by Todd Young
He nodded. It would most likely take him five or ten minutes to finish what he was doing.
“Can you bag the clothes separately? The two sets?”
David lifted an eyebrow. He’d already asked why Riley wanted two of everything, but he had managed to avoid explaining.
Now, somehow, it just slipped out. “They’re for my brother. We’re twins.”
A frown flitted across David’s face. He stared blankly for a moment, and then went back to what he was doing.
The underwear section was in the corner, behind a row of high shelving. Riley turned into it, and stopped, surprised. Every color and style of underwear he could possibly want was on display, including jockstraps and thongs. He shook his head slightly, and wondered, as he often did, at the mentality of the people in power. How did this make sense?
He’d always had a bit of an underwear fetish, and had often spent an hour or more in places like this, looking more than buying. It excited him for some reason, and without really thinking about what he was doing, he set about choosing everything that caught his eye — red, green, orange, yellow, blue, purple, pink — bikini briefs and boxer briefs and jockstraps and thongs, striped and checked and patterned with swirls and flowers and cartoon characters and fruit, with triangles and squares and circles and diamonds.
It occurred to him that underwear like this might not be available soon, that some executive somewhere might have overlooked what was on offer. He lost sight of what he was doing, and as he approached David again, felt his cheeks flush. He was sure he had more than fifty pairs, and then, as he handed them over, he remembered that he was supposed to be buying them for Theo.
Oh, hell, he thought. He glanced back toward the section.
“These for your brother too?”
“Er, yeah.” He paused, and was sure he looked grief stricken.
A curious, excited expression lit the sales assistant’s features. His pale blond eyebrows kinked, and his pink mouth quirked.
“He’s sick. He broke his back, and he can’t walk. Whenever I shop, I buy double.”
“Oh,” David said, his expression failing. “So you want double of all these?”
Riley swallowed awkwardly, and then nodded. Of course he didn’t. This was going to cost him a fortune.
David scooped the underwear up, and then walked off toward the underwear section, most likely wondering why Riley hadn’t grabbed two of everything when he was there.
12
He’d have to explain to Theo, explain that he hadn’t bought practical underwear, but then again, Theo wouldn’t know the difference. Perhaps he ought to just leave it, maybe not mention it at all?
He pushed into the news building and rode the elevator to the eleventh floor. He was a little late, but only by a few minutes. He’d bought too much to carry, so had arranged for the store to deliver. He’d said six or after, as he needed to be home. If someone rang the bell, would Theo even know how to answer?
“Riley!” Marion said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Sorry, Marion. I got held up.”
“I’ve got a job for you. You love those archives, don’t you?”
He shrugged, as though he didn’t care, but in truth he loved working in the basement, and had been looking for an excuse to go down there for days.
Most newspaper records were available online, but anything pre-2047 had to be checked. When the country moved to the sww dot system a lot had been lost, though Riley hadn’t known this before he started working here.
“What is it you want?”
“We’re doing a piece on Taylor, and I’ve been trying to come up with an angle.” Taylor was the Democratic candidate in the upcoming election. “I thought if you could go back, maybe right back, and see if you can find any forbears with a career in politics.”
Riley nodded. “Sure.”
“You know the sort of thing. An interest piece.”
He nodded again.
When his father told Riley he’d secured him an interview with The Company News he’d been worried he’d get stuck in the gardening or lifestyle sections. But he’d ended up in current affairs, which is exactly what he wanted.
It wasn’t entirely fair of Akam to say that he was doing nothing with his life. He’d studied journalism precisely because he wanted to make a difference. His idea had been to secure a position as a staff writer in text. There were no free media outlets to work for anymore, but he’d believed he could work for The Company News and nevertheless write subversively. He’d pictured writing articles that very cleverly told the truth, not by saying it outright, but by using language in such a creative way that a careful reader would understand precisely what he meant. In this way, he figured he could effect change, at least on some level. It had been fifteen months or so now since he started, but this was where he was heading, or he believed so, even if he was only a junior researcher at the moment.
He collected the key from Marion, and then walked toward his desk to gather his things. The floor was divided into cubicles, but the partitions were so low you could see over them even when you were sitting down. Often he looked up, able to see nothing but a sea of heads, as though all of them were treading water on a windless day. His desk was mauve, the chair lemon, the partitions white glass. He had a screen and a connection, but often liked to work on paper when he was nutting things out. He took his folio, his tablet and a pencil, and rode down to the basement in the elevator.
He’d been going down here more and more lately. At first he’d only had permission to search through the paper, magnetic, optical and solid-state media records. But three weeks ago Marion had given him clearance to access a www dot terminal. At the far end of the basement there was a small, brightly lit, secure glass room. It was dwarfed by the towering shelving systems that stretched aisle after aisle throughout the basement. Inside the glass room was a single long desk with three chairs, and on the desk three computers positioned side-by-side.
