with a grin.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
He injects me.
All I can see is my grandmother’s face in the darkness. She appears disappointed.
“Didn’t I say don’t let them get you, Jason?” She says.
No, grandma, I’m only making them think they’ve won.
Phil pulls the needle. “In roughly twelve hours the chip will harden just enough, grow synapses and nerves, and attach to the front of your brain. Once solidified in place it will upload, connecting fully with your brain. Access to the mainframe will automatically take place at that moment. After all the data has been installed, and mainframe recognizes you, you will be connected to the world. At that point you can go through a library of options. I’m telling you, it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced. You’ll be able to log in and out of the mainframe, share and not share certain items. It will become a part of you. It’s the first of its kind. A computer that will become one with a human organ. Non-removable—Unless you want brain damage of course.”
He smiles as he puts the tools away. “What’s wrong, Jason. You don’t believe it’s the right choice?”
“I didn’t want it.” I don’t want it. I stand up. “Are we done here?”
“Yes . . . for now.”
“I’m going home, and you’re not going to stop me this time.”
I head towards the exit.
“Jason?”
I turn.
“Look.” Phil turns his head, pointing to a spot on the back of his skull. There’s a two-inch lateral incision. He splits his short hair near it, showing a small plugin similar to a USB slot. “At least yours leaves no scar. This is the old-school way. You’ll never have to do that. You’ll be connected to the mainframe. For eternity, your thoughts and memories will be held in cyberspace, downloadable as long as it exists.”
“And if the mainframe were to not function?”
He gasps a chuckle. “That’s unlikely. But even if that were the case, the backup is in the chip itself.”
4
I leave Matson feeling nothing but disgust. I literally cry as I move through the parking lot in a hurry, covering my frailness with thin wavering arms. I didn’t want to be seen. I felt hideous, though there was no physical alteration to me. I also felt ashamed. Like something of an innocent nature was stolen from me; a rape of my essence, if you will.
Why Matson, why did you do this to me? You bastards are going to pay for this.
The drone I’m in, driverless like the rest, is taking me to Newport across Hudson Bay. It’s there that I’m going to meet with Jake and Leonard from the activist group, PAC. It’s been too long.
Light sprinkles of water hit the wrap-around-window of the saucer shaped drone. It’s a very grey outing with a storm moving in. The darkened cloud cover already hides the far reaches of the city.
Neon lighted advertisements flash on the pillars of the Brooklyn Bridge and on the boats moving up and down stream. An ad of Matson and the all new Thin Chip flashes in luxurious fashion across all the pillars in unison. Reds, bright yellows and whites shimmer of the water like hazy, mixed wet paint. For all the spectacular Matson’s ad puts on, all it does is make me want to vomit.
How dare they.
I feel it was very extreme of Matson to allow Phil Balock to Adam me. At first I thought maybe they were on to my secret lifestyle, but I do not fully adopt this stance anymore. If they were onto me, me getting the chip should eliminate any doubt whatsoever. The information I got from this horrid experience is that Matson ha
s a leaker, and they’re digging hard to find out who that is. But what’s even more disturbing is the lengths they will go to protect what they’re hiding . . . What are they hiding?
The drone drops me off at Beck’s Tower; a bar and pool hall for the local Jersey riffraff. It’s not even 3 p.m. but the greyness from the oncoming storm gives a feel of early evening.
I walk in and immediately recognize the musty smell, the cigarette burns on the roughed-up carpet that lost its hue long ago. Without the lights on it would be hard to guess the original color of it. Hensley, the bartender; a bearded man with tattoos up the neck, gives me a nod. It’s code for head for the back, and I do.
This place is home. Far away from my city slicker lifestyle of Midtown. It’s rugged here—tough. And though I am not the rugged type, I always feel safe in this place—in this area. I don’t think it ever matters what bigger and better places you’ve move on to in life, going back to where you grew up, as crummy as it is sometimes, is always inviting.
I enter the back behind a bookcase with no books. My sight spreads over the place: a garage storage of the old bar equipped with its own roll-up door. The red brick walls tell its age: somewhere in the reaches of a hundred years. On the large table, that sits as an island, there are wood spikes, cardboard, paints and so forth of supplies.
The guys and girls here are working on picket signs for an activist march in Philadelphia. Trying to build the awareness of a future losing itself through technology and unknown side effects that could put many lives at risk.
Most of them are dressed in what most people outside here would consider rags. They come from poor families with parents who work hard for very low wages. Some have defects showing on their skin; scaly bumps up a young girl's cheek, legions of raw pink inflammation on a young man’s forearm. Even with the deformities, and as little as they have, they are very proud in who they are. A few of them notice me as I walk in by giving me nods of acceptance. I also see some smirks of envy. I think it’s the clothes. They certainly give off how far I’ve risen, and to some, maybe it’s a reason to believe I’ve lost my roots. I cannot lie. Living with more than adequate wages has brought many changes in me. But by no means have I forgotten the hardships my brethren here face. Therefore, I want to help shut down corporations like Matson, who all but desensitized the working class to the problems of the poor.
Further back, a few from the group work on cars. Smoke trails up from their cigars and bong pipes of pobs; a mixture of dried alcohol preserved, yeasted beer hops, and marijuana. Most of the car crew look like grease mechanics or urban thugs. But appearance is not what makes them. Poverty from expanding corporations that all but killed small business and neighborhoods where they resided have put most of them here. Once the small shops were driven out, corporations cornered the markets, raised prices, shipped most jobs elsewhere along with most of the good yields, which in return resurrected the ghettos of the decades ago. Sometimes growing up poor can be a generational disease.
“Damn, bro, I thought you forgot about us. I haven’t heard from you in over two weeks.” Leonard says, giving me a handshake and a half embrace.
