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

by Scott Bartlett

  “YOU’RE NOT THE MESSIAH, CARL. I AM.”

  “Go away, you damned troll.”

  “YOU’RE NOT THE MESSIAH.”

  “I didn’t say I was. You misheard me, you spying creep.”

  “A LITTLE MEDIA ATTENTION GOES STRAIGHT TO YOUR HEAD, DOESN’T IT? NOW YOU’RE JUST ANOTHER ASSHOLE WHO THINKS HE’S THE PROBABLE GOD MADE FLESH.”

  “Who are you? Why do you keep doing this?”

  “WOULD A MESSIAH’S GIRLFRIEND LOSE INTEREST IN HIM? WOULD A MESSIAH DEFY HIS EMPLOYER’S WISHES?”

  “A messiah does what’s necessary. Are you Morrowne, keeping an eye on me? Or Stronger, maybe?”

  “I AM THE MESSIAH, CARL. HUMANKIND’S TRUE SAVIOUR. AND DON’T WORRY, I’LL SEE THAT YOU REAP YOUR SALVATION, TOO. I GRANT SALVATION TO ALL WHO EARN IT.”

  The wall switched off and didn’t come on again. But the adrenaline coursing through him precluded sleep. Other than Xavier, he’d never mentioned being Schrödinger reborn to anyone. That the hacker had heard him say it unsettled him. On top of everything else going on, it was too much. He got up, dressed for work, and left the house.

  Carl found the lobby completely silent, his view unobstructed of countless poles stretching in all directions. He headed for the exit.

  The hacker attacks were really starting to bother him. His ability to relax inside his own home had been stolen from him, and he always felt on edge there now. He supposed many of the companies he interacted with already had the hacker’s level of access in exchange for the conveniences they afforded him. The difference was that they didn’t make their presence known in such an abrasive way, constantly criticizing and insulting him for the way he conducted his everyday affairs.

  It wasn’t remarkable that the hacker claimed to be Schrödinger reborn. Lots of people did. The hacker was probably a geezer, and they claimed it more than most. Going senile, seen as failures by most of Dodge, they often lashed out at younger residents.

  Once, while they were eating lunch together in the SafeTalk cafeteria, Natalie told him that hundreds of years ago, young people were better at using technology than geezers. Even now, part of him still assumed it was just another one of her fantasies. But, as always, it was a detailed fantasy.

  “Back then,” she said, “technology changed. Rapidly. And the pace of development was accelerating.”

  “Where’d you get this information?” he asked. He liked to find chinks that could test which of her stories were real.

  She answered without hesitation, saying she’d found it on a site buried deeply in Indie Net search results, a site with no subscription to net neutrality. To load it she’d had to leave her TV room wall on overnight, twice. The first night the page failed to load at all.

  “How do you know it wasn’t nonsense?” he asked. “People can publish anything on the Indie Net.”

  “How do you know the Air Earth version of history isn’t nonsense?” she said. “Because a corporation tells you it isn’t?”

  The Indie Net site said that technology changed so quickly back then that young people were its masters. Older people’s brains were less pliable, and they couldn’t catch on as quickly. Youths ran circles around them. Some youths even hacked into the computers of large corporations, for reasons financial and political. Corporations and governments of the time lived in fear of young people with computers. Examples were made of the ones that could be caught.

  Gradually, though, computers became more locked down, so that users could do less with them. Where once young people were encouraged to take control of their technology, now they were instructed to make do with devices as they were sold, to use them only to consume things, and not to defy the manufacturer’s wishes.

  “That happened for a lot of reasons,” Natalie said. “They claimed it was to protect copyright holders, though it didn’t do that very well. What it was great at doing was slowing technological innovation. The major tech companies knew that they’d risen to dominance by using new technologies to disrupt old business models. Now they feared someone else doing the same to them. So they locked everything down. They increased surveillance on everyone, which naturally stifled innovation. Most of all, they cannibalized the ideas behind new technologies.”

