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

by Scott Bartlett

  “I don’t care. Not anymore. I care about actually doing something with my life for once, not about protecting corporate profits—I’m great at that—but I want to solve a problem instead of working every day to create more of them.”

  Natalie gave a miserable sigh and now the tears spilled down her cheeks. “Would you like to know why you failed, Carl?”

  He looked up. “Yes. More than anything, I would. Please tell me.”

  “Because you don’t have the will to sacrifice yourself completely. You’re still trying to find a way to succeed without ending up on a prison barge yourself. But the only way I was ever able to put up any fight, and to put a dent in FutureBrite, was to acknowledge that eventually they would get me. That’s why I’m bound for a prison barge, Carl, just as you would be if you’d been willing to do the same as I did.”

  “But…but isn’t that what they want? For us to sacrifice ourselves so that they can put us away for good?”

  She gave a sad smile. “Yes. They want that, too. There’s nothing that doesn’t serve them in some way. But self-sacrifice serves them the least. And it has the power to hurt them, too.”

  Despite the surry coursing through his veins, all at once Carl realized that Natalie was right. If he’d been willing to sacrifice himself when he’d embarked on this mission to help his friends, he could have simply used his position at SafeTalk to disable their censors long enough for the FutureBrite leaker—Jim Ofvalour, if he was right—to disseminate the sensitive documents. But that hadn’t occurred to him as one of his options, because it involved total self-sacrifice. Instead, he’d wanted to find the documents himself, and he’d wanted to leak them himself, so that he could come off as a righteous crusader righting a wrong, rather than just a guy who sabotaged his employer to help his friend avoid the prison barges.

  A true messiah would have sacrificed himself, but now it was too late. If only Carl could have been more like Natalie, or like Rudy, the tutor who sacrificed his own success to help improve the education of the FutureBrite kids he taught and to give them a fighting chance when FutureBrite finally released them from its clutches.

  That made him think of the strange encounter with Rudy earlier that day and of the game code that didn’t work. How unlike Rudy, who seemed so organized, to give him a faulty code and not to follow up afterward to make sure it worked.

  Carl sat up ramrod-straight, buzzing with the thought that had just tumbled into his surry-soaked cranium. “I need an antidote for surry gin,” he said to Natalie. “Do you have one?”

  “Uh, yeah. Sure,” she said, getting up to go to the kitchen.

  The game code Rudy had given him hadn’t been a game code at all. Carl was willing to bet it was a password instead, a password meant to give him access to the information Jim Ofvalour had alluded to Rudy having in his possession. In all likelihood, the password would be for a website accessible only via the Indie Net. But Carl didn’t have a subscription to the Indie Net…

  “Thanks,” he said, taking the antidote from Natalie’s hand and popping it into his mouth. “I have to go.” But first, without thinking, he swept her into an embrace, holding her for longer than friends hold each other. When he pulled away, she wore a baffled expression, and he felt a little embarrassed, but there wasn’t time for any more words. He rushed to the porch, stuffed his feet into the old boots he’d been wearing since his shoes were ruined underneath Rudy’s residence, and slid down the access pole. As he dashed through the lobby, he dialed John Anders.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Anders met him in the porch, and a cloud of dust followed him, billowing against Carl, causing him to wrinkle his nose to waylay a sneeze. “Schrödinger’s cat,” Carl said, coughing. “Surely you can afford a cleaner?”

  “Nobody enters my house who I don’t trust completely. Do I trust you, Carl?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t you?”

  Beyond the hefty propagandist, Carl spied dusty, arcane-looking tech equipment stacked from floor to ceiling, covered in blinking lights and emitting booping sounds. The man repositioned himself to more effectively block Carl’s view and stood with arms crossed over his ample gut. “Sorry, Carl,” he said. “But you don’t get access to anything until you tell me why you need to use my Indie Net subscription.”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t. I require total privacy.”

  “You won’t get that here. I know everything that goes on inside these machines,” Anders said, sweeping an arm through the air to indicate them. “Inside, outside, in the general vicinity of. Everything. And you certainly won’t find privacy anywhere else. But if you tell me what you need, and I agree to help you, then you’ll get closer to truly hiding your activity than anyone ever gets. Except for me, and Xavier Ofvalour, of course.”

  Carl stood near the exit, torn by indecision. Clearly the only way forward lay in telling Anders everything, but how far could he trust the man? Was he a loyal servant to Xavier and the establishment, or was the hint of subversiveness Carl had detected in the small tourist town genuine?

  He remembered what Natalie had said, about how only self-sacrifice could provide even a chance of progress. Carl didn’t know anyone else with an active Indie Net subscription that he could begin to trust with this. And he certainly couldn’t find the level of discretion Anders could bestow anywhere else.

  “It’s sensitive information, Anders.”

  “So turn off your lifelog. You can do that, right?”

  He could, and he did, though he worried it would look like a red flag to his employers. They’d want a report, certainly, but would that alone satisfy them? “What will I tell my superiors at SafeTalk?”

