I stared more at the screen but felt nothing. Writer's block was still in effect. Fuck this.
A conversation with someone was the answer. Dad wasn't really in shape for a chat, so I called my buddy Harvey at his office.
“Harvey Preston.”
“Hey, man.”
“Yo, how are you?”
“Pretty bad. Got a minute?”
“Uh, yeah. Hang on a second.”
He spoke to someone else, then he returned. “OK, what's going on? How's your mom?”
I took a shuddered breath. “She's gone, man.”
“No! I'm so sorry, man. That's awful.”
“Thanks, yeah, she at least went peaceful at home.” Even as I repeated the words about what had happened, it still felt like fiction.
“Well, that's good.”
“Dad and I were with her, and she isn't suffering anymore.”
“Right. Well, if there is anything I can do, please let me know.”
I leaned back and scratched my leg. “Just talking is great.” I was amazed how calmer I felt after just a few minutes on the phone with Harvey.
“I can sure do that. So, made the funeral plans yet?”
“Yeah, it's tomorrow, Thursday at the latest.”
“Oh, wow. I'll try getting over for a few minutes. Let me know when you have the definite time.”
“I will. Hey, how about a drink soon?”
“Sure! Say when and where.”
“Thanks, dude.”
“Hey, what are ex college roommates for?”
We both laughed. Harvey and I met in school, where I wound up with him as my roommate by sheer luck of the draw. He was there for me in good times, bad times, and shitty times too. My folks always liked him. He loved when they had him over and Mom made her lasagna.
I hung up with Harvey and stared at my laptop. The manuscript stared back, as if it mocked me. Unlike the screen of warmth and kindness about mom’s life, these words sneered back at me with a taunt. “Where the hell are you?” I glared at the screen. “Come together, damn it!”
My phone buzzed to life again with a voicemail message. That was weird; usually I heard the call waiting first. I opened the voicemail system. The automated date/time stamp announcement played. A chill ran through me as I heard the message. The voice sounded mechanical, and at times was garbled:
Nelson Forrester, listen carefully. I've been assigned to protect you from people trying to kill you. It's imperative you contact me at once. Don't disregard this message; your family is also in danger.
I played the message again.
Someone wanted me dead? Why?
I scrambled to think of what could have brought that kind of threat on. Alright, I’d been with several women, a few were already attached, but this wasn’t a jealous boyfriend.
So how was it they knew my name and number?
Chapter 10 (Ana)
A steady throb pulsed in my head, like it could have exploded as I lay on the ground.
There was a loud hum somewhere.
Or it was just my headache.
I sat up and looked around. I licked my lips and tasted the salty sweat that had beaded up there. I blinked for a few seconds until I realized it was mostly dark wherever I was. A few lights cast a faint glow in the distance. After a minute or so my eyes adjusted and revealed more shapes to me. A large building to my right. Several small walls to my left.
A dog barked in the distance. I soon saw what made the humming sound. It stood right across from me. A large metal tower and a lot of cables. It soared into the sky so high, I wondered if it was a transit system.
I scratched my head and ran back through the events that had led me here. At least three people I knew were dead. Would I have done the same if the positions were switched and one of them had a clear shot at the Verge?
I was safer than I was back there, sure. But I had less than half the chance Remy had. He was trained for this; I wasn’t.
“You’ve got more of a chance than you know.”
I spun around and saw nobody. Please tell me I'm not going crazy, I thought. Really don't have the time, like ever.
“Relax, you can do this. You know the goal, you have your target. Find him.”
The voice was a woman, but none I recognized. And from the look of it, whoever it was wasn’t with me in person, either.
The monitor on my wrist showed May 2014. I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead and slipped off my jacket. I noticed I was on a stone platform. Off about fifty yards away, sets of lights passed down a path.
Transportation. I needed some.
As I neared the path with the lights a man’s warbled voice from the ground mumbled, “Hey, did ya see that?”
I looked for the source of the voice and saw a clump of blankets on the ground with a head and feet stuck out from either side. What I made out of his face looked ragged, more so than a lot of the Encampment people I'd seen, who moved from place to place, sometimes at a moment's notice. I stooped down, put my hand on his shoulder and gazed upon the face of a dirty and bewildered man. “See what?” I asked, hoping he hadn’t meant the crazy girl who'd talked to herself.
He pointed towards my arrival point. With a scratchy voice that sounded like he had just rinsed his mouth with a bag of rocks, he replied, “Back there, ssss-some kinda light or somethin'. Loud bang too.”
I humored him and looked in that direction. “Dunno. Nothing now.”
He said nothing for a second. His eyes wandered, almost like he had forgotten about me. Then he returned to our conversation. “Well, see t'morrow in daylight.”
“What's your name?” I asked.
He moved about a little and scratched himself. “Louie. I'm Louie.”
“Hi, Louie. I'm Ana. You're gonna be OK.” I smiled and patted his shoulder. He murmured something that sounded along the lines of “Sugah.” He slid back down and drifted off to sleep. He seemed harmless enough. If he was the only one who had seen anything, I was fine.