  That sounded dramatic. “How’d they do that?” Carl asked.

  “By buying out every startup with an idea they feared might disrupt their business models. With those acquisitions, the tech giants promised to change the way people lived, and for a while they did. That’s why we have such advanced smart systems, for example. But the more they changed things the more likely disruption became, and as the global economy worsened they began to run out of money to acquire startups. So they adopted a more cost-effective approach. Instead of buying startups they began buying out patent monetization companies, which generally held tens of thousands of patents apiece. The patent system was incredibly broken and gave out very broad patents. So whenever a startup arose the tech giants dipped into their troves and used the relevant patent to sue the startup into oblivion.

  “Innovation slowed, and eventually it stopped altogether. Other trends contributed to this process, like charging the public access to knowledge it had originally financed, gradually diluting the quality of education, and extending copyright terms indefinitely, which deprived the public domain of thousands of creative works. Once the stifling process was complete, people spent lifetimes using the same products. Generations passed, and geezers became the most proficient at technology, simply because they’d spent much more time operating the same devices their entire lives.”

  “That’s not how technological development stopped,” Carl said. This was how he knew her story didn’t hold up. “The markets evolved to a point where all our needs were met. After that, technological change was no longer necessary.”

  Natalie’s mouth had taken on a sardonic twist. “All the needs. Except for the need to run screaming from our society. Right, Carl?”

  Only the sidewalk LEDs lit the night. He was well away from his block of residences now, and the adrenaline from his encounter with the hacker was wearing off. He rubbed his eyes.

  The markets had attained their most evolved state, just as Probablism had. Carl believed that, even though he reviled his life in Dodge. How else could anarchy continue to function except with finely tuned systems that looked after everything? The systems worked; they just didn’t make it particularly pleasant to be a human.

  Ahead of him, the side of a building lit up with an ad for a local bar. “Remember this, Carl?” read the text across the top. It showed him footage of a time he’d visited the bar with some work friends from a past contract. In the ad they were all smiling and laughing together.

  “I do,” he said, and decided to make his way to the bar. When he arrived, he found they were using every wall to show John Anders being interviewed by the Dodge Broadcasting Corporation. Carl couldn’t drink, of course. His clothes would detect that and relay it to his employer, not to mention his insurance company, which would raise his rate during the time it took to sober up.

  Ordering a coffee, he settled into a corner and took in the interview. “What have I discovered about Ofvalour?” Anders was saying. He seemed rather calm, from which Carl surmised that the interview had just started. “I sent the documents to the DBC two decades ago. But I’ll tell you again what they reveal: his family’s ruled for centuries, since Dodge was founded.”

  “Ah,” the interviewer said.

  “Now, that’s on record. They say we have no government, but I’m telling you we have a dynastic imperial family, members of which have always held the highest LifeRanks. Dodge is no meritocracy. It’s a dictatorship. But the real mystery is how our economy stays afloat when Air Earth is constantly shipping the biggest source of economic activity, the middle class, across the ocean.”

  “What’s that got to do with the Hand?”

  “Ofvalour’s in bed with Air Earth. Him and his elite buddies. The point zero one percent. All o
f them heads of long-running dynasties. You already know this, I sent you the documents, but of course we’ll never hear you acknowledge it. Anyway. I’ve discovered how they keep Dodge’s economy humming along. I know what they’ve been selling to the New World. I’ve been checking up on some of Air Earth’s upper-level managers, and it turns out they know a lot more about the New World than they’re letting on. They tell us it’s a land of equality, with a guaranteed minimum income” —Anders ticked off the points on his hands— “with this paternalistic government support for all, and of course that’s all true. Because that’s what a slave state looks like. You give the slaves the minimum they need to survive, and—”

  “So now we know,” the interviewer said, winking at his other guest, a writer for InsiderLife, “that the country everyone spends their life getting to is in fact a slave state. Everyone who pays for a plane ticket is being sold as a slave.”

  “Oh yes,” the InsiderLife writer said, managing to keep a straight face. “If you talk to John for any length of time you learn all kinds of things you didn’t know about the world.”

