The Phone Company

by David Jacob Knight

  Bad ass! he thought, and watched as the progress bar shot across the screen.

  Once the app loaded onto his phone, JJ found he could key in a name, any name he wanted, into the search. He got as far as when autofill predicted some options. The name he was looking for was right at the top. The program was that smart.

  Works off GPS, maybe?

  JJ tapped the option for and his jaw nearly dropped.

  She had just stepped out of the shower, and in the seconds before she wrapped the white towel around herself, JJ could see everything. She was beautiful, still tanned from the summer sun except where her bathing suit had kept her pale, her blonde hair darker now as it hung in a single wet rope.

  Blushing, JJ glanced at Mark and the Dick. They were absorbed in their own Tethers, completely unaware of what he was doing. He considered deleting the app from his phone. He’d spied on people before, with friends even. He’d cyberstalked, had checked out people’s houses on electronic maps to see the best way to spy through windows or whatnot. People had a reasonable right to privacy—so long as they couldn’t be observed from a public space. That was his thought. Information was free.

  Despite JJ’s philosophy, part of him felt dirty somehow. Ashamed. The other part of him turned back to the footage on his phone.

  With the towel around her, Meg went to the mirror, still steamy. She dried it and began to smooth lotion into her skin. JJ furrowed his brow.

  In one corner of the screen, he could change his view by rolling his thumb around a transparent circle. He could move anywhere within the room, as if he were controlling some sort of flying camera.

  Yet when he positioned himself right behind Meg, so that he was looking over her bare, lightly freckled shoulder into the mirror, JJ saw only the girl in the reflection. No camera. No little drone following her around. Just her and her own Tether, blinking an LED on the sink board near her comb.

  “Is that Meg?” the Dick said, swiping for JJ’s phone.

  “Get away from me.” JJ scooted farther from the bed, heart galloping. He had shut off his screen the moment he’d noticed the Dick watching. He hated it, but his face was hot and flushed. It gave him away.

  “Oh, boy,” the Dick said, chortling. “Spying on the neighbor girl, huh? Tsk-tsk.” He started doing something with his own phone.

  “What’re you doing?” JJ said, scrambling out of his sleeping bag.

  The Dick grinned as he drew something onscreen with his finger. “There.” He pressed something. Once.

  JJ leaned across the bed to see what his friend had done, but the Dick pushed him off with his feet, his socks stinky and flopping. He had the grossest feet. Warts and verrucae, a cheesy-smelling fungus. JJ didn’t want to go anywhere near them, let alone breathe them in.

  “What the hell did you do?” he said, backing away.

  The Dick shrugged. “Check your account.”

  “What—”

  JJ’s Tether vibrated. The Dick had tagged him in a photo on Follow, a picture of JJ staring at his phone. It had been edited so that the crotch of JJ’s pants swelled into a tent. The Dick had also tagged Meg Disney.

 

  “ROFL, ROFL! L-O-L!” the Dick roared, rolling around on his bed. “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  JJ snatched the phone from him. He couldn’t crack the locking pattern, so he threw the Dick’s phone out the window. The house was two stories. The Tether cleared the roof and gutter.

  “Twat!” The Dick punched JJ in the arm and went for the door, glaring back the entire time.

  “Going to tell your mummy?” JJ asked, rubbing his shoulder and faking a New Zealand accent.

  The Dick opened the door. “Nah, no worries.” As he went into the hall, he said, “You’ll forget all about this. But I won’t. I never forget. Meg won’t forget, either.” Then he was off to get his Tether.

  “Freaking elephant,” Mini Mark muttered, focused on his game.

  JJ sort of chuffed, sort of laughed at the memory joke. He untagged himself from the Dick’s photo and removed it from his wall. But, as he was mortified to confirm, there was no way to keep Meg from seeing it as well.

  “Dick,” he said to himself.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Hey, Sheriff,” Bill said, eyeballing the heads-up display on his newfangled glasses. “What’s with this user agreement?”

