Hell to Pay

by Dick Wybrow

  "You're joking."

  "Never," she said. "I'm tracking the governor of New Jersey's fetish for Taiwanese ladyboys. I've inserted small, vertical gun ads into the profile landing page of a gas station attendant in Kansas City along with articles about employees robbing their employers and getting off scot-free."

  The Actor slowly backed up until he was, once again, standing next to me, eyes still trained on the door, his mouth hanging open slightly. I put a hand on his shoulder. He didn't seem to notice.

  "There's a building super in Minneapolis trying to get rid of a tenant who's on rent control, so his newsfeed is… giving him ideas," she said and smiled even wider.

  I shook my head. "Why? Why would you do all of this?"

  "Because I like it!" she said and nearly rose off her lounger. "That kind of power? This world hurt me every chance it could, at every turn! Now, I'm returning the favor!" Her eyes blazed and watered. Her cheeks flushed. Then she calmed and tapped the cap on her head. "Also, they've wired into my pleasure center. With each… success, I get a jolt, and, baby, there ain't nothing in the world like it."

  "You… are not a good person," I said, unable to come up with much better.

  She laughed and nodded to the wall, which transformed into a floor-to-ceiling video image. A dark-haired woman was staring at us, squinting, scanning, looking through us. There were tears in her eyes that had not yet fallen.

  "This is a woman in Melbourne," she said and frowned. "Australia."

  "I know where Melbourne is," I said.

  "Her husband is out. He told her that he's out bowling with the guys but"—Marge flipped the screen—"it looks as though the missus noticed his FriendBook page was still open. Normally it should lock up, but strange thing, magically it remained open."

  "Magic," I said, frowning.

  "It remained open with the message pane displayed front and center," Marge said, briefly showing us an exchange, then flipped the image back to the dark-haired woman, her lips trembling. "She's about to read how an old friend from high school and her husband have been exchanging pleasantries. Tonight, they're having dinner then—let me quote—'who knows from there?'" Marge chuckled to herself. "I always find leaving it to the imagination is so much better than anything else I could compose."

  "Wait," I said and pointed at the screen, where the woman was crying. "You wrote the message?"

  Marge's eyes were fixed as she watched the woman. With each of the woman's tears, she shuddered and moaned slightly.

  "That means nothing," I said. "He'll come home, and she'll confront him, and the truth will come out. End of story."

  Marge shook her head. "Oh no. No, no," she said. "Watch."

  The woman peeled away from the screen and left the room. Moments later, her face appeared again, the room behind her darkened. The woman's image shook as she feverishly typed with her thumbs.

  "She's on her phone now," Marge said and stretched like a cat. "There's a man at her work—ten years her junior—who's been flirting with her. Oh, she's been coy up to this point, enjoying the attention. But she hadn't planned on doing anything until about a minute ago. All it took was… a little push."

  My voice was shaking. "So this is what you do? Just prey on people's weaknesses?"

  "I reveal them for their true selves!" Marge said so loud it almost came out as a roar. "For weeks, months, I've put ads for lingerie on her feed, dieting, pictures of young women in the prime of their lives, perfect bodies if photoshopped." She crossed her arms and looked like she was hugging herself. "I groomed her, killing her self-esteem! And then a friend request from a young workmate, and all the pieces were finally in place."

  "A request you sent?"

  She shrugged. "Naturally. I sent one to both of them, from each other." Marge stood again and slowly approached me. "You see, this is a win-win scenario. Here, I get everything I could ever want. After I burned through all the people who wronged me in the past, shredding their little lives, I took bigger and bigger challenges. But in the end, it's the small moments. I get the joy of spreading a little misery, which makes me warm and tingly."

  "And for Hell Inc., their MX goes up."

  "See? Win-win."

  "Ha," I said. "So you've broken up this marriage, maybe. One down, two billion to go?"

