A Tale Of Doings

by Philip Quense

  “I feel quite invigorated today. Going to make a push this year to put something extra away to purchase myself.” Nailed it, he thought happily; he always felt insufficient to the daunting task of communicating with the opposite sex. Why didn’t they teach useful and instructive communication tips in Upbringing education? Then David remembered Jill from his stock year Upbringing classes and turned cherry red from ear to ear. The receptionist’s voice snapped him out of his daydream.

  “As you should, as you should. You’ll make a fine product for many stock cycles.”

  “You’re so good with words,” he complimented her, embarrassed.

  Her soothing, sensual laugh was electric and fanned the embers of lust in his being; the sensation of raw carnal desire was fortified by a boost of pleasure from his blue brand. The brand always motivated the virtue of controlled lust. Lust fed the economy; statistics proved this. People were more likely to spend extra freedoms when on a lust rush. Again, Mary’s voice brought him back to the present moment. “Never a need to rush freedom, as the Mindmonks preach.” She leaned forward, whispering confidentially, “Don’t tell anyone, but I started work twenty minutes early today. I want to try and log a couple extra freedoms this year too.”

  David felt an instant connection. “I’m a Saver as well. I don’t understand those wasteful Spenders. You know how they are.” They both chuckled. The human connection felt good. His brand disagreed. His left arm felt a painful tingle and a moment of numbness. David winced. Enough wasting time!

  “Your wardrobe is due for a maintenance tomorrow,” she told him.

  “Already?”

  “Did you want to spend the extra 20F for the holiday package?”

  David thought about it. He did love the crisp professional look of a new holiday jacket. “Sure. Add it to my account.”

  Mary smiled a commercially honed smile, her perfect teeth gleaming as white as a snowy morning after a first snowfall, and her pristine red lips beckoned like a warm cherry pie. She wore a tight, revealing business dress that started on her right shoulder and wrapped around her body. David recalled that the color she wore was named “burgundy satina” on the amazing delivery clothing site. The dress stopped above her knees and was complemented by her matte red high heels. The left shoulder was bare, as always. Her arm read property of ssential. Her brand font was beautiful and blocky. Mary had s.s. in dark murky plum on her shoulder and e.n.t.i.a.l. stamped on her arm in violet letters. s.s.e.n.t.i.a.l.

  “Mary, you are indeed splendid with those new shoes. Are they Tertain brand, if you don’t mind me asking?” He laughed nervously, almost swallowing his tongue as he tried to act normal, ignoring to the best of his capacity the quickened heart rate he always experienced around such women as the storage unit HR receptionists. What an idiot I am, he thought. Ssential made all but the medical clothing in Xchange. Learning to make appropriate and witty small talk was one of his personal management goals this year. HR specialists were trained to be social and knew just what to say, whereas David was used to communicating with geek invention squads, a useful skill in his line of work at the office but entirely useless when he desired to get to know other humans. Flirting was a gift some of David’s heroes in Storyworld possessed. “Swag,” commercials called it: the natural faculty to convince the opposite gender to show interest in you. One day I’ll swag too. It was hard to use people if you could not communicate well. Thank the human stock for Nnect, which meant “to connect.” How essential the mission of communication was to human happiness!

  She beamed less cordially. “Why, thanks for remarking on them. I reason they truly make an individual more desirable, don’t you? The shoes are a joint branding effort from Tertain and Strive. Style and health in one shoe.” Her tone changed, warning David that the conversation needed to end. She released a long, slow “shhhh” from her lips, looking up at the elevator. “Who only knows what shoes will come out next!” Exasperated but cordial. Time to go.

  Taking the hint, as the other storage unit member tramped in behind him, David waved and moved obediently outside into the street.

