A wheelchair? If it was, it didn’t look like any wheelchair I had ever seen. Still, knowing that the person ahead of me was disabled actually calmed my nerves a bit. He continued to zoom in, and his appearance was anything but scary as it became clearer.
But who is he?
When he was about twenty feet from me, he stopped.
It was definitely some kind of weird futuristic wheelchair that he was in.
Neither of us moved for a moment, and I decided to break the tension. I waved with my right hand, and to my shock, he simultaneously waved his. Then both of our hands went down at exactly the same time. In disbelief, I leaned my head in to get a better look, and he mimicked the motion identically. I waved my left hand. Him too. I turned around and peered over my shoulder. He spun around and looked back as well.
We faced each other again, and I snapped, “Name?”
Below us, the longest crease of light appeared much brighter than the spotlights on him and me. Looking up, we saw what looked to be a tear in the void, letting the light in, and it was getting wider. As it opened up, the loudest suction noise began to pierce my ears, making it difficult to think, and like a vacuum, a strong pressure began pulling us upward. Somehow I knew that we didn’t have much time, but all I could think to do was snap again.
“Name?”
Light was consuming the entire space, and it wouldn’t be long before we’d be swept up into it, so I snapped it a third time.
He finally replied, “Ryan Carter. Name?”
I was barely able to get out my name just before our time was up. “Charlie Rios.”
Chapter 18:
A Slip of the Tongue
“Charlie Rios.” The name fell out of my mouth as I walked through the main doors at NTE.
“I’m sorry, sir, but who are you talking to?” Another employee at the company looked at me like I was crazy.
Part of me didn’t blame her. I had no idea where that name came from or why I had said it. Shaking it off, I turned my attention back to the business at hand. Since the leave for my mind migration was coming to an end, I had scheduled a late morning appointment with HR to have my job reinstated.
It was surreal walking into the building for the first time ever without Auto. The foyer that had always seemed to go on for kilometers when I rolled through, took just a few long strides for me to complete. Entering the hallway toward the bank of elevators, I pressed the UP button. To my pleasant surprise, the elevator Helen and I had first met in was the one to open first. With a ding, I hopped in, pressed the button for floor number forty-two, and settled into the middle since it was just me. But as the doors began to close, I heard clicking heels racing toward me and a middle-aged, good-looking businesswoman appeared. Instinctively, I put my hand between the doors. Sliding in past me, she gathered herself in the back corner. To my delight, her perfume was nice and subtle, and the ride up wouldn’t be so bad.
“Thanks!” She had an odd exuberance in her voice.
“No problem. Which floor?”
“Fifty-six. Thanks again.”
After pressing her button, I stepped back to the other corner to allow her maximum room, and could feel her eyes following me back to the spot. Trying to limit the awkwardness, I offered some small talk since I was a pro at it.
“You must work with the big accounts on that floor.”
She busted into the hardest laughter, nearly scaring me. I had always thought of myself as a funny person, but she was giving me a little too much credit.
“Yes. I work with the…big accounts. But, tell me. What do you do?” Unblinking, she leaned in closer than I would have liked, and it almost seemed like she was looking through me or talking to someone behind me.
Leaning back slightly, I quickly offered a response. “Me? I’m in data processing.”
Her ogling demeanor subsided as a perplexed look took over. “But you don’t look—”
“Disabled? Well, I’m not. Anymore. I had a mind migration, and I’m just getting back to work.”
“Oh, you’re one of those.” She snootily turned around in an attempt to end the conversation.
I couldn’t let it die so easily after that. “Is there something wrong with that?”
Hesitant, she turned back around. “Well, how do I even know if you have a soul or not?”
Her ignorance aside, she was being just plain rude.
“How do I know if you have one? Or if anyone has one? And who the hell cares?”
Her face turned just short of angry.
“Look, you might not be the religious type. No problem. I was just making small talk anyway.”
The elevator chimed, and the doors revealed my floor.
As I stepped out, there was no way in hell I was going to let the conversation end like that. “Small talk is about things like coffee and the game last night, not about whether someone’s a legitimate person. I’m glad you kept talking because after the little bit of flirting you did, I almost liked you.”
Even if the last part was a lie, it was worth seeing her jaw drop to the ground. The doors began to shut, and I turned down the hallway and walked away. Truth be told, I was kind of glad that she reminded me of the bigotry a certain percentage of the population had for us migrators. Much of it came from the religious groups that were opposed to the procedure from the beginning. Others simply lumped us in with all the other minorities as causing the “moral bankruptcy of society.”
To ADG’s credit, they did mention migration prejudice as something to be aware of. But they did so in such a clumsy way that it wouldn’t have stuck out to most people even if they were unfamiliar.
“You realize that others will look at you differently after your mind migration? Some may dislike you simply because you’re not in your original body,” was all they’d said on the subject.