I left Louie and made my way up to the path. A few other people were scattered around, but Louie was the only one who talked to me. I kept my eyes low. I’d already spoken with more people than Otto had suggested.
I ran back over the meeting at Encampment 12 in my mind, what Otto had told Remy about. No interactions with people unless absolutely necessary. Well, that had gone out the door once Remy took a shot in the gut and died on us.
Hopefully, Otto had the right location and I wasn't too far away from Xander.
As I checked for vehicles, I noticed something black on the ground in front of me.
It reminded me of pictures from the cache. They called these things hats.
The fabric was smooth under my hands. The edges were a little stiff, and it looked like it had been stepped on or a vehicle had rolled over it a few times. But I wasn’t picky.
I mused how useless it was, if someone from Lebabolis had a bead on me. But, Otto suggested anything that blended in. This was a start.
The sides felt cool on my head. It slipped low over my eyes until I tilted it back a little.
I came across a vehicle parked along the street. It was smaller than a Landcrawler. I pointed the P-LAD toward it and activated the electropulse. Its lights came on and after a few seconds of click sounds from the front of the vehicle, whatever motor it had came to life. I smiled at Otto and his magical toys.
It took me a few minutes with the controls before the vehicle moved at all. Soon after, it shuddered. I cursed it a bit, as if that prevented any problems. I needed a way around this place before I convinced someone I had never met that I was from the future and made sure they followed me back my way.
That wasn’t so hard, right? Whomever that woman’s voice I heard thought so. That was good enough for now, I guessed. I clutched the monitor bracelet in my hand. At least MODOSNet had no trace on my whereabouts.
I fought with the controls until the vehicle lurched ahead. At least the paths here were open and clear. After a few
minutes, I pulled the vehicle over and checked Remy’s P-LAD for whatever details it had.
Not only was every Lebabolis citizen registered in MODOSNet, their locations were tracked at all times. Any changes for things like health conditions required your Product status be updated. Each sector proctor reviewed those who hadn’t properly updated their information, and if you violated this enough they had you “convinced” about compliance.
It wasn't sudden, all that control. They worked it in slow. Basic services, food, shelter, medical, were tied to MODOSNet. No registration meant you received no food. A few tried their luck and lived off the land instead, but the areas for that were kind of sparse, and you may have been devoured by the wild animals around, so there was that.
I had to watch myself. I wasn’t the only dog in this hunt.
Chapter 11 (Nelson)
I returned to the office the following Monday. I worked for a consulting firm called QuickSolve. We handled software for law enforcement agencies. As far as jobs went, we did fine a few years back. Work was the fuel for my writing time, anyway. I reminded myself of that when things got bad, which was often as of late.
My recent time off was a bit of a challenge with these people. At least the owner allowed me time with Mom as needed. My immediate boss Travis, however, used it to his advantage after awhile.
I checked voicemail while my computer started up. Fifteen messages from last week. Typical. I needed coffee before I started in on them.
My cubicle sat in the middle of a sea of them, like some corporate based coral colony. People were in and around, tapping away on keyboards, some on their headsets on support calls. I’d forgotten the dull roar of this place when the busy morning hit. Once I’d settled back in for a bit, that old familiar caffeine pang reared its ugly head, and I knew what my next move was.
Of course, the coffee pot had a half inch of sludge that might’ve passed for coffee on the bottom if chewable semi-burnt coffee was a thing. On my way to the kitchen, I heard the voice I had hoped I could’ve avoided for the moment.
“Well, look who's back.”
I turned and saw Travis, a file folder clutched in his hand as if it were a poisonous snake. Travis looked like those guys who were always like two seconds away from stories about his yacht club or a lame trip where he looked at waterfalls. The neatly trimmed hair, the Ed Hardy shirts; he must’ve taught guys lessons on douche bag behavior in his off hours.
“Hey, Travis.”
He folded his arms and trapped the folder beneath them. His aqua marine polo and frosted hair were pretentious enough on their own without his help.
“How's it going; you getting situated?” He threw in a pretend sympathetic smile.
“Trying to, yes.”
“Well, don't let me keep you from coffee duties. Come see me in a bit.” He glanced at the pot and snorted before he walked off.
Travis was already my boss for a few months too long. We never gelled. And I had a great supervisor right before him too. Of course, they left for a better job, and I had been stuck with Travis ever since. Travis made a big splash with some interagency web application that coordinated drug enforcement agencies and made sure their undercover work never overlapped. Alright yeah, it was brilliant. But a lot of people actually did the work that he took credit for. Travis was good like that.
After I had cured my coffee deficiency and waded through support calls and email updates from network admins about server issues, I strode over to Travis' office. I knocked on his door, and he yelled from inside, “Yeah?”
I entered, and he waved me over to a seat, which happened to be a few inches lower than his desk and chair. Being in his office always felt like court. In honesty though, I’d have much preferred it be court. At least there I had a halfway decent shot at explaining myself to an impartial judge.
Travis folded his hands, his forearms draped across the desk almost as if he were praying. Ah yes, the silent game- one of his favorites. He waited for people to say anything that gave him a target for pouncing.
