The Owners

by Tara Basi

  Boss. He thought that would never get old, the thrill of being the Boss. He’d like to have the time to see if it was really true, that it would never get old. It must have grown old for Tracy, his suicidal predecessor. Tippese waved the girls and boys away and took a seat positioned at the focus of the arc where he could comfortably see all twelve screens. He asked Reference to open communications. The screens flickered into life and a variety of images became visible. Someone’s pimpled bottom. The interior of an opulent bedroom with a dishevelled four-poster bed that was occupied by a number of naked sleeping bodies. A bland empty Block room with a desk and single chair. A very large nose. The disturbing image of a Crawler carrying away a couple of battered bodies. On the middle screen there was the face of a smiling girl picking her teeth.

  “Tracy called this meeting, where’s the old bag?” a girl on a screen asked. She was garishly made up. Badly applied lipstick was smeared across her cheek. She looked bored and impatient to get back to whatever she’d been doing.

  “A moment. Not everyone’s here yet,” Tippese answered. He didn’t know who any of these people were, only that they were all Block Bosses. Reference indicated the one who’d asked for Tracy was the Atacama Boss.

  “You’ve got one minute,” the Atacama Boss said, obviously resenting the encroachment on her time.

  More and more faces came in to view and the air filled with noisy questions and angry shouting. When every Boss was present there was complete chaos. He was the only male. That’s the way it was in the Block. Most males got sent to the Yard when they reached puberty. Anyone who survived to their teens had to be beautiful. If you were a boy you had to be smart as well. By Block standards Tippese was moderately handsome though perhaps a little more attractive since Reference had allowed him to regrow the blond curls he remembered from his childhood. He had the long limbed body of a dancer. His youthful good looks were in stark contrast to his former Boss Tracy, who for most of her life had been the only really ugly person in the Block.

  “Tracy’s dead,” Tippese yelled. “I’m the Block Boss now.”

  The babble only grew louder and took on a more desperate quality.

  “How?”

  “When? Her numbers were always the best.”

  “Tracy’s gone?”

  “She was the oldest, the last of her kind.”

  Reference intervened and the Bosses fell silent. Reference didn’t actually speak to anyone. It did something inside your head so you were aware of new information or a directive. He first heard Reference when he was fifteen. He’d been given a breeding unit to manage. It was a great prize that guaranteed at least another year when he wouldn’t be going to the Yard. Reference whispered fertility rates, blood quality and other snippets which guided his blind efforts in the beginning. The murmuring never stopped though he was only conscious of it when he needed to be. As Boss the murmuring was more expansive. It covered the status of the entire operation of the Block and other information Reference deemed relevant. It was only because of a Reference whisper that he knew about the Owners falling silent, and the consequences.

  Sometimes, very rarely, Reference told him what to do and didn’t take questions. Reference told him Tracy was dead and he was to be the new Boss. He didn’t know if Reference couldn’t hear the questions he asked or it couldn’t be bothered answering. Getting instructions from Reference was always a good thing. If Reference wanted to convey anything bad it sent a Crawler and someone else got a promotion. So everyone listened to Reference, be it murmurs or orders.

  Reference was whispering to them all now, about another promotion that Tippese had recently been given. And from the look of surprise and hostility on the faces of the other Bosses, it seemed they were all hearing about it for the first time.

  “Boss of the Bosses? What is that?” asked one.

  “How can you be our Boss? We’ve never seen you before.”

  “Why you? You’re not even wet behind the ears. Never been rejuvenated, never met your numbers.”

  “Why do we even need a Boss of Bosses? We hardly ever talk to each other let alone like this, all together,” the Tokyo Boss said.

  They were good questions. In a few years, if his numbers were good, he’d get his first rejuvenation pill. Then he’d be twenty again and in perfect health. Five years on and it would happen again. And again, for ever, if his numbers held up. Well, that’s what used to happen. One pill, one rejuvenation at least. He deserved that. It was true, it wasn’t his experience that qualified him to be Boss of the Bosses. It could be something to do with his Block’s product. Every Block produced something different. The only common denominator was that people were essential ingredients. Reference hadn’t elaborated when it informed him of his unprecedented advancement.