  The Patrol Division, which had been whittled down to four deputies other than Bill, had gathered in the briefing room. If the Major Crimes Unit hadn’t ceased operations due to budget cuts, the detectives would have been there as well.

  Two deputies who usually had weekends off grumbled at first that they had to come in on a Saturday. But then they saw why they were called in, and suddenly they were all about it.

  “Good question, Biggs,” Sheriff Perkins said. He stood by the whiteboard at the head of the room, wearing his own high-tech glasses. PCo had donated the new equipment to law enforcement across the nation: each deputy had received a Tether with connected glasses and a detachable Bluetooth earpiece—an “earwig,” Bill called it.

  The app, as Bill found out when he donned the featherlight eyewear, was called Dragnet T.800. It tethered the glasses to the powerful engine of the phone.

  “Dragnet’s on a sort of trial mode till you consent to a background check,” the sheriff said.

  Bill looked through his lenses at Deputy Caruthers. Information spiderwebbed off the officer’s uniform. It displayed Caruthers’ vitals, his demographics, his criminal history; his shoe size, even, if Bill drilled down into the peripherals.

  A semi-transparent reticle tracked the movement of Bill’s eyes. He focused on the menu for Caruthers’ criminal history, but the program blocked the information and prompted Bill to accept the background check.

  “Why’s that even necessary?” he asked the sheriff. “We’ve all been cleared.”

  “Yes, well, Dragnet gives you access to a ton of information, stuff you wouldn’t normally have at your fingertips. I mean, it’s got your typical stuff. GPS. All your databases: DMV, NCIC, LexisNexis, local records. What’s cool is, if you look at a fingerprint, Dragnet will search for a match. Look at a license plate, it’s got a reader built right into it, gets you into everything. These glasses should virtually replace your on-board computers.

  “Thing is, these are powerful machines. We’ve got to be mindful of the Fourth Amendment using this kind of tech. So the user agreement is just a way of making sure you’re on the level. As soon as you consent, Dragnet runs a detailed background check and files it for review. After that, it gives you access to everything. And I mean everything. With certain clearances, you can access FBI files, CIA files, and a lot of stuff the NSA grabs from email and phones.”

  “Oh, wow,” Deputy Goff said. He’d already accepted the background check. Everyone had, except Bill. “Hey, Biggs. I didn’t know you had a second mortgage on your house.”

  “What the hell?” Bill said. “It tells you that?”

  “Oh, man,” Goff said, eyes roving around his HUD. “Second mortgage, and you lost seventy grand in equity when the bubble burst.”

  Bill pushed Goff’s face away, wanting to do much more than push. “Read someone else’s diary, creep.”

  Averting Goff’s eyes didn’t help, though. The deputies were all looking around at each other, eyes flashing with information.

  “All right,” Bill said, getting up from his seat. “Are we done here?”

  Sheriff Perkins wore his glasses the same way he wore his mustache: imperiously. He stared at Bill, who tried not to sweat, lest Dragnet analyze the chemical makeup of each bead.

  “We need to talk,” the sheriff said. “My office.”

  Aside from the typical bookshelf of procedural binders and legal encyclopedias and an entire wall of awards, Perkins had mounted a few heads above the wainscoting in his office. The heads of the bear, lion, moose,
and whole paddlefish he’d had enshrined all looked like they wanted to eat you. No matter where you were in the room, their eyes sought you out.

  Perkins leaned back in his leather chair, one hand planted atop his desk. “So, Bill, tell me. What’s this hard-on you’ve got for Rat and the Martian?”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “I heard you interrogated them last night about the incident at HMS.”

  “Yeah? Where’d you hear that?”

  Perkins stared at him through the glasses, as if to say it didn’t matter where.

  “Well, check your sources,” Bill said, “’cause I didn’t interrogate anyone.”

  “Really.”

  “I may have asked them a few questions. Where were they that evening? Why was their car at the scene of the crime? Stuff like that.”

  “They suspects?”