Leonard is an African American male, tall, skinny, long dreadlocks hanging past his shoulders. He’s a good man, and a solid friend.
“I’m sorry about that. Things have been getting strange at work. I wanted to be safe . . . For all of us.” I elect not to mention my acquaintance to Myra.
“I see Charlene’s hood is closed. She’s up and ready?”
Leonard smiles brightly. “Oh yeah. Got them turbo enhancers put on, too. She’s a beaut isn’t she?”
Leonard loves being an activist, but in a perfect world, I think he would spend most of his time and effort racing his drone car, Charlene, in the city’s illegal circuit.
The short, no neck white guy wearing a beanie is Jake. He walks up, gives me a hug. “Dude, what’s wrong. You look like someone stuffed a dildo in your ass.”
I don’t say anything. I didn’t know how to break it to them. But Leonard seems to read my thoughts. He’s always had great instincts.
He shakes his head. “You’ve been Adamed.”
“No! Hell, no. Tell him, Jason.” Jake barks.
“Leonard’s right. They might as well have rapped me.” I shrug. “In nine hours—I won’t be able to remove it.”
“Fuck! They chipped you?” Leonard adds.
I nod.
Jake’s face embodies how I felt on the ride over. “There has to be something we can do, right?”
Leonard rubs his chin. “It’s too new. I’m not sure.”
I sigh. I really was hoping they could help me, but Leonard is right. It’s too new to know how to stop the process.
“Look, guys,” I remark, “let’s not worry about this right now. I want to know about the leak from inside Matson. The guy that implanted me knew about it already.”
Leonard signals Jake with a wave of his head. Jake scuttles away to the corner of the garage and comes back with an inch-thick file of paper.
“Most of this is useless, but there’s some real solid evidence in here.” Jake spouts.
“Like?”
Leonard speaks. “They’re going to force everyone to get chipped. That’s their plan. That’s why they went to Congress. The President signed off on it already.”
“What?!”
“Yeah. I know. This thing has been in the works for months. Maybe years for all we know.”
“What’s the reason. Did the leaker give a reason?”
“No. He said Matson and another entity, one he was too afraid to mention, was going to have complete oversight. The government is going to allow this.”
“But if this is their big announcement in a few days from now, it’s not really evidence of anything. We just have insight. We need more. Something of a nefarious nature.” I stick out my hand. “Did you make copies?” Jake nods. “I’ll take the file and go over it then. Afterwards I will burn it. I’m going to need you to set up a meeting with this leaker for me. I want to see if I can get anything more out of him.”
“I’ll try, but he’s a real wreck. He didn’t even want to talk to Leonard.” Jake replies.
“Give it a try. Tell him you know of another that works at Matson. That he’s not alone.” He nods, then my phone vibrates. It’s Myra via text:
Hey! I didn’t see you at work today. Rob and Dave told
me you were talking to that creepy Phil guy.
Call me when you can. I’d love to see
you tonight. xoxo
“I’m going to head out. Here’s a name for you guys. Phil Balock. See what you can dig up on him.”
Leonard: “Who’s he?”
“He’s the asshole that put the chip in me.”
“What are we going to do about this revelation, Jason? Come a few days from now we may all be chipped.”
“That’s why we need to find out why Matson wants this. That’s the important thing. To force this on everyone is wrong, but since most would love to get it for free, we have to find out what their real plan is.”
Flying back over the Hudson, all I could think about was how in less than nine hours my body would no longer be pure anymore. I thought about slaves years ago being branded by their masters. The method and time may be different, but it’s all the same. It was degrading back then, and it’s degrading now. Matson wants to be the master. But I’d be damn if I let that happen.
5
Myra and I sit up to bar of The Broken Rutter. We sit close, knees touching, my left and her right arm resting on the bar. We’ve been chatting for a little over half an hour, but I saw no reason in bringing up what happened to me. I mean, I want to, but I didn’t want to disrupt our blossoming relationship. After all, it’s her father’s company that did this to me.
“You know, the mainframe will offer people to literally become one.” She says, hand around her drink.
“How so?”
“When allowed to, thoughts, feelings,
memories all can be connected to whoever you want. It will allow lovers to gain even more of an intertwined relationship. However, I’m not totally sure our generation could handle such intensity, such freedom for someone to explore their deepest fears or even darkest thoughts and secrets, to know what pain feels like or death even. But my father believes someday this will all be second nature and it will lead to humanity being more spiritual. And may even rid the planet of violence and war one day. If we could get closer as a species and see all the bad we do to each other, why would we continue, right?”
“That’s a bold endeavor and an interesting concept.” I take a drink, licking the foam off my top lip.
“You don’t believe it’s possible to be that close to one another?”
I breathe out a long wind, gathering my spread out like stars in space thoughts, and place them into the bag of reason.
“When I look onto the landscape of man, I just feel we are too far from unity. We are a flesh driven, self-gratifying being by nature.”
Myra moves her red hair over her shoulder. “You make it sound as if everyone is for themselves. We can’t all be bad.”
“It’s not that. I just happen to think there is far fewer extremely good people, and even far fewer ones who are in a position of power to make a difference. The ones in power today don’t care for unity. That’s my opinion. Just look around the streets. The homeless, the decay of the less fortunate communities, the disease that seems to be linked with monetary class. I don’t think people think of it this way. But the way food is distributed in this world is the equivalent of a master eating their meal then passing the scraps to their dog. Except that dog still eats normal food. The poor eat the fake stuff. Because it’s cheap. And everyone knows it is deforming them and killing them, but what else can they do. Starvation is a slow death.”
“You make a great point. But you must have faith, Jason. It’ll take some time, but the mainframe can change all this.”