  Had Reference told them the rest? Or was he supposed to do that? Reference was silent. Tippese guessed this was why he’d been appointed. “There has been an attack,” he said. “The Blocks, all of them, have entered some sort of emergency mode. They’re considering leaving.”

  “Leaving?”

  “Attack. What kind of attack?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s crazy. Where are they going to go?”

  The noise grew till Tippese couldn’t hear what anyone was saying. If his people behaved like this Control would kick in and twist their guts till they shut up and listened. If he really had to, he’d get a Crawler to take them away and then he’d get someone else. There was always someone else dying for want of promotion. As he had that thought the faces on the screens contorted with pain and little yelps and groans filled the air. Silence fell. Twelve pale frightened faces stared back at him. No one was speaking now.

  Tippese was puzzled. What was going on? Why were they all looking at him like that? He frowned. Slowly at first, then with a happy rush, it dawned on him. They were his to Control. “Listen, it’s not an honorary title, being Boss of the Bosses. It’s the same with the Crawlers in your Blocks. Now, I’d like to know what you think about the situation.”

  Eleven of the Bosses tried hard to hide their anger and frustration. In some faces little sparks of agony lit up their eyes. Control would keep hurting them till they submitted completely. They should know how it worked, they’d done enough management and Bossing of their own. Maybe some had forgotten what it was like being Bossed around. Eventually the faces on the screens calmed. The clever ones knew there was no point in fighting Control. The rest were too scared. But there was one Boss who didn’t want to give up. Her screams were cut short by the unmistakable whip-crack of a Crawler’s snapping limb. Then her screen died as well. The Boss of the Iowa Block was gone. After that Tippese knew he wouldn’t have any more trouble. It should have felt wonderful, yet now he was in this position, he found all he wanted to do was scream with frustration. He was master of the world at the very moment his world was about to end.

  There was no point in messing around and he had no idea how much time they had left. “You need to know that Reference has lost contact with the Owners.” Tippese paused and waited for a reaction. He was met with blank stares and puzzled expressions.

  “Isn’t Reference the Owner?” the hesitant China Boss asked.

  If Reference hadn’t been the one to advise him of the situation he would have thought the same. Reference was the ultimate Block power. “Here on Earth it is, yes. But out… there, away from Earth,” he vaguely gestured to the sky, “are the real Owners.”

  “Okay,” the stunned China Boss said, as though he’d understood what Tippese was saying.

  Tippese had no idea of who or what the Owners were or what losing contact really meant. He decided to tell the other Bosses what Reference had told him, hoping he’d understood correctly though fairly sure he hadn’t. Murmuring Reference could be oblique and ambiguous at the best of times. And this wasn’t the best of times. “Losing contact has triggered some sort of fail-safe. If the Blocks think they’re under threat they’ll leave… without us.” Ti
ppese paused again. He wanted to make sure they’d understood.

  “Where will we go?” the Tokyo Boss asked.

  Tippese shrugged. “Outside, I guess.”

  A wave of panic swept across the Bosses’ faces. He didn’t know if any of the other Bosses were like Tracy. She was already unimaginably old when the Blocks arrived. She was the very first Boss and she must have been really good, to have been so ugly and yet have survived and prospered for so long. Her success never seemed to give her much satisfaction. Tracy missed the world before the Blocks. She was always reminding him of how far back her memory stretched with her boring tales of the old days, old places, old slights, old grudges, old people. It was all meaningless gibberish to him, but she knew about the outside. From the look on the nervous faces peering out from the screens they were all like him, Block born and bred. None of them had ever been outside. Even in his Block with its schools in the wastes only a tiny, tiny fraction of his Block population had ever felt the Sun on their face. And that was more than any other Block.