  Bill shrugged. “Marvin certainly hasn’t hidden his hatred for PCo. And I saw Mrs. McCurdy’s car there at HMS, but I never saw Mrs. McCurdy.”

  “Shouldn’t you have interrogated her then?”

  Bill gave another shrug. “Like I said, I didn’t interrogate anyone. And, no. It wasn’t a woman I saw running away from the school. Did I do something wrong here, sir?”

  Perkins stared at him for a long time while Dragnet blinked away across his eyeballs. “Why won’t you consent to the background check, Bill?”

  “Honestly? It feels like those glasses give us way too much power. I’d rather see how this goes, see if any of the other guys run into problems violating people’s rights.” It was a smooth line. No hesitation, no glancing away or blinking, which was good.

  “Hmm.” Perkins tapped his blotter. “You really think those two had anything to do with the arson? Rat and the Martian?”

  “I do.”

  Perkins looked at something in his HUD. “That’s the first true thing you’ve said to me all day.”

  “Sir—”

  “Bill, look, I’ve got a lot of respect for you, for your gut. Got a hunch, then bring me something we can get a warrant for.”

  “Can do, sir.”

  As Bill was leaving, Perkins said, “And, Bill.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  The sheriff gave one last tap on his blotter. “I don’t know why you didn’t bring the Martian in for the shit he pulled at the graveyard, but if he does something stupid, if he hurts anyone, you’re on the hook.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bill said.

  Once he was out in the hall, he whispered into his earwig, “You hear all that?”

  “Yep,” Aaron said, and Bill decided the earwig, at least, was tech he could get used to.

  * * *

  Sunday, Steve took his kids to the newer cemetery. He ignored the future site of the PCo store across the street, annoyed that he’d have to avert his eyes from here on out, lest he get angry.

  “Why don’t we go anymore?” Sarah asked, looking at Mountain View Church below the cemetery. Its parking lot was full of mostly familiar cars, parked beneath the evergreens.

  Steve saw that the church’s sign still welcomed PCo to the community. Well, he thought, that’s one reason right there.

  Just because people went to church, or sermonized in church, or served as pastor, did not mean they didn’t do bad things, that they weren’t corrupt.

  The church was obviously pandering to the megacorp, but why? A large donation? Steve wondered if Bill had heard anything.

  “I don’t see why I have to go,” JJ said, changing to an earlier conversation. “It’s a waste of time.”

  “Because,” Steve said. He pulled onto the paved one-lane road that led up through the cemetery. It was a good reason, because. It couldn’t be disproven.

  “Why do I even need therapy?” JJ said. “It’s not like I’m going around bombing people and eating babies. I’m not crazy.”

  “It’s not therapy, it’s counseling,” Steve said. “Educational counseling. It’ll help you do better in school.”

  “Right,” JJ said. “In other words, therapy.”

  It probably was therapy, but Steve didn’t want JJ to think of it like that, not if it discouraged him from going to see the school counselor. The boy had been acting out lately, and his grades had dropped. Even Mrs. Keeler didn’t know why.

  Sure, she knew, as Steve knew, that part of it was the lingering impact of his mother’s death—it had changed them all forever—but Janice had been gone five years now. Something more recent must have caused this sharper downturn. A bully at school? A girl?

  The one person in the world who knew, or didn’t really know until he got a chance to talk about it, was JJ—and he didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Listen,” Steve said, “I’m done arguing. I’ll set up a meeting with Mrs. Keeler, and we can all assess where you’re at, okay? Maybe when your grades start going back up, who knows?”

  “Whatever,” JJ said, sitting back. He continued to play whatever he was playing on his Tether.

  Sarah’s old clamshell dinged, and she pulled it out. “Ew, sick!” she said, and JJ snickered.

  “What now?” Steve said.

  Sarah clapped her phone shut. “He sent me a screenshot from his demented game. Shooting out some Arab’s brains, or something.”

  “JJ, stop it.” The road forked, and Steve took the route that climbed the wooded hill.

