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

by Scott Bartlett

  “We’re lucky she’s not one of the kids who gets nauseous playing virtual reality,” Ernest said. “Imagine how hard it would be to keep her occupied if she was.”

  Carl cleared his throat. “Mind if I use the workstation to start work on the blog?”

  “Sure. Just don’t block our view of the feed.”

  Ernest seemed far more interested in his phone than Jenny’s game, but that was none of Carl’s concern. Staring at the composition software, he realized the writing would be harder than he’d assumed. He hadn’t written anything with this much creative freedom since his school days. Sure, he’d written plenty of emails to people irate about having their posts taken down by SafeTalk. In those cases, though, he’d been restating a very specific corporate line.

  After a while Jenny switched from her game to watching a playlist of promotional videos from the New World. The third video showed a young girl walking through a green space, hand-in-hand with her parents. Jenny replayed that one twice before moving to the next.

  “Does she watch those often?” Carl asked.

  Ernest glanced up from his phone. “Most every day,” he said before returning to whatever he was doing.

  Allison was staring into space with eyebrows drawn down and lips tightened. “Did you give Jenny her medication this morning?”

  “Oh, shit,” Ernest said, without looking up this time. “I forgot. Did you?”

  “Obviously not, or I wouldn’t be asking.” She pulled open a filing cabinet drawer and fished out a cardboard folder filled with blister packs.

  “Is it okay to give her it now?” Ernest said.

  “It’s better than not giving it to her at all. We’ll have to push her afternoon pill forward a bit, that’s all.”

  She popped out the morning pill and brought it out to the TV room. As she did, Carl picked up the folder of blister packs and glanced over the instructions and side effects listed. It looked like pretty powerful stuff.

  “Don’t raise your voice to me,” he heard Allison say from the TV room, though he hadn’t heard Jenny speak yet. “Take your pill, Jenny. You have to take it.”

  “No, I don’t! You’re not my mom.”

  The feed from the headset was paused. Carl left the office and found Jenny standing on the couch, hands curled into fists, glaring at Allison, who glanced at him. “Can you believe this? She refuses to take it.”

  “I don’t have to do anything you say!”

  “Do not raise your voice to me, Jenny,” Allison said again. “You’re supposed to be on your best behavior, remember, with your court date coming up.”

  “Wait,” Carl said. “What? Court date?”

  Jenny’s stare had become venomous. Her mouth worked wordlessly, and she began to shake.

  Allison picked up the headset by its strap and jiggled it. “Why do you bother watching those videos, anyway? As if you’ll ever work hard enough to afford a ticket to the New World.”

  At that, Jenny began to clamber over the back of the couch toward her caregiver. “I hate you!” she yelled, and Carl wondered automatically whether the people living in the next house over could hear.

  “Hey,” he said, stepping between them, hands raised, his heart hammering against his chest. The anger in Jenny’s eyes was real, and if someone didn’t divert it soon she’d unleash it on Allison. “Why don’t we go for that lolly? Hey?”

  Jenny’s face grew slack. “Okay,” she said, in a monotone. “Let’s go right now.”

  Carl breathed a sigh of relief, surprised at his success.

  As they walked to the store, with Jenny ranging a block or so ahead of her caregivers, Allison rounded on Carl. “I didn’t appreciate you interfering as I de-escalated the incident with Jenny. And I don’t appreciate you bribing her with candy. That isn’t the way to raise a child. It does nothing to build her character.”

  “That may be,” Carl said, meeting her burning eyes with a level gaze. “But somehow I doubt lording a court date over a twelve-year-old will do much to build her character either. It’ll definitely provoke her, though, and that’s what you did. De-escalate, my ass.”

  Allison said nothing to that, probably because there was nothing for her to say. But she refused to meet Carl’s eyes, and her gait took on a stiffness that suggested she wouldn’t soon forget the rebuke.

  “What is this about a court date, anyway?” he said. “What has she been charged with?”