  Chapter 2

  Streetings

  Hover trains known as Gravetless trains floated like mystical mechanical serpents above his head. They were the most convenient and timely means of transportation for the public. Productzens never owned personal transportation devices other than their own legs; they really did not own their own legs either. Even so, on gym days David often preferred to jog instead of riding the Gravetless. A good hard run got the heart rate up and the blood pumping, preparing him for a stimulating workout. Oddly enough, David refused to admit his other motivations to his insurance-assigned Mindmonk, Doc Gus. Truthfully, his habit of running to the gym was one of his saving habits gone a bit excessive. He calculated that running saved him 10,000F (freedoms) per year. This deep, perhaps obsessive motivation was fed by an increasing desperation to buy himself.

  Obsessively saving freedoms was not a habit that a healthy, wise Productzen shared with his Nnect managers or personal Mind Doc because it might reflect poorly on his personal objectability review; he would get low tallies on “contentedness.” The last thing he wanted to become was undesirable to his owners at work.

  Many other human-doings were out and about, enjoying the sun and the shopping. A lot of the veteran Productzens and Self-Purchaseds were doing their first-quarter shopping early so they could avoid the inevitable crowds that would be out during Quarter One holiday week. A digital poster of two females and two males with the words governing board flashing showed the four most powerful men and women in Xchange as far as David knew. “Are you prepared to welcome and integrate the newbies?” the faces on the advertisement board said.

  “New human stock will be released to the market this week. Wow, time flies!” David said to a man with a green cap standing next to the sign and eating a cake.

  “Damn youths. They’ll be running around like crazy next week before they start at their companies,” the man said.

  David answered, “At least the clutter in the office will be removed. Out with the old and in with the new, I always say.”

  “My manager says the same thing, but I think thirty-five is a harsh retirement age.”

  “Let’s agree to disagree.” David nodded as he looked at the enormous billboard with the faces of the governing board leaders. “Good doing.” David took off at a sprint to the gym.

  In his peripheral vision, David saw a commotion in an alleyway as he ran adjacent to it. He paused, jogging in place, and heard a woman screaming. Two rugged, unkempt Productzen men with purple brands were pinning a red-branded woman against a steel wall. David shuddered. The air in the closed alleyway felt stiff and full of fear. The voices silencing the woman were charged with evil intent. The woman looked at David and screamed for help, crying tears of fear that dripped and stained her pretty face. Her petite frame could not hold back the men as they tore at her clothes. David turned his head and thought, Poor deprived human-doings. They have ceased earning what they use and are instead taking without permission from the woman’s owner. Destroying company property. The two degenerates cannot even pay for pleasure at Orns. They are going to lose their Major brands if they damage that woman. David shrugged. I hope the QC gets here soon to stop them; she looks like she needs on-site product support. David wanted to be nowhere near the accident. He knew better than to interfere in police work or involve himself in hero antics.

  “A real hero is a dead hero.” He recalled that from a work seminar.

  With those thoughts, David continued his run, ignoring the pitiful plea for help. His brand activated and sent a wave of pleasure through his arm, validating his selfish decision-making. He would not risk himself, the property of Nnect, for another company; he left the matter to the appropriate department, Quality Control. The world worked well when you knew your role in it.

  Then a disorderly thought emerged. You should have helped her! He looked back to see the scene continuing.
He turned away again. The brand suppressed the disorderly thought. I could have notified QC, but that would have wasted improvement time at the gym. “Time is freedom, and freedom is expensive.”

  A scream from the alleyway.

  He sang to drown the plea out: “There is always someone else to do a good deed.” His version of the popular commercial was out of tune, his voice a warbling baritone.