When the elevator doors opened, he lifted his head and peered anxiously ahead. The glass room sat at the end of a long aisle, but was positioned off-center. It didn’t look as though there was anyone in there, but as he neared it, his sneakers squeaking on the polished concrete floor, he saw Fiona, a young intern who’d been here a few months now. She was sitting at the terminal on the left, which is where he preferred to work, as you couldn’t be seen from behind.
He fed the key into the slot and the door opened.
“Hi, Fiona.”
She flinched, and twisted her head anxiously. “Riley!” Her eyes were wide and bright. “You scared me.”
He wondered what she’d been doing, and glanced at her screen. Before starting here, he hadn’t even known what www dot meant. He’d heard it used in conversation a couple of times, but only vaguely, and hadn’t connected it to the “sww.” he saw every time he loaded a page. Marion had had to explain it to him.
In 2047 the company had moved to a statewide network, a network contained within the United States, the statewide web. Previously, the Internet had been worldwide, a worldwide web, which is what the www dot stood for. This had never occurred to him. He knew little about other countries, but had assumed every country had an Internet. Only he’d imagined they were bound by a country’s borders the way America’s was. He learned this wasn’t the case. The Internet was a worldwide phenomenon, and had been for a long time.
But it was full of pornography and flippant interactions between citizens, Marion said. And there were games. The statewide web, by contrast, was informational. It was a reference tool, on which you could find the latest edition of The Company News among other things.
On Fiona’s screen was a picture of a naked woman. She had red hair, and was reclining on a bed with her legs spread wide. Every detail of her genitalia was exposed. But Riley had to blink a few times before he understood what he was looking at. On the right of the screen was a man’s shoulder and arm, his back to the camera.
“It just came up,�
� Fiona said. “I hit a link, and then this popped up.”
He nodded.
“You won’t tell will you?”
“You’ll have to log it.”
“Really?”
He nodded again. “They can tell, anyway. They can track every page you open.”
“Oh, hell,” she muttered. She turned away, and began poking at the keyboard.
He stared at the picture for a moment, and then cut his eyes sideways. He’d seen a couple of pornographic images himself, but only in thumbnails, on the borders of a page. Once, a picture of one man having sex with another, in profile, the man underneath on his knees.
“It won’t go away,” Fiona said. “I can’t close it.”
He glanced at her, and wondered what she was doing down here. She hadn’t been in the office long, and she was an intern. It didn’t make sense for her to have access. But then again, Marion wasn’t her boss. Jemes was supervising her.
“Do you know what to do?”
“Force quit the browser.”
“How do I do that?”
He leaned forward and did it for her. Then took a seat.
She turned to him, her eyes anxious. “Has it happened to you?”
He shook his head.
“Should I turn it back on?”
“Open the browser, but don’t let it reload.”
“It really just came up.”
He’d believed her before, but now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe she’d been looking for pictures of men, and had landed on that. She certainly wasn’t a lesbian. He knew that much. He’d been tempted to search for pornography himself, but was afraid to. The furthest he’d gone was to look for articles on America, and its political system, but he’d always been careful to keep it related to what he was researching.
Even so, he’d learned a great deal, and was beginning to understand how the company had come to power. In the early 2030s, a man called Turow had run for the presidency as the Republican candidate. He was the CEO of a company called Anthwars Stock Holdings. He wasn’t the first candidate with substantial business interests. There’d been Wilkie in 1940, Perot in 1992, and Trump in 2016. Turow had no intention of standing down if he won the presidency, and once he was in the White House, he continued to preside over Anthwars. He governed for four years, and pushed through a number of changes to company law that were widely criticized at the time.
The next president, a Democrat, was Hendley, the CEO of The Berstheim Corporation. Shortly after he won his second term, Berstheim merged with Anthwars to become Anthwars-Berstheim. A few weeks later, it was revealed that several congressmen held paid positions within the company. Hendley made major changes to monopoly and anti-competitive laws, and by the end of his presidency, the mood in America was decidedly “anti-company.”
Anthwars-Berstheim then went on to back Celia Grainger, who ran for the presidency in 2044. But their financial backing wasn’t publicly revealed. Grainger had few financial holdings and no apparent connection to the company. She won the presidency with the greatest electoral landslide in American history. Three months after taking office, she was appointed CEO of Anthwars-Berstheim.
It soon became apparent that Anthwars Stock Holdings and The Berstheim Corporation had plotted together as far back as 2028. During Grainger’s first term in the White House, it became illegal to run for public office unless you were an employee of Anthwars-Berstheim. The worldwide web was replaced by the statewide web in 2047. Foreign nationals were expelled, and the borders closed to tourism and immigration. American citizens were told they could no longer travel abroad. By the time Grainger was reelected in 2048, America had become a capitalist totalitarian state, and by the end of her presidency “the government” and “the company” had become synonymous.
Most of the articles Riley read came from papers in the UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. He learned pretty quickly that once you got past 2040, American media reports were untrustworthy at best. By the middle of that decade they were more or less propaganda, and by 2049 no independent media outlets existed.
“You’re not going to tell on me, are you?” Fiona said.
“What is there to tell?”