  Marge crossed her arms in front of me. "I've shown you this one." She flicked a wrist, and the screen filled up with tiny squares from the middle of the wall, growing like panicked bubbles, so many I couldn't even count. "We have tens of thousands, millions, of these little schemes in play right now."

  The Actor looked at the wall, his mouth open. He was staring at his fate, just minutes away, for the moment, lost to the world.

  I'd seen something in her expression, though, so I took a gamble. "So, you lose all of this in just minutes?"

  She shrugged and trotted back to her lounger, picking up her magazine, then putting it back down just as quickly. "Seems my time is done," she said. "My contract will be liquidated, and I suppose, I go back to my old dreary life. But with the knowledge of a job well done, and I've been promised I'll never have to worry about money ever again," she said. "So there is that."

  I crossed my arms. "Oh, but… all of this. Won't you miss it?"

  "I'll find something else to do."

  "Yeah, but not with this kind of power. You can change the world in here—mold it as you see fit."

  She looked around the room and slowly nodded.

  "What if," I said slowly, "we could find a way where you could stay?"

  Marge laughed then slowly shook her head. She tried to laugh again, but it came out halting, thin. "What could you do?" she asked, not looking at us.

  "Well," I said and took a half step forward. The turrets above us did not move. "The Actor's contract becomes valid in, what, twenty-two minutes?"

  "There about, yes."

  "What if, um, we made it invalid?"

  Again, Marge shook her head, but her hands moved quickly, grabbing the magazine again then dropping it. "As if you could! How would you possibly do that?"

  "Well, you are know-all and see-all, right? Where is the contract now?"

  She scoffed. "In Hood's office up in the tower with all of his hell contracts. But it won't do you any good."

  "Why?" I asked and took another step closer. "You control the security."

  "So?"

  "The two of us could walk right in there and destroy the contract," I said slowly. "That would leave them… without a replacement. They would have to keep you on."

  She opened her mouth for a moment, but nothing came out. Then she waved a hand in the air. "They would find someone else."

  "Sure," I said. "But how long would that take? Weeks? Months? Years?"

  Finally, she looked at me. She then glanced over at the Actor. "It has taken this long to find another suitable candidate… but how do I know you'll do this?"

  "Because that's why we're here," I said. "He doesn't want it."

  She looked at the Actor with a scowl, one eyebrow cocked. "Is that true?"

  Staring at the woman on the screen, tears streaming down her face but smiling as she typed, the Actor nodded.

  Marge glared at us for what seemed like an eternity.

  The light tendrils going to her brain flashed, snapped, and crackled. Then she said quietly, "Hood controls the elevator, so you'll have to take the spiral stairs."

  The turrets retracted, and the door behind us slid open.

  "You've got less than twenty minutes until the contract takes effect," she said, glaring at us hard. "I didn't think this was possible… but I do know I don't want this to end. Still, if you don't destroy that contract in time, I must be the spirit of FriendBook." She smiled sweetly. "So, if you run out of time, I will have my tidy robots kill you both."

  "What?"

  "Nineteen minutes," she said and went back to her magazine. The silent dark-haired woman on the screen trading messages with her young coworker laughed softly, wiped away a tear, an
d put a hand to her mouth.

  * * *

  Anza looked at her cell phone again. Still no return text from the Actor. Then she looked at the icons at the top of the screen. No service. That was frustrating. So was the smoothie barista, who'd cheerily introduced himself as Hunter.

  "I do not like kale," she said for at least the third time. "It making me burp."

  "That's good," Hunter said, casually wiping his fingertips on a blue smock. "Burping is healthy. It releases toxins."

  "I don't think that is true."

  "Sure it is!"

  She walked back to the table with a simple banana smoothie—which seemed to break Hunter's heart. Uncle Jerry, already half-finished with his drink, had gotten something with soy milk, almonds, whey, and boysenberries.

  Disconcertingly, it was called "Purple Nut Butter."

  The moment her butt hit the chair, a young man appeared next to the table, seemingly out of nowhere. There were quiet titters in the room, some of the employees smiling and pointing, briefly catching snippets of the man on their mobile phones.