My eyes squinted a bit. I had forgotten how bright he kept it. He claimed it was because of an eye issue. Sure.
His smirk faded a little. “So, first off, sorry about your mom.”
“Thanks.”
“How're you handling it?”
“Oh, as good as I can, I guess. Good days and bad days, you know?”
He eyed me for a second. “Mmmhm,” he offered. He made a few keystrokes and spun the monitor on his desk toward me and I saw an oh so familiar site: the Service Call Tracker.
“So, on to business. Your support call stats are bad, and have been for awhile now, way before you took off.” He grabbed the keyboard at his desk and typed away for a few minutes. Several graphs appeared on the screen from the support tracker software the company used for efficiency measurements.
He pointed at the screen and said, “As you know, we shoot for minor issues to be resolved in one to three days max. Major issues we allow up to two weeks for resolution. I checked your times over the past two months, and you’re taking too long.” He turned back to me. “So what's going on?”
My stomach tightened, and my breaths came a little quicker. “Um, I don’t know, lotta users don't respond when I check on their status.”
“Yeah, a few like that.” He glanced back at the screen, ran his hands through his hair and faced me again. “Look, I know these cops get pulled away a lot. But this is happening all over the place, man.”
“Alright. I'll work on it.”
He studied me for a few seconds and offered what I thought was a half smile. “You realize if these agencies aren't happy with us, they stop paying our fees. And you know what that means, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. I gotcha.”
“Fix it, Nelson. All I'm saying.” He waved his hand to the door, then turned back to the screen and became engrossed with it. His typing built into a moderate rattle of fingers on keys and served as my cue that my presence was no longer even on his radar. What a jackass. And he had thrown that thing in about Mom first so he appeared sympathetic.
I always felt like I needed a shower to wash the smarminess off after dealing with Travis. The calls he rode me so hard about were for our jail management software. It was in use all day and night and yeah, any down time for those customers whatsoever was bad. The others in my group and I rotated on support at night and on the weekends.
I never had much leeway from Travis, not even with a dying mother. I wondered how my unavailability over the past two weeks had further affected my standings. And I hated the fact it was even a source of worry for me.
Beyond the new voicemails that came during my thrill ride of fun with Travis, another was from a telemarketer. Heh - easy delete.
I sipped my coffee and played the next message:
Nelson Forrester, you don't know me, but I know you. Be careful. I need to see you as soon as possible. Don't disregard this, there is too much at stake. Sorry I can't say any more right now, but I'll be in touch.
I sat back for a moment. After another sip of coffee, I listened to it a few more times.
Careful?
I was a support analyst at a modest IT company. The list of my worries pretty much consisted of carpal tunnel and eye strain.
I deleted the message and shook my head. Another message - this was either a horrendous wrong number case, or my imagination had gotten the best of me at last.
Now, the world I wrote about was full of danger. As bad as my prick supervisor was, at least my existence here was pretty mundane.
Chapter 12 (Ana)
I floated in a murky dark fog. Dim shapes floated by, and a young child whimpered somewhere close. Then, the fog cleared and I drifted around a room. Two dark figures huddled over a bed as I watched from a corner. The rest of the room looked plain, bare other than a table near the bed with several pumps on it and tubes connected to the child on the bed. It reminded me of a medical station from an Encampment hospital.
The chil
d's sobs echoed in my head. One of the dark figures spoke with a gruff male voice. The child cried out, and a chill grabbed me as I recognized the voice.
Varrick.
My heart raced, and my breath quickened.
The child cried out, “Sister!”
He reached up, but the dark figures steadied him. Their faces were still too dark to see. Varrick’s eyes were full of fright, and he focused on one of the dark figures.
Sweat rolled down Varrick's forehead, and mingled with his tears. He breathed faster, and looked at the figures. His eyes pleaded for relief.
Please no.
I moved closer to the bed, almost as if pushed by something or someone. They made sure I saw everything. I reached toward Varrick. I wanted him soothed, anything where I was a help. But it was useless.
Varrick's pleas were audible as I neared the bed. I looked around, but the walls of the room faded into blackness.
I heard more discussions between the two dark figures. The larger of the two held the child against the bed while the other figure grabbed a needle and injected it into Varrick's arm.
They waited. Varrick's breaths hadn’t changed. He glanced about for a few moments.
Then he screamed.
His scream echoed over and over in the room and ripped through me. It felt like my soul was burned from inside my body. The agony shot through him, and his body shook on the bed as he was still braced by one of the figures.
His eyes shut.
Whatever I was in this place crumbled inside. Tears clouded my vision. I swung at the dark figures, but nothing happened.
Varrick shook once more then was still. A thin trail of blood oozed from his nose. The figures stood, still faced away from me.
The larger figure spoke clearly, a man's voice. “Well done. I know that wasn't easy.”
The other responded with a raspy, “He had the Pox, it was a death sentence anyway.”
The large figure turned and grabbed the other's shoulder. “We need to take care of the rest like this. I wanted you to understand – we can’t save them, but we can decide how to help them.”
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