Flight or Fight (The Out of Dodge Trilogy Book 1)

by Scott Bartlett

  “I normally sleep in turns throughout the night, switching out with whoever the other on-shift caregiver is. It’s against company policy, but we do it anyway, and no one ever says anything about it.”

  Carl snapped his fingers. “You’re a contract worker, just like me. SafeTalk has access to your lifelog, and they’d fire you if they knew you worked for FutureBrite too. SafeTalk expects its employees to arrive on time and alert. You’re making this up, Natalie. It’s not possible.”

  “The microcameras in smart clothes aren’t infrared. Why would they be? So when I go to bed and turn off all the lights, I slip out of them and into clothes that don’t have cameras. Then I go to work at SafeTalk, using a different identity.”

  Carl dropped his fork and put his head in his hands. “Why?”

  “Because, Carl. Between FutureBrite and the prison barges, they’ve succeeded in criminalizing an entire class of people. Those who can’t afford a basic subscription to human rights are arrested for ridiculous reasons and sent to harvest resources from ancient landfills, leaving their children functionally orphans. Then FutureBrite snatches up those children too, keeping them in the program as long as possible, medicating them, micromanaging their lives, isolating them from other kids—screwing them up permanently. When they’re finally released from care they have no idea how to live. So they end up on the prison barges too.”

  Carl shook his head. “You’re an amazing person, Natalie. You really are. I’ve always admired you. But this seems reckless. I know these kids are hurting, but so is everyone in Dodge, and it isn’t your—”

  “This isn’t about fighting for an ideal for me. At least, it’s not only about that. FutureBrite took my sister. They misrepresented my family as meeting the criteria of dysfunctional under LifeRank’s Terms of Service, and they took Justine. She’s on a prison barge now. Because of me.”

  “Because of you?”

  “Yes, Carl. Justine got arrested before she was even old enough to leave FutureBrite, which is illegal. But it’s my fault. I can’t get into why right now. I’m sorry.” She sighed. “I just wanted to help you understand why I wanted to take them down. And to warn you. I plan to reveal myself as the FutureBrite blogger.”

  He stood up. “No. That’s a very bad idea.”

  She stood up, too. “I can’t let an innocent man suffer on my behalf any longer. I don’t want to do this. But I have no choice.”

  “They’ll eviscerate you. You’ll end up on a prison barge.” The thought of that brought him to the brink of tears.

  “I know.”

  “You can’t save Chuck Erything’s reputation. No one recovers from a scandal of this magnitude, not even if the scandal is debunked.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to do the right thing.”

  Carl sat down again and drew in some rapid, shallow breaths, trying to calm down. “Why don’t you look out for yourself, Natalie? Why put yourself at risk for this guy?”

  “You do the exact same for me. At SafeTalk.” She was smiling. “I’ve heard about the things you’ve done for me there. You try to play their game by their rules, but anyone paying attention knows you’re not like them.”

  “It’s the only game, Natalie. There is no other game.”

  “Well, I was trying to change that.”

  Carl stirred his food around with his fork. “What if…what if you made another post on the blog, saying Xavier and I found the wrong person? It’d still be a PR disaster, but at least you could remain anonymous. Your life wouldn’t get torn apart, then.”

  “No one would believe it. They’d just assume it was Erything trying desperately to get out of the mess he’s in. The only way I can take the pressure off of him is to come forward and provide proof that I’m the blogger.”

  “Can you give me a week to try and find a way around this? A way to help Erything that doesn’t involve you becoming a prisoner? Please.”

  “I’ll give you a day. I can’t let this go on any longer than that.”

  “I can’t do anything in a day. Two days, Natalie. I’m begging you. I’d never be able to live with the knowledge you might be suffering on a prison barge somewhere.”