  "Hello, I'm Mr. Hood," he said. "I'm so glad you could join us." He turned to the old man first. "I understand you're here to correct a clerical error in your profile."

  Uncle Jerry crossed his arms. "I ain't dead."

  "Can you prove that?" Hood asked, grinning. He looked down at the guest pass, which identified the man across from him as Lou Stool. "Somehow, I don't think that is your name."

  "Ah, that."

  "We must be special," Anza said, taking a sip of her smoothie and frowning. "Do you personally fix all of your users’ clerical errors?"

  Pointing at his badge, Uncle Jerry said, "It's really a bit of a play on words, you see—"

  "Oh, it was hard to miss you," Hood said. "Especially since you arrived with such, um, flair. We do have a guest parking lot, but the closest landing strip is about ten miles south of here. Not in, as it were, the nearby creek."

  Uncle Jerry said, "Ah, good story there—"

  "But that is not my concern," Hood said. "My concern… is the company you keep."

  They both stared at the man, unblinking.

  "It's funny," Hood said, sipping his own orange smoothie with small lizard-like tongue movements. "For years, marketers would pay thousands, millions, of dollars to learn about you, me, and anyone they could." He stood and stretched, looking up to the giant menu on the wall. "What do you like? What did you buy today? What might you want to buy tomorrow? What turns you on?" He laughed. "Which Disney princess are you most like?"

  Uncle Jerry shook his head. "I never do those. Just a way to hijack your personal info."

  Hood nodded. "Of course it is."

  "I was Jasmine," Anza said to Uncle Jerry with a small grin.

  "Huh," Uncle Jerry said. "I got Ariel!"

  "The mermaid?"

  "Yeah!"

  Anza leaned forward and grabbed her friend's hand. "I think that's perfect."

  "Anyway!" Hood said and slid into the third barstool at the table, uninvited. "All of you just freely hand that info over. Where you go, who you talk to, who you don't want to talk to, who you used to date, who you slept with on your friends list—"

  "You cannot know that!" Anza said, scowling.

  "It's not hard. We've got trillions of data points, so we can predict relationships," Hood said then raised his eyes to the two of them. "And how certain relationships affect people more than others. Which, to the point, is why I am here."

  Anza reached over and grabbed Hood's smoothie, put her finger in it, and tasted it. She grimaced. "So, why are you here?"

  Hood was at a loss for words for a moment then recovered. "Follow me," he said.

  They glanced at each other and did.

  "You have a friend who, within the next half hour, will become a very, very important part of the very fabric of our work here."

  They both stopped in their tracks.

  "Yes, yes," Hood said, smiling. "Now, you're here, but he is not."

  He doesn't know! Anza thought and couldn't help but smile.

  "Why is that?" Hood asked.

  "On vacation," Uncle Jerry said. "Few weeks down in Cabo."

  Hood shook his head. "No matter, very soon we’ll be able to compel him to come easy enough. It's within the contract he signed."

  The CEO of FriendBook passed through a double door that had opened when he'd approached it. Cautiously, Anza and Uncle Jerry followed him inside.

  "Then why are we here?" she asked.

  "Because, like I said, we can analyze data-points and take everything we know about our users to determine what they've done and what they might do or, more importantly, who might influence those decisions."

  The door behind them slid closed with a whisper.

  "And our analysis, with the help of the proprietary AI running this place, has determined that you are both a danger to our greater plan."

  Anza stopped again and looked back at the door they'd walked through. A light on a panel next to it flipped from green to red.

  "A danger?" Uncle Jerry asked, his voice wavering. "How might that be?"

  "Well," Hood said. "We know that the Actor will do what we need him to. In fact, once he's plugged in, he'll want to. Once we realized what a fine candidate he was, we began grooming him over the past few years."

  Hood continued walking down a long hallway with no doors. "We helped sever the few ties he had, fed him stories about the success of his contemporaries," he said, a smile in his voice. "We even poisoned his own sister against him."