  “I don’t know why he gets a Tether and I don’t,” Sarah said.

  Steve sighed, trying not to let the bickering get to him, but failing anyway. “I don’t understand why people need to have what everyone else has, just because that’s the trend.”

  “Of course you don’t, you’re forty.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Yeah, but you’re, like, one of the only people I know who still has a home phone.”

  “It’s a cell phone,” Steve pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Sarah said, “for the house. Who does that anymore?”

  “Well, it was your mom’s,” Steve said, and let it drop.

  Until HMS had given JJ his Tether, they’d all been on the same family plan, using the same exact clamshells they’d had since before Janice’s cancer had shown up on any scans. Steve and Sarah both had those old phones.

  Steve let his eyes wander through the trees and the different levels of grave markers sloping up the hill. He was glad for the moment of silence, but he could feel the darkness from Sarah’s side of the car. He hadn’t meant to use Janice as a conversation stopper and he felt terrible—but he’d take the silence where he could get it.

  “Hey, Dad, want to know what?” JJ said from the back, and Steve sighed. “Mini Mark had this app where he was digging in town. There was our graveyard and everything. He dug through the First Step and found this deep crack, and it went, like . . . he spent over three hours trying to find the bottom of it. Oh, and then he baked the clay into bricks, and he’d started to build this, like, fortress over it, without any windows or any way in.”

  “Sounds cool,” Steve said with half a heart.

  “Sounds stupid,” Sarah said. “He should do homework on it, that’s what it’s for. His phone’s not for playing.”

  Steve began to tell her to mind her own business, but then JJ’s story finally sank in. “What do you mean, a brick fortress? You mean like the PCo building? The one they’re putting in at Harcum?”

  The Phone Company had recently started construction after the sewage cleanup. Steve had seen the flattened, graded worksite, and a conceptual design of the low brick building; there’d been a few nice conceptual Japanese maples planted in the conceptual sidewalk around it.

  “Yeah, it’s like I told you,” JJ said, “the world in the game’s pretty much Buttcrack Rock.”

  “Huh.” That was mildly interesting. Steve had gotten a pretty good look at the conceptual drawing of the building and, thinking about it now, he didn’t recall any windows or any way in. Apparently, it would be a data center, Bill had told him.

  Something happened on JJ’s Tether, and t
he boy jumped back. “Wow! Dad, look!”

  He thrust the phone between the two front seats, practically blinding Steve to the narrow road ahead. “Damn it, JJ.” Steve brushed the phone away, but not before getting a glimpse of the game.

  In it, a Marine had gotten his legs blown off by what was probably a dirty bomb in the desert. Except the graphics weren’t just realistic—it looked like real footage from the war in the Mideast, blood pumping out of the soldier’s ragged stumps where the blast hadn’t cauterized the wounds.

  Steve grimaced and glanced at Sarah, who had fallen silent too. Neither of them felt comfortable around violence. JJ was too young to really remember why. They’d shielded him as much as they could from it.

  “JJ, that’s enough phone in the car,” Steve decided. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

  When his son continued to play and say “wow,” Sarah craned around in her seat. “Dad told you to stop.”

  JJ’s thumbs halted, and he met her eyes.

  Every now and again—but not too often—Sarah had this way with her little brother. Steve had always noticed it. It was her voice, her mother’s voice, and he thought maybe Sarah avoided using it because she recognized where it came from, too. Either it hurt, or it worried her to death she was starting to sound like her mom.

  Maybe both.

  JJ put his phone away and looked out the window, flushed and avoiding their stares, pushing his hat low on his brow. Thank God, Steve thought. Sundays were stressful enough.

  They came to the crest of the hill and parked. From the trunk, Steve grabbed the bouquet of flowers and a little handheld broom, and they made their way to Janice’s grave.

  Steve stopped at a few other markers along the way, sweeping off any dead leaves, old flower petals, and debris. He always hoped it wouldn’t affect him, the dates. The lifespans on these markers were too short, none older than fourteen. Ten years old was the youngest.