  Her expression softened, and Carl thought he saw a shimmer of tears in her wide-set eyes. “Okay, Carl. Two days.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Hand of the Market was not a man to be summoned whenever you needed him. He paid people to manage his social network accounts, and they served as highly trained barriers to anyone who actually wanted to get in touch with the man. No other way of contacting him was publicly known.

  Carl knocked on Morrowne’s office door. “Go ahead,” said Morrowne’s voice, emanating from a speaker located somewhere near the doorknob.

  “Hi, Mr. Morrowne, it’s Carl Intoever, I—”

  “Go ahead, I said! Come in!”

  Carl did, shutting the door behind him.

  “What?” Morrowne said.

  “I think we might have a bit of a situation.”

  “Just tell me what you want, Intoever.”

  “I’ve been thinking about Erything. What if he’s not the right man?”

  “That’s your situation? You come in here spouting idle speculation and call it a situation? Stop wasting my time.”

  “Well, if he’s not actually the—”

  “Honestly, Intoever, I don’t care if he’s the right man. He’s the man we’ve got. We ground him into dust, and it’s in this new dust-form that he best suits our needs. If another man pops up, your ‘right man,’ Erything could reassemble himself and cause us some serious headaches. Are you worried justice hasn’t been served, Intoever? Because justice isn’t my department. And anyway, I thought I told you to check your scruples.”

  “It’s not about justice. It’s about risk.”

  “What risk?”

  “The risk of the right man, or person, coming forward.”

  “Either that happens or it doesn’t. In the meantime, I don’t intend to search for a person I have no desire to find. And you won’t waste company time searching for him either.”

  Carl’s lips tightened, and he ground his heel into the carpet in frustration. “Can you put me in touch with Xavier Ofvalour?”

  Morrowne sneered. “You think your little field trip with the Hand means you can ring him up at any time?” He tapped a finger against his chest. “I decide when Ofvalour is contacted. Unless you’d like to sit here at my desk? Trade your plane ticket for a shot at being head geezer at SafeTalk? Is that what you’re after, Intoever?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then get out of here. You’re making me ask myself why I promoted you.”

  Carl left.

  There was nothing more he could do from SafeTalk. Morrowne would no doubt monitor him for the rest of the afternoon to make sure he didn’t use company time to follow up on whether Erything was really the FutureBrite blogger. Besides, he’d already drawn some unwanted attention. Gregory Stronger had visited his workstation earlier to ask why he’d turned off his lifelog yesterday evening. Stronger received a notification whenever one of his subordinates’ lifelogs went offline. “I noticed you haven’t filed your report with the reps for it yet,” he said.

  “Yes,” Carl replied. “Well, I’d love to tell you why I had to switch it off. Unfortunately, you’d have to fill out a form requesting that information, wouldn’t you? Company policy. You know.”

  Gregory returned his gaze, unblinking. “See that the report is filed.”

  That bought Carl some time to think of a convincing justification. It would have to involve the Search Department, since anyone who watched his lifelog from last night would see that Natalie had requested he turn it off.

  In the end, he said that Natalie had wanted to discuss strategies for suppressing unwanted viral blog posts more efficiently. That not only covered them, but also made them look like stellar employees, the kind who brought their work home and mulled it over late into the evening.

  Ca
rl stayed at SafeTalk a few minutes beyond the end of the workday. Morrowne couldn’t say he was wasting company time now. Carl wanted Chuck Erything’s home address, so he emailed a journalist at Buzzworthy who had access to Erything’s lifelog. Hopefully a reply would be waiting for him by the time he arrived home. The first of the two days Natalie had allowed him was nearly over. Carl hoped Erything could be reasoned with. Maybe he would understand that any damage had already been done, and nothing could be gained from Natalie coming forward. Maybe he and Erything could convince her of that together.

  He came home to an empty house again. Absurdly, this depressed him. Just a month ago he would have felt overjoyed at the opportunity for some alone time. He’d always been tense with the knowledge Maria could be watching his lifelog at any time, and they’d fought about it constantly. Now she seemed to have given up on him.