  The schools were an eccentric legacy of Tracy’s irrationality. Tracy had always been a little soft, in the heart and in the head. She could swing from happy to morose in a heartbeat and if you were caught out by the swing a Crawler would whip you away to the Yard, or worse, the Vat. Tracy had taken him to see the Vat, a five-thousand square kilometre lake of blood near to the very top of the Block. It was a sort of initiation and a warning when he was first promoted to the Heaven House. She had made him watch row upon row of wriggling wretches hanging by their ankles on rails, being shunted towards a small army of waiting Crawlers with their whizzing blades and clicking claws. Stupidly, Tracy was more upset than he was. She’d been running the Block for more than two decades and the memories of what she’d help do to her old world still troubled her. Even the rewards that went with being the Boss, eternal youth and absolute power over the hundreds of millions in the Block, weren’t enough to help her forget. Tippese didn’t feel guilty about those that didn’t make it. It was the Block way. Tracy was never really proper Block.

  “What’ll we do?” someone asked.

  The question brought Tippese abruptly back to the horrible present. He decided it was time to tell them everything. He wanted their views. “There’s a group outside. They want to help us.”

  “There’s people outside? You mean, like your schools? They’ll be useless.”

  “Not like the schools. They’re not under Control. They’re… free.”

  “Oh god please don’t make me go outside.”

  It might have only been the China Boss saying it but he could see everyone else was thinking it. They couldn’t conceive of anything more frightening than being outside, without Control and the comforts of a Block. “Reference might not give us any choice.”

  “Who are these outside people if they’re not Block?”

  Tippese knew it was difficult to comprehend. He found it difficult. There was nobody outside, not beyond the fence anyway. “There’s not many. Most are ex-Block. They… escaped, lost Control. One’s different. She’s not Block. I think she might be like Tracy, really old and a bit crazy.”

  “How’s a few ex-Blocked, however that happened, and some mad old bag going to be able to help?”

  Tippese didn’t have any answers. If they had to leave the Blocks they’d need all the help they could get. “Tomorrow, same time, I’ll talk to the free people and I’ll see what I can find out. I want you all there.”

  “What are we supposed to do, before then?”

  “Pack?”

  “Oh god, I’m going to get drunk and organise one gigantic orgy.”

  Tippese lost his temper, “Get a bloody grip. You’ve all been around a lot longer than me. Start digging around inside your own Blocks. See what you can find out.”

  The glum faces nodded without much enthusiasm. It was the Tokyo Boss who had the final word. “You’re the big Boss now. Try to talk to Reference. We’ll do anything, if the Blocks let us stay. None of us will last very long if we go outside.”

  The nodding grew more vigorous. They were all thinking the same thing. Only Reference could save them and Tippese, maybe, had its ear. He didn’t share that hope. He disconnected and the screens flickered to black. You didn’t talk to Reference. It talked to you. They all knew that. It was a desperate plea.

  He seethed at the unfairness of it all. He’d only been Boss for a month, and Reference was already thinking of kicking him out. It wasn’t right. Perhaps the orgy idea was a good one. Enjoy it while he could. Though an orgy wasn’t his first thought when it came to a distraction. What he had most envied about Tracy’s life, after her longevity, was her clothes. His whole short life he had been dressed in the same dull boiler suit. Only the size ever changed and, sometimes, the colour. Tracy wore what she liked and what she liked could change many times in a single day. He summoned a selection of clothes. The top of a giant wardrobe rose up out of the floor before the head of the Crawler carrying it. After it left he threw open the wide doors and stared at the long line of clothes glistening with vibrant colours and an equally wide diversity of materials, textures and styles. Unbidden his hand reached out to stroke a short fur jacket. He snatched it back as if the fur had bitten him.

  There was no time for this. He was going to start shouting at Reference, even if it wasn’t listening. There had to be another way. You don’t get to be Boss by giving up.

  Reference suddenly started communicating loudly. Startled, Tippese collapsed into a chair. This wasn’t a murmur, it was a shout, and there were new orders. Confusing orders.