  “I’ve blown it wide open,” said Anders, who sat next to the writer. He leaned over so that their faces were inches apart.

  “You have. I’m absolutely blown away by it all, but it leaves me with just one question for you, John. You have uncovered this conspiracy between Air Earth and an evil dynastic empire—”

  “I thought you said it didn’t exist?” Anders said.

  “I’m getting to that. You have uncovered this all-encompassing conspiracy, this brutal network of elites who control everything and everyone. You’ve been a lone warrior, fighting them with everything you’ve got. So tell me this: why haven’t they simply killed you, or sold you into slavery? Which is the explanation? One, the conspiracy doesn’t exist? Or two, you’re part of it? I think number one, personally.”

  “I think number two,” the interviewer said, and he did laugh now. A few people in the bar laughed, too.

  Anders was getting louder and more red-faced. “Let me tell you a story. Let me tell you a story.” His jowls had begun to wobble. “Six years ago, when Ofvalour was in that car accident, they had it from every angle, of course. I analyzed the footage and I discovered that because Ofvalour’s subscription to CabLab was higher than the family in the other car, it was their vehicle that went into the guardrail, not his. In the event of an accident-causing glitch, CabLab’s algorithm discriminates based on your subscription level. When I broke that, InsiderLife called me crazy, Gawp called me crazy. Of course, they didn’t know about the untraceable phone calls I received, threatening me. The callers said, ‘You should take us seriously, because your dad is getting on an Air Earth plane next month, and planes can crash.’ And they told me I better shut up or they’d cut my head off.”

  The interviewer was trying to speak, but Anders roared over him, gaining in momentum, volume, and resemblance to a radish. “This goes back to the twenty-first century, to before Dodge even existed. The world elites experienced a shakeup, because of all the new technologies, and they decided they never wanted that to happen again. And for the first time in history they had the technology to cement their rule.” Anders jabbed a finger at the ground with vigor. “Networked control and surveillance, used to squash innovation and establish dominance forever. That’s what Dodge was built on. They expanded the twenty-first century’s for-profit prisons to encompass all of society. They treat every resident like an unruly prisoner.”

  The segment ended with the interviewer telling Anders, over his ranting, that he was the worst guest that had ever been on the show. “We have an idiot on tonight, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, sticking out his tongue and twirling his fingers around his ear.

  Most of the bar patrons were laughing by now, but Carl noticed a few sitting in stolid silence, hunched grimly over their pints. Some people bought into everything Anders said, but mostly they didn’t dare repeat any of it. Sharing Anders’s viewpoints was a good way to watch your LifeRank plummet.

  Shortly after he left the bar a customer service cruiser pulled up alongside him, window rolled down. “Excuse me, sir,” one of the reps sitting inside said. “You do know it’s past curfew?”

  “I have the basic rights package.”

  “Splendid. You’ll know, of course, that as part of the LifeRank Terms of Service Agreement it’s my responsibility to verify your subscription. I’m also required to ask what your business is walking the streets at this hour. Please place your hand here.” The rep extended a black pad.

  Carl laid his hand on it, and it made an encouraging sound. “Excellent,” the rep said. “And your business?”

  “Hackers were bothering me in my home. I thought I’d walk around, clear my head until my shift starts.”

  “Do you have a permanent position with your employer, sir?”

  “Of course not. I’m a contract worker, just like everyone else who isn’t a rep.”

  “I see. In that case, I wouldn’t advise going to work without having slept a full eight hours. In my experience, employers expect contract workers to show up alert and ready to perform. If your employer were to check your lifelog right now, I doubt he or she would be pleased to see you awake.”

  “Is dispensing life advice part of your Terms of Service?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then get lost. Leave me alone.”

  “Being polite to your customer service representatives isn’t in the Terms of Service Agreement either, sir,” the rep said. “But it’s advisable.”