  Sirens filled the alley and bounced between the buildings. David turned, and two QC officers dove out of a moving QC Zip Air car that appeared above the scene—flying black bodies on invisible zip lines. The daredevil QC enforcement officers landed with a crash next to the potential rape victim. The calm, silent, deadly officers attacked the purple-armed rapists with a blur of kicks and punches. They put the two criminal men in air binders and the woman on her way to see a Mindmonk before David disappeared around the buildings several blocks away. David shuddered again, grateful that he was not in such a dastardly level of poverty that would motivate such policy violations. Destroying another company’s property was a sign of internal depravity. The men would be sold by their owner, Ssential, to Orns’s dehumanized unprotected labor forces as punishment for such an infringement of the law. They would have no chance of corporate redemption or purchase by one of the reputable Majors. The freedom profits of the criminals’ sale to Orns would cover the woman’s medical repairs. If they were blessed by legal mercy, the violators might instead be sent to the rehabilitation prison on the Thrive campus for a second chance.

  “Early forced retirement,” he said to no one. “Stock be taken.”

  Running steadily along the paved Ssential-branded cobblestones, he breathed in the cool morning air. The crispness was a credit to the Ssential engineering team’s recent improvement work in this vicinity. Just two years ago, David had relocated to his housing unit in Flock Block Cube, a town in one of the outer districts of Xchange. His cube was composed mainly of human storage units and was adjacent to several popular MCMs, Mega Consumption Malls, which were branded on the sacred fortresses of commercialism. Nnect Refuel cafés and Tertain Thrill shops and entertainment theaters lined the street he was running along.

  Flock Block Cube had been renovated from an abandoned Orns housing cube that had previously housed the refuse of society, the garbage unit employees and support units for a sports factory that had failed due to rights infringements with Tertain. Orns had sold this destitute portion of the city back to the Majors, and the governing board had chosen to recreate this area into a progressive Productzen section for up-and-coming human-doings.

  David passed from residential Flock Block Cube into a bustling combined shopping and energetic personal development street. Bright, tasteful advertisement flags billowed haphazardly in the breeze; brand names and products were artfully impressed into many of the modern steel building walls. Productzens walked to and fro along the clean, paved utopian streets. David got a self-image rush as a crowd of unknown faces stared with respect at him running. Other people rode the silver Gravetless that floated almost silently along and above the left side of the street airway. Gravetless public transport was always on the left side of the designated street airspace. Airspace rights and permissions were governed by the QC. The hiss and hum of the gasping air brakes and sliding doors reminded David of old bunk bed noises from his days growing up with all the other kids in the Thrive Upbringing Division before the CEOs had donated modern Thrive beds. The Gravetless was a huge improvement to public hygiene, replacing the slimy old subway trains and eliminating the underground pollution, hellish health hazards, and homeless cubbies for unemployed outcasts of society. The airspace to the right of the street was always unobstructed by Productzen public transportation. Right airspace was for the Self-Purchased people, free humans. Free people enjoyed the right-of-way. Self-Purchaseds were the unbranded, self-owned class of humans; Self-Purchased people also owned some of the hottest new hover vehicles on the market, lived in Freedom Purview, and held the key management positions in companies. Occasionally a sport hover would rocket loudly and violently through the airspace. QC police used whatever airspace they wanted in their crusade to protect the quality of humanity. No laws for the law.

  David saw a workmate waving at him from the floating train as it zipped overhead, and he waved back. Dan-10 must be working on a Nnect special assignment this quarter if he was headed to work now. A lab assignment, David thought as he further noted Dan-10’s lab suit. I wonder if I will be paired with Dan-10 this quarter. Dan was one of those fellows who was easy to get along with because he was a team player. Team players were inherently easy to take advantage of and were rare to come by. Dan had the unusual virtue of wanting everyone to be free. David knew better than to be overly optimistic in a logical world. Only some rise to the top, after all. Economic equilibrium demands an accomplishment hierarchy. But Dan and David occasionally discussed work goals over an energy café breakfast. The two were invested in a chat friendship and still spoke occasionally after work about hobbies. David had even invited him clubbing; he was allowed a single Storyworld guest each year, included as part of the premium Medieval Storyworld subscription. Friends and relationships were still on David’s mind, it seemed. He could not shake the parasitic desire to be in relationship.