  He wondered again what she could be doing, and this time he was filled with more suspicion than ever before. It was time to look at her lifelog. He’d never done much of that before, as she always used to stay home, playing around with her investments and doing whatever else she did online. There had never been anything to watch. Now that she was barely ever home he had actually begun to miss her. And he wanted to see where she went all the time.

  Carl logged on through the TV room wall, and an email notification appeared. It was the Buzzworthy journalist getting back to him about his request. He’d provided Chuck Erything’s address, as well as his contact info, and his social network profiles. Carl decided it best to avoid showing up on Erything’s doorstep unannounced, so he sent him an email requesting a meeting, identifying himself as Carl Intoever, head of SafeTalk’s Youth Dignity Department. That should get the man’s attention.

  Then he accessed Maria’s lifelog. Due to a momentary glitch the audio came on before the video.

  “Stronger,” Maria was moaning. “Stronger!”

  The video came on. Maria lay on her back, looking up. Carl couldn’t see what she was lying on, but that didn’t seem important. What seemed most relevant about Maria’s feed right then was Gregory Stronger straddling her, pumping his hips, one hand clutching her breast.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  One eyebrow raised, Carl’s brother regarded him over a pint of ale, from which he was drinking deeply. He set it down with a thud, wiping foam from his lips with the back of his hand. “Okay,” he said. “I think I’m a little closer to your level of cognition now. Tell me again. Why is this a bad thing?”

  Carl spun his untouched beer slowly between his fingers and said nothing.

  “Plenty of couples who are only together for their family phrase take lovers outside the relationship,” Leo said. “It’s the only thing that makes these arrangements bearable. You should be celebrating in the street. You’ve finally crossed that threshold, and for the first time being with Maria is starting to look sane.”

  “I just…I don’t understand what drove her to it.”

  “Carl. You two treat each other like complete shit. One of you finally reached breaking point. One of you finally realized you can’t function as a monogamous unit. Honestly, I’m surprised it was Maria.”

  “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Well, it’s all pretty fresh, so I guess I can understand that. But it seems obvious what you do now. You marry her with the knowledge that you can improve your LifeRank, collect the discount on your plane ticket, and still have sex with a bunch of other women.”

  “Honestly, Leo, I have no desire to do that.”

  “You are so weird, Carl. Come on. Let’s barhop. We’ll find you a new Maria to warm your bed.”

  “Forget it. I have work tomorrow. Morrowne would have a hernia if he checked my lifelog and saw me up late drinking. And I can’t risk my insurance going up.”

  “I hope Morrowne’s watching your lifelog right now,” Leo said, holding his middle finger in front of Carl’s face.

  “Schrödinger’s cat, Leo! Cut it out.”

  “Why’d you invite me here, anyway? If you don’t want to drink.”

  “I don’t know,” Carl said. “To be a brother? Do the brother thing?”

  “Have I fulfilled my role?”

  “I guess.”

  “Good. If you’re not going to satisfy your base urges then I will. I have a new one, actually, and I think it’s about time I introduced her to Dad.”

  “I’m sure that’ll go over well.”

  They paid the bartender and strolled outside. Carl’s phone vibrated. “Oh,” he said, staring at it. “Looks like I will be having another drink.”

  Leo glanced back at him, grinning. “Yeah?”

  “Chuck Erything wants to meet. In…the bar we just left.”

  “Chuck Erything? Why are you meeting with Chuck Erything?”

  “I asked him to.”

  “Um, Carl, you realize he probably doesn’t want to be your friend, right?”

  “Go home, Leo. This is confidential SafeTalk stuff.”

  “Confidential. Right. Will Erything be turning off his lifelog? I’m guessing no. And if he isn’t, there’s no point in you turning off yours. Plus, you’re in a bar, where things stay secret for about as long as it takes to type a status update.”

  “Fine. You can stay. But you have to sit in a corner and pretend you’re not with me.”