  Chapter 3 – Hope

  Battery Boy lay on the top bunk staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t slept much. It wasn’t Stuff’s contented snoring that had kept him awake. They’d got back from the Store yesterday to find that Reference had arranged Tippese’s call for later this morning. Thoughts of what might be coming, and what had been, were running around inside his head, in ever tighter circles. He couldn’t bring himself to trust Tracy’s replacement, the monster and new Block Boss Tippese. Battery Boy was used to monsters. They’d tried to kill him or Band him. And they always lied. Battery Boy shrugged away the pointlessness of trying to guess what Tippese was up to. In a few hours the Block Boss would be calling and then he’d have a better idea of what to expect next. He threw off the blanket and jumped down from the top bed, half waking Stuff.

  “Get up. We’ll be calling Tippese soon.”

  “A little bit longer. I’m tired.”

  “You were the one doing all the maths on the billions trapped inside the Blocks and how long it’d take to get them out. Don’t you want to hear what Tippese’s got to say, how it’s all going to work out?”

  “Sure,” Stuff drawled and promptly fell asleep.

  Eventually Battery Boy managed to drag Stuff out of bed by dangling a piece of toast under his nose. They’d been through a lot together but Stuff was still a kid who liked animals and was scared of almost everything else.

  After breakfast Battery Boy and Stuff headed to the conference room. The others were already there, including Anton via a link to the Maxinquaye space station and the mad, foul-mouthed machine in the little box, Trinity. Battery Boy checked the clock on the wall. If Tippese hadn’t lied he should be calling very soon.

  Mina and Trinity were arguing about the Block worm. Trinity had planted the computer virus in Block Seven during Mina’s first excursion inside. Before Reference had purged the worm it had allowed them a tiny degree of control over relatively insignificant parts of the Block’s operation. It was enough to allow Mina to rescue Tress, Sara and Grain from being butchered and bled. Stuff frowned. He didn’t like it when his friends argued. Battery Boy tried to follow why Mina was quarrelling with Trinity this time. They quarrelled a lot.

  “I thought you said the worm was dead. How can Tippese be using it?” Mina asked. Battery Boy assumed she was talking to Trinity. The little box lay on the table.

  “It’s definitely an ex-
worm. It is no more. I could go on but I’m sure you get the idea. Reference used the poor thing’s innards to establish a permanent link between us and Block Seven. We should have a ceremony later.”

  Mina screwed up her face. “Ceremony?”

  “For our poor dead comrade worm.”

  “Oh, shut up. Anton, anything sensible we should know about before Tippese calls?”

  Anton’s crinkly face filled the screen. “No change. Those little Blocks, the transports that used to travel through the gateway, they go to the Iowa Block now, drop inside and go back. Like clockwork.”

  Battery Boy took his now usual seat towards the back of the room where a silent Jugger and Pinkie were already sitting. Jugger was an intimidating figure when Battery Boy had first encountered him. Since they’d all been eating well at the base, he’d beefed up even more. Otherwise, he hadn’t really changed. He spoke rarely and smiled less. From under short wavy brown hair Jugger’s dark eyes always seemed to be assessing and judging. Battery Boy guessed that he still didn’t trust anyone, despite everything they’d been through together since they’d met, only months ago.

  As usual Stuff went and sat close to Mina.

  “What are you chewing Stuff?” Mina asked.

  “Gum.”

  “God I could kill for some gum, where did you get it? There’s none in the base. I’ve looked. I think it’s banned down here. Stupid bloody rule.”

  Pinkie called out, “What’s gum?”

  “It’s like a sweet, Pinkie. So, Stuff, where did you get it?”

  “Me and Battery Boy got it from the Store in Times Square. I had to fight a bear for it so only managed to grab one piece.”

  “Don’t make things up Stuff. Isn’t real life crazy enough?”

  Battery Boy wanted to say something but before he could verify his friend’s story his attention was grabbed by something more important.

  “Block Seven’s calling,” Trinity said quietly.

  The big screen flickered for a moment then Tippese’s face filled the monitor, apart from a small square in one corner displaying Anton’s face.