She shrugged, but she was looking at him with wide, imploring eyes. “I really didn’t mean to—”
“Fiona, I’m not interested. I’m trying to do my work, but no, I won’t mention it.”
She relaxed a little, turned to her screen, but looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “What are you working on?”
“An interest piece. On Taylor.”
“I heard he’s going to win.”
“Yeah. Right,” he said sarcastically.
The presidency seemed to move in eight-year cycles. No president since Hendley had failed to win a second term. Flint had only been in the White House for four years, so everyone knew that Flint would win. He was also the CEO, though the two things didn’t necessarily go together.
Theoretically, Riley guessed it was possible for Taylor to win. People still voted, maybe one in four or five, but it was generally accepted, if never mentioned, that the electronic voting system was manipulated. It must have been. If it wasn’t, then the public was incredibly stupid.
Anyone with any shred of intelligence figured that presidential succession was organized by the company. It was the only thing that made sense. No one expected Flint to lose on November 7. On the contrary, everyone knew he would win. So when Riley had said to Marion that he preferred Taylor to Flint the other day, he was making a satirical comment, a comment he suspected hadn’t gone down too well, as his boss could be a little crusty. He shouldn’t have said anything at all.
“No. I mean it,” Fiona said. “He really is going to win.”
“Why do you say that?”
She shrugged. “Just something I heard.”
He frowned at her.
A few minutes later, she left. He concentrated on Taylor, whose great-great-grandfather, it turned out, had been a Republican senator.
[] [] []
Theo heard a sharp series of knocks, something striking wood. It sounded like the front door. He was lying on Riley’s bed, and had his hand thrust into his boxer briefs. He was trying to jiggle some life back into his cock. He’d jacked off twice today, and figured he could go a third time. There wasn’t much else to do.
He’d watched one of the videos Riley had said to, and had dreamed about it afterwards. He’d fallen asleep again, his head full of planets and stars and galaxies. It wasn’t like this at the barracks. He’d had to get up at 0600 every day and train. Hand to hand combat, or foot drill, or rifle practice, or something. He hadn’t had any free time. He’d barely had time to think.
He got up and stepped out of the bedroom warily. He turned to the front door. The knocking started a second time. It was someone on the other side, striking it with something. Akam had said that if anyone knocked on his door, he shouldn’t let them in. He said it might be his probation officer, or the CPF, or someone pretending to be someone they weren’t when they were really a skulker, an FBI agent.
Whoever it was, they knocked a third time, louder now. It sounded like they wanted to come in.
Theo frowned, and then narrowed his eyes at a small glass circle in the center of the door. It looked like a tiny window. He stepped forward, put his palms on the door, and lined his eye up with the hole.
It was Erran, his head warped.
“Theo,” he said, his voice an urgent whisper. “Let me in.”
“Why?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Theo kept watching. He wasn’t sure what to do.
Erran glanced at the hole, then put his eye against it. His eye was so pale it was almost yellow. It focused on Theo’s eye, very close. Then Erran jerked his head back and frowned at the hole. He looked frustrated.
“Open the door,” he said, without making any sound, the movement of his lips exaggerated.
Theo pulled away and unlocked the door. There were three locks
.
Erran put his hand on the door and pushed it inward. He stepped in and closed it, then looked Theo up and down.
“Were you sleeping?”
He nodded. He didn’t like Erran very much. He was kind of hot. He had a fat package, and a firm ass, but still, he didn’t like him. On Saturday, when they were at the hub, he’d yelled at him, told him to get moving when it was time to go with Akam. Theo didn’t want to get into the van again. He’d been in the back of that thing forever. But Erran said, “Just get in there.” He gripped his elbow and pulled him to the doors.
He’d stripped Theo too, taken him into a room and told him to take his uniform off. He took all of it, and then gave him an old T-shirt and a thin pair of pants. No underwear.
He said, “You’re a fucking princess, aren’t you?”
Theo had firmed up a bit, so he guessed he was talking about that. He’d been checking Erran out, and he’d seen.
Now he was looking at him like he was an idiot. “Where’s Riley?”
“At work.”
Erran nodded, and then stepped past him and walked into the big room. Theo followed him, and watched as he glanced at the ceiling, then the doors, then the windows.
“I’ve got an ID for you,” he said.
“I’ve got one.”
“Yeah, but this has got Riley’s address on it. Where’s the other one?”
He began to point toward Riley’s room, but then went to get it. He’d put it in the pocket inside the jacket, which was on the floor. When he turned around, Erran was standing in the doorway, watching him.
“Just throw your clothes all over the place, do you?”
“What?”
“Don’t worry. Give me that.”
Theo handed the bright plastic card to him. It had his photo, his thumbprint, and his address in Seattle on it. “Don’t I live in Seattle anymore?”
“No, you live here, dumbass.” He handed him another card, and Theo peered at it. Fifteenth Street. He’d seen that on the sign outside. He put it down the front of his boxer briefs.
“What the hell are you putting it in there for?”
“Akam said to keep it on me.”