  Forcing the worries of daily life out of his mind, David decided to push himself hard the rest of the way to the gym. He always looked impressive in the lobby mirrors as he walked into the gym with a preworkout muscular swole. Tsss, push and breathe, spring and breathe: David watched his feet hit the surface rhythmically. Running aggressively along the immaculate gray shingled street, he rounded the corner and could see the self-improvement center, a mega exercising gym. thrive was printed in gold letters, with the Thrive sun buried in a heart emblem. It stood out on the front of the massive round dome-shaped building.

  Suddenly a bloodcurdling bark, bark, and growl filled the roadway, a low, guttural, savage sound resonating off the surrounding buildings that chilled him to the bone. Before he could turn to identify the source of the sound, a large body hit him hard on the back, sending him sprawling onto the smooth tile roadway just in front of the gym’s mirror windows. From David’s peripheral vision, a massive canine with a drooling black jaw leaped across him and into his only escape path, stopping all of David’s physical movement instantly. In paralyzed apprehension, David let out a shocked gasp. What in business is that? he thought in terrified panic. David’s mind screamed at him to run. Fight or flight. Flight. But if I run, that thing will eat me. His mind frantically searched for a sensible solution—nothing. He came up with nothing to save himself. David remained frozen and stared into the canine’s demon eyes. And it stared back, daring the human to make a move. The drooling dog’s excited face begged its victim to run just so it could give chase and kill him. Its large black jaw moved rapidly with hungry breathing, and the oversize razor-sharp fangs were slick with saliva. Beady black eyes were buried deep in the socket of a hairy tan face that was bigger than David’s head.

  “Do not move or run!” shouted a clear, confident voice from behind David, possibly at a distance of thirty yards, but David didn’t dare look.

  “Don’t run? Screw that—I want to live,” David whispered. Fight or flight. He knew that flight usually meant life.

  David’s well-manufactured exterior, his usual corporate composure, melted away, and he gave up any chance of negotiating with this deadly beast. Fight or flight. “By the human stock, I want to live.” And he ran. Ran. Ran. Was chased. Was chased, screaming like gutless prey who was being set upon by hell’s wolves. “By the holy human stock!” he screamed as he ran. And he tried to run faster. Faster. David ran as fast as he could, but it was not quick enough. He could feel the acid burning through his leg muscles and the adrenaline pumping from his heart to every part of his well-trained body. But over the din of his body’s exertion, he could hear the looming presence of the monstrous hunter as it sucked in air, barked, and easily kept stride behind its prey. An
d then silence. The animal launched itself like a rocket. The canine hunter landed hard on its prey’s bare left shoulder, and wet crud from the slobbering jaw covered David’s branded skin with its embrace. The stony sharpness of penetrating teeth met the warm blood pumping in his veins. Blue became red. He was surely going to die. Pain roared through his body and burst into his cognition as the bitten brand spasmed in sensation. David almost passed out from the pain.

  Thud and growl. Razor-sharp claws clamped heavily down and froze as the voice yelled again, something David could not hear.

  David screamed internally, Do not struggle, or Xchange news storytellers will post another deficit in human stock stats today. Paralyzing fear replaced the little scrap of his remaining human dignity, and he lay there as helpless as the day he was produced as an infant. The brand gave no input; it was numb. He tensed his left arm but only felt the teeth. His usual supernatural insight was not answering. Nothing. Searing pain ran down his spine, and the dog’s teeth sank farther into his left shoulder and back. Surely it would only be moments before the canine started tearing or chewing through the rest of him, but for now it just held him prone, awaiting something or someone. David waited for the deeper pain and a crack. Surely this beast would break him in half.

  And then a yell and whistle. “Fly Ri, release and guard!” Instantly the weight from David’s back and the tension of the invasive teeth released. The breathing of the beast retreated a pace and stayed in position off toward the fallen victim’s left side.

  Confusion and hope raced through his heart. It’s off me! It was all he could think.