  The large man shrugged. “That you needed my input on a sensitive project? You’re a smart guy, you’ll come up with something. And whatever you do come up with, I’ll back you up. I have the ability to switch off my lifelog too, as a perk from working in Xavier Ofvalour’s employ, and I’ve already done so. Now, tell me what you need.”

  Carl took a deep breath. “I believe someone gave me access today to a trove of sensitive FutureBrite documents. Like, two hundred thousand of them, filled with damning secrets that could very well bring the company down. I’m going to use them to keep Natalie Lemonade off a prison barge and to get my brother’s kid out of their clutches.”

  As he spoke he studied Anders’s face, which betrayed no hint of emotion. When he finished the great propagandist stepped forward, and for a moment Carl feared he would try to subdue him until the reps arrived with their paralyzers.

  Then Anders’s face broke into a broad grin. He laid a hand on each of Carl’s shoulders, giving him a friendly shake. “You finally got your chance to be a good person. Didn’t you?”

  Carl grinned too, and it stretched his cheeks so wide he was sure he looked stupid. He didn’t care. “I guess I did.”

  “Excellent. Now down to business. How many people have you spoken to openly about your intentions while your lifelog was on?”

  “Uh…a couple.”

  “That was dumb. But things are moving swiftly now, too swiftly for either of us to change the course.”

  “Things?”

  “Come inside. There’s someone waiting for you.”

  Brow furrowed, Carl rounded the corner into the TV room. When he saw who sat in the middle of the room, managing to appear graceful with her legs crossed atop a black cabinet coated in dust, his breath caught in his throat. Into a basin somewhere deep within his skull, emotions poured out of several different reservoirs, coming together to form a churning mess. Carl hung suspended in time and space, afraid the beating of his heart would cause him to split down the middle.

  It was Maria.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Hello, Carl,” his wife said.

  “You.”

  She rose, leaning back against the cabinet, and his gaze drifted down to her tight black pants before snapping back to her face. The
situation called for an eloquence fit to sum up his frustration and bemusement, but since that eluded him he remained silent. He couldn’t help noting that her hair, which had touched her shoulders when last he’d seen her, was now cropped short. He couldn’t help wanting to run his hand through its silky blackness. Maria looked fierce and beautiful, and something about her poise sapped some of his anger.

  “I really want to kiss you,” she said, “but I won’t ask for that until I’ve explained myself.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  Anders cleared his throat. “I’ll give you two some privacy. Ring for me when I’m needed.”

  Maria’s slender lips curved upward. “As always.”

  The propagandist left, and Carl frowned. “How do we ring for him?”

  “We don’t. It’s just his way of being funny.”

  “Huh. You’ve been here for a while?”

  “Off and on. I haven’t stayed anywhere for very long, since…”

  “Since you left.”

  “Mm.”

  “I left your smart clothes plugged in. Why, I don’t know.”

  “Thanks. Though I suspect it stopped being effective pretty early on.”

  After clearing a space atop a rickety coffee table, Carl lowered himself onto it, relieved when it only gave a low groan. He settled his elbows on his knees and stared at the floor near Maria’s feet. Without looking up, he said, “You left just as we were starting to be happy.”

  She sighed, and they sat in silence for a time, with Carl wishing there was a window, to give him something to look at other than the teetering piles of computer equipment, or his wife, for whom he was filled with love and resentment.

  When he did look at her, Maria’s eyes shimmered with tears. “I have a confession to make. When we first met, I didn’t agree to date you out of love, or even because I cared about matching up our family phrases. I’m a member of an underground resistance movement, and together we decided you would be an invaluable asset to us.”

  Carl shook his head, which was crowded with innumerable questions. He chose one of them at random. “What are you resisting? Dodge is an anarchy, without a government of any kind. There’s nothing to resist.”

  “You’re wrong, Carl, and you know it better than most. I know you’ve been resisting FutureBrite for a while. Our lack of government just means the people who are actually running things can’t be held accountable. They’ve refined the system over centuries so that it benefits only them, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Except we’re trying, and we think we might finally have a chance of success.”

  “Who are you resisting, though? Who, exactly? Who are you trying to fight?”

  Her tears gone now, Maria pushed off the cabinet so that she stood over him, her expression graver than ever. “Xavier Ofvalour, right now. He’s very smooth, and he’s made himself out to be a philanthropist, which is why everyone loves him. Not to mention he tops the almighty leaderboard, which everyone places such importance on, even though people like him invented it. Within five years, Xavier wants to double the amount of people sentenced to prison barges. That’s the real reason why he became the majority shareholder at FutureBrite…so he could steer their policy toward demonizing the youth even more. And he also wants to increase Air Earth ticket sales to the New World. He’s invested in Air Earth, too, you know. We think he might be behind the recent string of hotel fires.”

  “It’s hard to imagine Xavier Ofvalour running around Dodge setting fire to things.”