  “Is this part of that brother thing you were talking about?”

  Carl smiled. “In a sense.”

  Erything didn’t order a drink when he came in. He approached Carl’s table and pointed a finger at him without sitting down. “Finally figure out I’m innocent, you piece of shit?”

  “Easy, Chuck. I’m here to help.”

  “Oh, of course. That’s very convincing, given what a huge help you’ve been already.” Erything gripped the back of the chair he was neglecting to sit in. Everything about him was large, including his bushy eyebrows, which were nearly touching as he glared down at Carl.

  “How did you know where to find me?” Carl said.

  “Don’t you watch TV? I’m not the only one whose lifelog made the news this week. Your big debut was about an hour ago, when thousands watched you walk into this bar with that guy over there.” Erything pointed straight at his brother, who was sitting in a corner and pretending to ignore them. “Carl Intoever, the hero who convinced everyone I’m the FutureBrite blogger. Your life’s big news. Including the fact your girlfriend slept with your boss behind your back.”

  Carl swallowed. “Perhaps we should both cancel our insurance rebates,” he said. “To limit the number of eyes on us. Then we could talk more discreetly, and—”

  “I already canceled mine.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah. Those smear job articles got everything wrong, except for one fact: I did exceed what was required of me as a caregiver. Because what they require of caregivers does not even begin to meet a child’s needs. People approach a job with FutureBrite the same way they’d approach a job flipping burgers. Because they can. The company doesn’t do a thing about it. They don’t care about those kids. They just medicate ’em and track ’em.”

  “I-I didn’t know.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to tell me, Intoever. People like you never know. You spend half your lives making sure you never have to know. You don’t know what it’s like to witness these kids getting treated like they’re less than human. You don’t know how it feels to hear a little girl wake up screaming, night after night, from a horrible dream she can never escape from. Because her life is the nightmare.”

  “What…what can we do about it?”

  “You’ve done enough. I didn’t come here because I thought I’d get any help from you. You took away the one person in that little girl’s life who genuinely cared about her. Me. But I came to tell you it doesn’t matter. I was pretty close to buying a plane ticket, and I’ve decided instead to use my money to help that little girl escape the vicious treadmill people like you have set up for her. I’ve already
paid her subscription to basic human rights for twenty years after she gets out of the FutureBrite program.”

  “That’s great. I applaud that.”

  “Glad you approve. Anyway. I hope you enjoy your time in the limelight.” He walked out of the bar.

  Leo came over. Carl stared into space, avoiding his eyes. His brother walked to the bartender, bought another couple of pints, and then returned, setting one of them in front of Carl.

  “So,” he said. “How did that go?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Carl walked home from the bar in a state of mental paralysis. Maria didn’t come home at all that night, which he was glad for. He didn’t want to see her. He especially didn’t want to touch her.

  Carl lay in bed, his jealousy, anger, and guilt all warring for dominance. Fragments of what Erything had said blared periodically through his mind, keeping him awake. During the brief mental silences he tried to formulate some kind of rational plan for the morning. Then Erything’s voice trumpeted again, blasting apart his thoughts, interspersed with Maria moaning in ecstasy.

  “People like you never know,” Erything shouted inside Carl’s skull, louder than seemed possible. “You spend half your lives making sure you never have to know.”

  “Stronger,” Maria called. “Stronger!”

  Carl had been participating in things he didn’t agree with all his life. Everyone did. The resultant guilt had always motivated him to immerse himself deeper in his work. Someday, he told himself, things would be better. He would become a person he could respect in the New World. Excelling at tasks he didn’t agree with would get him there quicker.

  No one had ever thrown his own depravity in his face. Until Natalie. Until Erything.

  “I’m the messiah,” he said aloud in the empty bed. “I’m going to save them, in the end. It will all work out.”

  The wall at the foot of the bed lit up, the bright white screen making him squint.

  He groaned. “Not now.”