  Ernest cleared his throat, looking to Allison as if for guidance. She offered none, and he said, “Jenny assaulted Allison a couple months ago. Allison, uh, had no choice but to call the reps. Jenny had her barricaded inside the office, and she was using a rock she’d hidden in her room to punch holes in the door. That’s what it said in the reps’ report, too.”

  “Does Jenny even have a LifeRank subscription?”

  “FutureBrite buys every child a subscription when they turn twelve. It’s the minimum age kids can have one.”

  Carl stopped himself from shaking his head. He was twenty when he first got his subscription. “When is her court date?”

  “In a couple of days.”

  “I guess I’ll be attending it, then.”

  Jenny may well have assaulted Allison, though Carl was very interested in seeing lifelog footage of the incident. He wondered whether that might be arranged.

  Jenny selected her lolly, and as promised, Carl paid, suppressing a cringe. Setting a bad example or no, his consumption record couldn’t handle him making a habit of this. He resolved not to bribe Jenny again. Allison maintained a chilly silence on the walk back to the residence complex. Dark clouds began to gather, but rain was the worst they would bring. Carl had checked the forecast that morning.

  A FutureBrite shift lasted twelve hours, longer than most SafeTalk shifts, but eventually it did end. Around an hour before that, Allison typed up the daily report.

  “Shouldn’t we write an incident report too?” Ernest said.

  Allison shook her head and didn’t answer.

  “But Jenny displayed maladaptive behavior, when we tried to administer her medication.”

  “I’m doing her a favor. If we write an incident report it will enter into the court’s records and could hurt her.”

  “May I read the daily report?” Carl asked.

  Allison whipped around in the office chair, glaring at him. “Why would you need to do that? You don’t even work here.”

  “I’m conducting a report on the quality of care you’re providing,” he said quietly. “The daily reports form part of that care.”

  Her lips tighter than they’d been all day, Allison scrolled to the top of the report so he could read it. As he did, he could see why she hadn’t written an incident report, and it wasn’t to cover for Jenny. Her daily report said, “Today Jenny had a spontaneous outburst. Caregiver Allison de-escalated the situation before Jenny could exhibit behavior disturbing enough to warrant an Incident Report.”

  Carl stood and faced Allison. “This is an utter mischaracterization. The outburst wasn’t spontaneous. You provoked her. You obviously just don’t want the record to reflect that.”

  “Excuse me?” Her face turned red, and her eyes grew until Carl felt sure she was about to pop a blood vessel. “Jenny is an antisocial child. That’s why she’s here. She’s antisocial, and she exhibited antisocial behavior. End of story.”

  “It’s not the end of the story. In fact, it’s a totally different story. You provoked her, Allison.”

  It took Ernest speaking up to make Carl realize he was going too far. “They told us you wouldn’t be so…challenging, Mr. Intoeverylifeali.”

  Carl looked at the man, and his ire seeped away, replaced by fear. If he continued to create a stir, he’d damage his effort to exonerate Natalie and save Riley; perhaps he already had.

  Sitting down, he let out a rush of air. Looking first at Allison and then at Ernest, he said, “I’m sorry. I got carried away. I’m not a caregiver, and I shouldn’t presume to comment on your techn
ique. I’m sure you provide Jenny with exemplary care.”

  Ernest offered a conciliatory smile to complement Allison’s smirk. “It’s fine,” he said. And that was that. Going forward, Carl would just have to accept it when these people treated Jenny unfairly. In fact, he would have to spin it into praise for his blog posts; otherwise his plan would die a quick death.

  They succeeded in convincing Jenny to take her evening medication, which reminded Ernest of something else they’d forgotten to do. “Shit,” he said, which sounded odd coming from him. “We forgot to take Jenny to tutoring. Damn it. We should really set reminders on our phones or something.” He looked at Carl. “Brianna’s working tonight. The manager. Would you mind, um, not mentioning this to her when she gets here?”

  Concealing his disgust, Carl nodded. “Sure thing.”

  When Brianna arrived for the overnight shift, she didn’t ask about tutoring. She introduced herself to Carl and asked how Jenny had been all day. “Fine,” Ernest said.