Having researched the phenomenon, I was trading one form of obvious oppression, my disability, for another not-so-obvious one. It was worth it to be able to walk, but it still stung to experience it firsthand.
It had already been an interesting morning, and I hadn’t even made it to my destination. Fortunately, I was quickly approaching the glass wall and doors of the HR offices at the end of the hallway. I took a deep breath and entered.
The department assistant immediately greeted me. “Hello, sir! How may NTE help you today?”
“Hi. My name is Ryan Carter. I am here to be reinstated for work after a medically related leave of absence.”
“No problem, Ryan. Please place your thumb in the ID reader, and I will have the next available personnel representative assist you. Your wait time is approximately five minutes. You may have a seat.”
I was fairly certain that she had gone to Cyborg University and was a monotonous communications major. Still, I verified my identity for her and waited the five minutes.
“Ryan Carter. Please report to room four-two-two-one.”
Entering the office, I saw it had the best view of the city.
“Hi, Ryan. I’m Emily Turner, the personnel rep who will help you out today. I understand that you’re scheduled to be reinstated next week.”
“That’s correct.”
“We’re glad to have you back. I hope everything went well medically.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“We reviewed your employment while you were away. Upper management needs me to bring something to your attention.”
My heart sank since upper management had never even acknowledged my existence, much less had a need to “review something with me.”
“Okay.”
“Well, we completed an audit on your employment record, and I must say that you have been outstanding since day one. Before your leave, you never missed a day of work and your processing had a ninety-nine-point-nine-seven-five percent perfection rate. That puts you third best in company hi
story. With all of that, we’d like to offer you a promotion.”
Stunned, I could only muster a nod as a response.
“We’d like you to be our newest lead generator.”
And there it was. Lead generations was the black hole of all departments. Years ago, NTE figured out that automated lead generation, which had been the standard for decades, was no longer as effective as a person reaching out to potential customers. Completely commission-driven, with very hard work, some luck, and possibly an inside track, a decent living could be made through cold hologramming and ad placement. Rumors would periodically surface of lead generators who made thousands of leads in a month, leading to five-figure paychecks. But most employees in the department struggled to stay afloat, and it was no secret that they had the highest turnover in the company. So, why me, Mr. Top Data Processor? My guess was that the company was scheduled to lose the tax break they had received from my disability once I returned and wanted me to start earning my keep.
“If it’s all the same, I would prefer to stay in data processing for the time being. Maybe when I get my feet under me again, I would be open to the transfer.”
“I’m sorry, Ryan, but the offer only stands for this meeting. We are looking to consolidate our quarterly rosters, and it would be another year or longer before you would be considered again. It really is a good move for someone like you.”
“Someone like me,” she’d said so smugly. Maybe she really believed that she was doing me a favor. As disgusted as I was, it was probably a good move in the short run. Otherwise, they’d probably find a frivolous reason to get rid of me altogether. So, I figured I would take the job to keep an income while I got settled into the new apartment. Hell, there was even a possibility that I would actually be good at it. But if not, I would quickly start looking for something different.
“Fine.”
“Thank you, Ryan. I’m sure you’ll do just as well in your new role. Please put your thumb in the ID reader to confirm your position switch, and we’ll handle the rest of the data work on our end. You will have a trainer meet with you for two hours, and based on the schedule for next week, it looks like we’ll need you to come in tomorrow afternoon for that training. Lastly, I need you to report to your data-processing workstation to wrap up any remaining and incoming data-processing requests. Feel free to head up there after this meeting. Any questions?”
Can you and the company kiss my ass? But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. “No questions.”
I pushed my thumb into the ID reader like a good little lemming.
“Again, we appreciate you accepting your new position, and we look forward to your continued success.”
After wrapping up the blackmail that had just taken place, I headed for my old cubicle on the fourteenth floor. It was modest, with tan paneling and white tabletops. No chairs, of course. Only company approved flair could be posted inside, and I had never felt like getting approval for anything special, so I’d just hung up my data-processing awards. To the company’s credit, all desks on the fourteenth floor were auto-adjusting, so that made it easy to raise up so I could stand while completing the last bits of work that I had.
Pressing my thumb into the ID reader, my desk transformed into a data-processing workstation. A virtual keyboard appeared a couple inches above the desk, and widescreen holograms displayed the information in a semicircle around me. There were a few items waiting for me to process, and I quickly handled those.
Ready to ID out, I reached my thumb toward the ID reader, but instead, my eyes were drawn back to the holograms, and I inexplicably froze. An inner force was stopping me from leaving, and without thinking, I navigated my workstation to the data-search function. Feeling like my body was on autopilot, my hands began typing.
CHARLES RIOS
Enter.
6,471 RESULTS FOUND.
With complete disregard for time and having no idea what I was looking for, I began diving into article after article involving anyone with the name Charlie Rios. There were birth announcements, obituaries, and general news items. One of the Charlies even invented a reusable chewing gum. You just had to wash it with soap and water and put it in the refrigerator to restore the flavor.