  The reps drove off, and Carl continued to wander the streets. He felt very tired now, but the twin possibilities of another hacker attack and Maria returning to the house kept him out.

  He tried again to think of a way to prevent Natalie from having to reveal herself as the FutureBrite blogger, but his thoughts took the same circular path they’d been treading for the last twenty-four hours, with Erything’s words interjecting regularly, and Maria’s. Picturing her with Gregory on top of her again made Carl nauseous. How could she do that to him?

  He deposited some money in a bench near his work, and its metal prongs retracted, allowing him to sit. Some time later, sunshine and the bench’s strident beeping woke him. The prongs were about to extend again. He got up just in time to avoid them.

  According to his phone, work started in one hour. SafeTalk’s doors would be unlocked, though, so he straightened his clothes as best he could and walked the rest of the way. He waited the remaining time in the cafeteria.

  Work began, and the morning crawled by. Carl felt like he was flailing. On the surface, the Youth Dignity Department seemed like it had been a tremendous success. Too successful, in fact, his workers left with barely anything to do. Carl had to break up a couple of arguments, both caused by one worker encroaching on another’s assigned tasks. They were all worried Youth Dignity would be shut down—mission accomplished—and everyone would be demoted back to wherever they’d been before.

  Gregory Stronger had arrived for work right on time, and headed straight to his office without speaking to anyone. Lately, this was his routine.

  Carl had to speak with his supervisor, as reluctant as he was to do so. There was no other way of contacting Xavier, and Morrowne kept brushing him off. His meeting with Erything had borne no fruit. Gregory was his last hope.

  He knocked on the office door and was told to enter after a brief pause. Maria’s lingerie commercial was playing on the wall, with Gregory leaning back in his office chair watching it. He turned and smiled at Carl. “What can I do for you?”

  “You had time to turn that off before I came in.”

  “I know. I didn’t, because I recognized your voice. I wanted you to come in so we could appreciate this together. She has grace as well as beauty, doesn’t she? Your girlfriend. Such poise, even when she’s not aware she’s being watched. Do you think you’ll marry her, Intoever?”

  “Morrowne won’t be happy when he catches you watching lingerie
commercials during work hours.”

  “Morrowne doesn’t care. Don’t you see, Intoever? We’re done here. You’ve performed admirably, as have all the Youth Dignity staff. The Hand’s investments have been well protected. Soon, the department will be dismantled. You’ll be going back to the Complaints Department, of course. I, however, have been promised a promotion to the upper levels of management. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

  Carl chose not to comment. He mentally forbade his expression to change and tried not to clench his fists.

  “By the way, I got a LifeRank alert informing me you slept on a bench last night. It suggested I try talking to you about your aberrant behavior patterns. Thought I’d mention it. What do you want, anyway, Intoever?”

  “I need to speak to you. Lifelogs off.”

  “I hardly think that’s necessary. Haven’t you been listening? The department’s work is all but—”

  “I need to speak to you about something that will bring this department roaring back to life. Something that will undo all the work we’ve done so far and keep us busy for months to come, maybe years. If you’re busy watching my girlfriend’s ad, though, we don’t have to discuss it. Hopefully your promotion will survive what’s coming.”

  Gregory considered for a few moments. Then he gestured rapidly in midair. “All right,” he said. “My lifelog’s off. Go ahead. This better be worth it.”

  “Not in here. I’m sure you have it bugged, along with Schrödinger knows who else. There’s a custodial closet on the second floor where I’d much sooner have our conversation.”

  “Fine.”

  They walked together through SafeTalk’s corridors, and Carl noticed a lot of heads turning to mark their passage. The news that the “hero of SafeTalk” was cuckolded by his boss had been covered extensively on television last night, along with a slew of intimate details, such as the fact that Carl wasn’t handling it very well. He supposed seeing him walking with Gregory must be confusing for his poor colleagues.

  “Is it your job to gawk?” he asked one of his old Complaints Department colleagues as they passed in front of his desk. The man’s eyes snapped back to his work, and his cheeks reddened. Gregory snickered.