  “Pretty good,” Allison said. “A small conflict, but nothing major. You can read about it in the daily report.” She shot Carl a self-righteous little smile.

  Ignoring her, Carl decided to try to get some information that would help Natalie while there were three FutureBrite employees present. “Have you any of you ever worked with Jonathan Trangebe?”

  He got only silence in reply, which presumably meant no.

  “Have any of you even heard of a Jonathan Trangebe in this company’s care?”

  “FutureBrite has thousands of children in its care,” Brianna said. “Besides, employees aren’t allowed to discuss clients they’ve worked with before.”

  Carl suppressed a frown. He was beginning to realize how difficult it would be to prove that someone didn’t exist.

  “It was nice meeting you, Carl,” Brianna said.

  That seemed like his cue to leave, so he smiled and walked toward the door. “Bye.”

  “See you, Carl,” Ernest called after him. Allison said nothing.

  During the short walk home through the lobby, Carl burned with shame over having done so much to protect this depraved company’s reputation in recent months. Reading the criticisms online was one thing, as they could be discounted as the ravings of radical activists. But actually seeing a child mistreated was quite another, and it made him realize the activists were right. FutureBrite really was rotten to the core, and so was he, for ever defending them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  During his next shift, Carl found himself working with Ernest again as well as Cynthia, a geezer who had opted to remain in Dodge specifically to work with FutureBrite children. She felt they needed her more than she needed to leave for the New World. She volunteered this information within a half hour of meeting Carl.

  He admired her intentions, but she didn’t seem to get on very well with Jenny, who treated her with the same indifference with which she seemed to treat all her caregivers. Carl didn’t intend to leverage any more lollies in the effort to get Jenny to school on time, and Cynthia stood outside her door instead, trying to coax her out. Eventually, she succeeded, but by then the cab had been waiting for twenty minutes. The driver seemed used to it, though.

  “I really admire what you and SafeTalk are doing,” Cynthia told Carl once they were all sitting on couches in the teachers’ lounge. Ernest was once more fully engrossed in his phone. “People have a lot of misconceptions about FutureBrite. We need someone on our side.”

  Carl nearly snorted.

  “I know we’re not perfect,” she said. “Who is? But we try. We do our best by these kids.”

  “To be sure,” Carl said. “Have you ever worked with a child named Riley Uneasyli?”

  Ernest looked up. “I have. I picked up a shift at his unit a couple of weeks ago.”

  Carl fought an urge to ask him what had happened to the client confidentiality Brianna had spoken about so reverently the day before. But he didn’t want to jeopardize his chances of getting information on Riley’s situation.

  “Why do you ask?” Ernest furrowed his brow.

  Carl could think of nothing to say except the truth. “He’s my nephew.”

  “Ah. Yes. I read about your brother’s son being a FutureBrite kid. You know, if you’re wondering how he’s doing, you could always visit him. As long as the client is willing, the company does allow family visits.”

  Carl could have hit himself. That had not occurred to him. He didn’t need to extract information about Riley from his new coworkers. He could just go and talk to Riley directly. He wondered whether Leo had been to see him yet.

  One of Jenny’s teachers approached them after they’d been at the school for a couple of hours and told them Jenny was in danger of failing math. “Ironically, it’s her reading and comprehension that’s holding her back,” she said. “If you sit down and explain the problem to her, she normally gets it right away. But, unfortunately, I don’t have time to sit down with every student. If you could make an effort to spend more time going over the problems with her, maybe—”

  “Jenny hasn’t had as many opportunities as other children,” Cynthia said. “The poor dear just doesn’t have the skills, or the focus, to keep up with her classmates. We try to get her to do her work, but she gets so upset.”

  “I’ll spend some time working through some problems with her this evening,” Carl said.

  Cynthia had no reply. Ernest barked a laugh, and said, “That solves that, then.”

  Jenny’s teacher smiled at Carl. “Thank you very much.” She asked for his email address and said she would send him a link to a page with the sort of problems Jenny was struggling with.

  “She has a tutor, you know,” Ernest said after the teacher left the lounge.