  Anza nearly tripped. "I… I didn't know he had a sister."

  "We would have taken him last year." Hood sighed. "We'd stoked his bitterness toward everyone he knew and didn't know, fed his feelings of inadequacy, and molded him to eschew any personal relationships."

  At the next corridor, Hood turned. His mouth was a thin line. "That was until you three came along! He was perfect!" Hood stepped closer to Anza, looking down his nose at her. "You… damaged that. It makes no sense. How did you get him to help Rasputin on that stupid quest of his?"

  For a moment, Anza bit her lip, thinking. The truth was, the Actor had been compelled to help, a clause in Rasputin’s contract with the Devil. Strangely, it seemed Hood and Hell Inc. didn't know that. She kept that to herself. "Maybe he is not as bad as you think," Anza said, thumping a finger into Hood's chest.

  The man lifted up on his toes for a moment then closed his eyes and took a cleansing breath. "No matter. Old news, the damage repaired," he said. "But I'm not taking any chances."

  "What?" Uncle Jerry asked, his eyes darting around the hallway. "What does that mean?"

  Hood turned to Anza with a horrible grin. "Your profile says you like Star Wars?"

  She nodded.

  "Then, I think you'll get a big kick out of this."

  * * *

  "Oh Jesus," the Actor said, sucking in huge gulps of air, bent over at the waist. "I am so out of shape."

  I looked down.

  "We're barely even halfway there, man," I said, only ten steps ahead of him. It felt like my heart and lungs were fighting a battle to the death in my rib cage. Ignoring the searing in my chest, I pushed higher and higher.

  Then, I heard a voice. Something was calling me. Is it urging me forward, willing me to help save my friend's eternal soul?

  I listened closely, and the small, powerful voice said to me, "What the fuck are you two doing up there?"

  Ah. Recognized it now.

  Night was beginning to fall, but when I squinted, I could see Sally down below. She'd raised her pistols, pointing them at both of us.

  "The contract… is up… there," I called back, spitting the words out between breaths.

  Climbing higher still, with one eye on the gunslinger—and her guns—I saw Sally pull out her mobile phone, her face briefly lighting up.

  "Fourteen minutes!" she yelled back. "Then I shoot him."

  The Actor found his second wind and shot past me. "Move,
move, move!" he shouted, and I pumped my burning thighs behind him.

  I then heard another voice. I recognized it as well, but that one was just for me.

  You can do it, my love.

  "Ugh," I whispered, choking on my breaths. "Everything hurts."

  Remember, you have to do good things so we can be together again. This is good. You can do this, my Razzie.

  I nodded, unable to answer, put my hands on my knees, and pushed them like pistons. Round and round and round, I was moving faster, the only things in my vision were the metal rungs in front of me and the bottoms of the Actor's shoes. Then I nearly collided with him.

  "What are you do—"

  "We're here," he said, breathing heavily.

  The entryway was shuttered, no way to get in. The Actor fished into the pocket of his robe again and pulled out the key with the tiny skull. After a series of configurations, it stopped. The door slid open.

  "Man," he said, looking at it. "This opens everything. It's like some kind of…" Catching his breath, he stared at the tiny skull hanging from its tiny ring. "Super key."

  "How did you get in here?" someone inside the room asked. "No matter. It's almost time."

  The room was circular and looked far larger on the inside than what the exterior suggested.

  When we crossed the threshold, the door slid closed behind us.

  It was funny. I had spent years as a radio disk jockey and hundreds of hours in bars doing remote broadcasts, calling the great unwashed down for cheap beer and happy hour tapas. Most of the clubs were dark, with only the dance floor lit. That room looked a lot like them.

  My eyes adjusting to the light, I could see dark leather seating areas along several of the walls. LED track lighting even traced the interior of the room in long blue cords.

  In the middle was a long, circular couch.

  More leather there, high backs, it looked like I could hold hipster board meetings in the place, or seances.