  Maria rolled her eyes. “Obviously he would pay someone to do that. It’s about removing the avenues Dodgians have for relieving stress, which pushes them toward that ticket purchase even faster. Xavier’s thirst for money and power is unrivaled throughout Dodge’s history. And it’s going to bring Dodge down.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Sitting on the dusty cabinet again, Maria’s face went slack, and her gaze turned inward, as though she might forget about Carl’s presence entirely. “It’s something my father told me before he died. He worked on one of the prison barges all his life, and he was gone for most of my childhood. My mother died during one of his voyages, but I was sixteen, able to take care of myself, so it didn’t impact my father’s work. But then, during one of his weeks off, I noticed he was acting differently. He started sleeping a lot, so much I wondered whether he was ill. It gave me an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I remember begging him not to go back out on the boat again, afraid something awful would happen. He did go back, but not before he told me something that would shape my life from that day on. He told me that the voyages undertaken by the prison barges are getting longer, while the materials they harvest are growing scanter. Those ancient landfills make up our last major energy source, and they’re nearly depleted. Dodge is headed for collapse. What happened to global civilization is going to happen to us.”

  Carl’s confusion loomed larger than ever. “But it doesn’t make sense. If that were true, why wouldn’t Xavier focus on developing an alternate energy source, instead of focusing on increasing prison barge incarceration and Air Earthplane tickets?”

  “Because, Carl. For Xavier, all that matters is profit. Money is like a religion to people like him, and that means every other consideration pales in comparison. It’s just like it was in the twenty-first century, right before the collapse came. Back then the oil companies fought to block alternative energy technologies, and now it’s men like Xavier, who profit from the prison barges.”

  “What happened to your father?”

  Her lips trembled. “He vanished during his next voyage out. His barge didn’t sink, or anything…he just vanished.”

  Carl crossed the cluttered room to hold her, and she held him back, clutching him close, her embrace needful and desperate. When he felt her face turn upward against his chest, Carl lowered his lips to hers. They kissed for what felt like seconds but must have been a long time, since Anders came back in and cleared his throat.

  “I hate to interrupt,” Anders said, “but our window of opportunity is closing. We need to access those documents, Carl, and we need to do it now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Carl had plenty more questions for Maria and for Anders, but no time remained to ask them. Not if they were going to help Natalie and Riley and all of the others Xavier and FutureBrite had sought to exploit. Anders walked to a nearby wall, cleared some junk away from it, and raised his hands to turn it on. “You said you believe someone gave you access to the FutureBrite documents, which means you don’t know for sure, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, do you have any idea how we might find out?”

  “I assumed you’d know. Rudy is part of your resistance, isn’t he?” Carl had gathered that much.

  “Well, yes…”

  “So didn’t he send you instructions on how to access the leaked docs?”

  Maria’s expression had returned to one of incredulous exasperation. “It’s not that easy. Rudy can’t just hop on Unfurl and message us with a link to a how-to guide. You of all people should know that we’re up against the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus the world has ever seen. If we don’t take extreme measures to hide our communication and cover our tracks, we’ll all end up on a prison barge. Wouldn’t that be cozy?”

  Anders interjected, evidently trying to defuse an argument before it started. “What do you have from Rudy, Carl?”

  “Um, well, he gave me a password, which he said was a code for an educational game. But when I tried using it to unlock the game, it wouldn’t work.”

  Anders’s eyebrows rendezvoused in the middle of his face. “So you have a password, but you have no idea what it grants access to.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Well, I’m stumped.”

  They all sat in silence for a time, in various postures of contemplation, until Carl suggested they watch the lifelog footage of his conversation with Rudy earlier that day. S
o they did, viewing it once and finding nothing, then replaying it to watch for hand gestures that might signify a deeper meaning—maybe an indication of which of his spoken words to pay attention to. When that yielded no results, they studied his speech for any bizarre inflections. Nothing.

  “He’s making sure I open the envelope,” Carl said as Rudy hesitated before leaving for the umpteenth time, emphasizing that he knew Jenny would really enjoy the game.

  “Obviously,” Maria said. “But that doesn’t bring us any closer to the documents.”

  After five more viewings, conversation between Carl and Maria began to get truly heated, and Anders called for a break. The propagandist went into the washroom, and they took the liberty of going into the kitchen and making some instant coffee, which they sipped at gingerly, trying to ignore the battery-acid taste.

  “What is this truly about for you Carl?” Maria asked. “Is it about helping FutureBrite kids like your nephew, or is it about keeping Natalie Lemonade off a prison barge?”

  Her words dripped with reproach, which Carl found almost comical given her liaison with Gregory. But he decided now wasn’t the time to bring that up. Or to be snide.

  “The kid FutureBrite put me with was named Jenny Aprilsho, and I got attached to her. She’s not especially dangerous, no matter how her workers make her out to be. Sure, she’s not the most well behaved child, but she’s only reacting the way anyone that age would react if they were placed in her situation. She’s actually pretty smart, in her own way, and in another world she might have had a decent future ahead of her. To think FutureBrite’s going to ship her off for a profit, to literally be a slave on a prison barge, an innocent kid like her…manipulating her like that, a giant corporation exploiting an innocent little kid…”

  Maria nodded, and didn’t ask about his motives again. She looked as though what he’d said had affected her, which didn’t surprise him because it had affected him too. The truth of it hadn’t been clear to him till he’d spoken it out loud, and now that he had he realized how invested in all this he was. They might as well sign him up to be a full-fledged member of their resistance.