  Carl ignored him and took out his smartpad to write his first blog post. He’d decided what he would write about: the great expense FutureBrite went to in order to provide comprehensive, high-quality care for its charges. He planned to go into great detail about how they paid for research into Jenny’s home life as well as her education, tutor, medication, cab trips, video games, food, clothes, therapist, LifeRank subscription, and so on. His post would also address how they got their funds from charities like the Better Foundation, which in turn took money from wealthy donors and crowdfunding. Donating to charity improved one’s LifeRank considerably.

  With this topic, Carl could meet all the requirements of his assignment while still giving ammunition to FutureBrite’s detractors. His glowing depiction of FutureBrite’s ‘generosity’ would fuel criticism that the company was a kid farm, and that it used any excuse to apply for more funding, even if it meant medicating children unnecessarily or fighting to keep children in the system by defaming their parents.

  He wondered whether SafeTalk would allow comments on his posts. Somehow he doubted it. The controversy would have to unfold on social networks and personal blogs.

  Jenny finished her school day, and they went back to the unit, where she soon donned her headset. Carl decided not to approach her about working on her homework just yet. She probably wanted a break first, so he resumed work on his blog post, and Ernest took out his phone. Cynthia talked constantly, interrupting them both in turns.

  At quarter past three, Carl asked Ernest whether Jenny had tutoring today. He gave a start when Carl said it, and turned red. “Yes,” he said. “She has that every day. I was, uh, about to call a cab.”

  “I’d completely forgotten,” Cynthia said.

  Jenny was about as eager to go to her tutoring session as she’d been to go to school in the morning, and it took considerable time and effort to extricate her from the game world and persuade her to get ready.

  “Do we all go with her to the tutor, as with school?” Carl said.

  Cynthia shook her head. “Rudy, the tutor, is good with her, so only one of us needs to go.”

  “Oh. Well, I can go, then.”

  “I’m sure you must have a blog post to write,” Ernest said. “I�
��ll go.”

  “I’m almost done, actually.”

  “Come on, Ernest,” Cynthia said. “Rudy can handle anything Jenny cares to pull. Let Carl go with her, and you can stay here and chat with me.”

  “Out of the question. Carl doesn’t have the proper training to be left alone with Jenny. Rudy may be capable of managing her, but there’s the cab ride back and forth to consider, too. What happens if there’s an incident? I don’t trust a lot of the cab drivers, and I definitely don’t trust Jenny to behave. I’ll go with her.”

  “I’ll come too, then,” Carl said. “I think it’s important I experience every aspect of her care.”

  “Fine,” Ernest said.

  Jenny’s tutor lived in another residence complex, but they ended up running only ten minutes late, which, Carl now understood, counted as punctual for Jenny’s caregivers. During the CabLab ride Ernest looked just as uncomfortable with Carl’s presence on the trip as he had back at the unit. “Rudy’s a very different kind of person,” he blurted.

  “How so?”

  “Well, he takes on FutureBrite kids, for example. Doing that hurts his business, since it turns off wealthy parents who don’t want their children associating with FutureBrite kids. He’s an excellent tutor and he could be making a killing.” Ernest shook his head.

  For his part, Carl was surprised Ernest spoke so frankly about Jenny’s socioeconomic reality right in front of her. She didn’t remark on it, but Carl wasn’t sure whether that was because she wasn’t listening or was simply used to it.

  Rudy turned out to be a thin, balding man, older than Carl’s father—rapidly becoming a geezer, in other words. Carl liked him, though. He shook Carl’s hand firmly but briefly. He was soft-spoken but direct. And he did seem to work well with Jenny, who, though she engaged in the sort of boundary-testing Carl was coming to expect from her, seemed to hold a grudging respect for her tutor. For his part, Rudy was not above using bribes to get her to focus on her lessons. He apparently had a math-based game that Jenny enjoyed, in which she played as a dragon storming a castle, with each battle represented by an equation to work out. If she focused on her work, Jenny would be allowed to play the game for the last fifteen minutes of the session. Carl made a mental note to employ this technique himself: bribes that weren’t sweets-based.