Yuck.
After what had to be an hour or so, a light bulb finally went off, and my searching stopped. A news blurb without a date or location reported that a man named Charlie Rios was a suspect in custody for an accident involving his car and another, and was sent to the hospital. There weren’t any other details even after I filtered for related stories. Nothing else of relevance was returned, but that didn’t matter. I found out what I needed to know from the search.
He is real! Charlie is real.
Somehow, I could see what Charlie did, what Charlie saw in my dreams. Just when I thought my searching was over, the autopilot kicked in again, and I began to type more letters.
SPOTTED LUNG.
Enter.
4,198,210,245 RESULTS.
I had heard of the disease before, but never knew much about it. Skimming through a few sources from the results, I discovered that, at its height, spotted lung had affected about 20% of the city’s population. It had been a super virus that mutated to feed off air pollution which, decades ago, was aplenty. The bug had settled in people’s lungs, and as they’d breathed in the dirty air, it forced the host’s lungs to absorb the pollution much more deeply into the tissue than it otherwise normally would. It had especially affected children, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems, but occasionally, healthy adults caught the virus as well. Originally, the disease had an 80% mortality rate, and people around the globe feared it was the end of humanity. But treatments had advanced pretty quickly, and for the last several years after the discovery of a cure and subsequent vaccine, only 5% of infections had been fatal.
The disease had been strange in that it forced pollution to be concentrated in the lungs, but it had preferred its host to be in otherwise good health. Nearly all of the other major organs—heart, brain, kidneys, and occasionally the liver—were usually unscathed, or close to it. A good thing for those who’d survived, but it also created a morbid opportunity for a local crime syndicate with a high-ranking member in the city coroner’s office. They had waited for the infected to die and, prior to the body being sent to the morgue, had harvested any remaining healthy organs to sell on the black market. The scandal had broken nearly twenty years ago, and the crime syndicate was dismantled with its leadership going to prison. But nowhere could I find the names of those leaders, which seriously bothered me for an unknown reason.
“Excuse me, Ryan Carter. You have reached your data-search limit, and you have no remaining pending data. Please ID out and leave for the day.”
It was no surprise that the department supervisor was as pedantic as ever. It didn’t matter. I had found what I didn’t even realize I was looking for. The next thing I wanted to do was speak with someone at ADG, maybe Tony, to get some perspective on what I was experiencing, and the proof I’d found that Charlie was real.
“Yes, sir. I will see myself out.”
IDing out and exiting the building as fast as possible, I was excited to be joining Helen for dinner that night. It might have been a little early for food, but it was definitely the right time to start drinking.
Two Toms’ Tavern was a local jewel in that it had excellent food and beverages without the long waits that some places had. It wasn’t a very auto-chair-friendly place, but I had persevered a few times before getting my legs because it was that good.
Rob the Bartender was wiping the place down when I entered, and as usual, he was the breath of fresh air I needed after interacting with boring, rude people all day. To my surprise, he instantly recognized me.
“Ryan! Dude!”
“How’s it going, Rob?”
“Can’t complain! How’s being erect?”
/> Yes! I had waited ever since the migration for someone to make that joke, and it was even better when I finally heard it.
“Ha ha. It’s great. Can I get a half-liter of Bobby Brüce, please?”
My favorite ale had hints of caramel, but the exceptionally smooth malt finish made drinking it somewhat dangerous. I’d be a couple in before I realized just how buzzed I was.
“Coming right up, my walking friend.”
It was only me and a few other day drinkers there, but I knew it would pick up a little as the night went on. I grabbed a table in back to give Helen and me a little more privacy since it was a night to celebrate our completed journeys and those ahead of us. It was no secret that the drinks and talk would be flowing all night.
Two beers in, and the main door to the pub flew open, and there she was. In all her migrated, gorgeous glory, Helen entered. The setting sun behind her emphasized her natural glow. Time stood still, and I almost didn’t notice her looking around for me.
“Helen!” I waved exaggeratedly in an attempt to embarrass her.
She nodded in acknowledgement and gave a playful scowl.
As she headed to the table, I stood and opened my arms, and she slipped into them as perfectly as I had always imagined. We held each other tightly for an extra second.
“How’s it going, Ry? Anymore weird blackouts?”
Tipping my glass, I gave my best witty response. “Nah, but let me get four or five more of these in me, and we’ll see how my new liver holds up.”
Rob interrupted with his awful cowboy impersonation. “Howdy, ma’am, what can I get ya to drink?”
“McHenry Stout, please.”
“You got it.”
Before we could dig into our first conversation, some drunkard in a leather jacket played an awful, decades-old rock song on the music box, so we had to yell at each other to talk.
“How many are you in?” Helen shouted across the table.
“This is my third. You’ll need to drink fast to catch up.”
“That’s never been a problem for me, and now I have the body to do it right.”
Between Two Minds: Awakening Page 21