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

by Scott Bartlett

  He’d assumed they were taking him to an office within the Station itself, but when a blank wall slid open, revealing a hidden stairway that stretched down so far he could barely see the bottom, he realized something more special awaited him.

  At the bottom of the staircase, they encountered a walkway flanked by arched windows that looked out on breathtaking, snowcapped mountains.

  No. Several things were wrong about that. For one, snowy mountaintops hadn’t existed since long before Xavier’s birth. Plus, there was the minor detail that the staircase had taken them deep underground, far beneath the bustling city. The windows were digital displays. Why this gross expenditure of energy, far beneath the Air Earthport? Unless…

  A gasp escaped his mouth, and one of the rep’s gaze twitched toward him. He’d heard rumors that the CEO lived in the city, though their rare meetings had always taken place in the countryside. Could this be the secret abode?

  The reps, seeming to know where they were going, took him through a series of hallways, each walled with false windows that looked out on a different biome that hadn’t existed on Earth for a long time. Lush jungles. Rolling plains covered in wheat from horizon to horizon.

  Then they came to a desert, with scant, dessicated growth clinging to the hard-baked land. This sort of terrain existed on Earth in abundance. The reps stopped him here, and a doorway swung open, where before there had been only seamless wasteland. The reps stood at ease, saying nothing, hands on their paralyzers. One of them nodded to usher Xavier into the room. So the Hand went in.

  The far wall showed a wintry landscape, but the others were only dark wood paneling, adorned with extravagant light fixtures, one of them in the shape of a bouquet of flowers, another fashioned after a candelabra.

  In the room’s center sat a golden-colored table that bore a single crystal bowl. Xavier approached it, confusion welling up inside him, along with fear. The bowl was filled almost to the brim with dark berries.

  He glanced back at the reps, who still could be seen standing impassively in the hallway. “What are these berries?” he called back to them.

  No response. Xavier studied the berries again. He picked one up, brought it to his nose, and sniffed. Odorless.

  He turned again. “Are they for me, then? Am I meant to…?”

  The reps wouldn’t even make eye contact.

  He cleared his throat, and shrugged, bringing one to his mouth. He hesitated. Maybe just a lick, to see whether he recognized the flavor? His tongue probed forward, but he stopped again.

  “Are they okay to eat?” he asked the guards. Nothing.

  “They’re fine, Xavier,” a voice said, and Xavier yelled, spinning around and nearly knocking the crystal bowl onto the floor. The CEO stood near the snowy scene, smiling.

  Xavier sputtered.

  “What?” the CEO said. “Did you think the berries poisonous? Is that how you thought I’d answer your flub, by feeding you poison berries?”

  “Uh…”

  “That would be awfully dramatic, wouldn’t it? And it wouldn’t really be related to anything that’s happened. I mean, why berries?” Laughing, the CEO approached the bowl, scooped out a handful of berries, and popped them one by one into his mouth. “They’re acai, Xavier. Quite tasty. They’re also supposed to improve cellular health, not that I get too worked up about that.” Finished with his handful, he scooped up another. “Go on,” he urged around a half-chewed mouthful. “Try some.”

  Xavier did. At first they tasted just like raspberries, but then a second flavor followed. “Kind of a chocolaty aftertaste.”

  The CEO nodded. “Dark chocolate, sort of, hey?”

  Xavier nodded.

  “I’ll admit, I knew the berries would freak you out a bit. I did it as sort of a prank. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No! No, it was funny.”

  The CEO nodded again, with more vigor this time. “Yes! I thought so. I’m glad we agree.”

  “Me too.” Xavier sniffed, trying to do so as quietly as possible. His nose ran when he felt nervous, which was rare, luckily. “So,” he said, and trailed off.

  “You’re wondering whether I intend to administer some kind of punishment, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You thought the berries were it.” Another chuckle.

  The Hand of the Market chuckled, too. “I did.”

  “How odd that would have been, if I’d actually tried to feed you poison berries.”

  “It would have been.”

  “But you did fail me, you know.”

  Xavier’s gaze fell to the floor, and he tried to look suitably repentant. He was having trouble, though—a smile struggled to break through. The berries really had struck him as funny, far funnier than they should have. What a droll situation.

  “I did fail,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level.

  “Much hardship resulted from your inability to keep Intoeverylifeali and his friends in line, and I’m afraid a lot more will follow. I have my work cut out for me, now, and you know how I loathe doing work.”

  “Yes. I always did it for you, didn’t I?”

  “You did. For me, and for all the other CEOs. You and your predecessors have flawlessly kept the populace in check. Except…your record isn’t really flawless anymore, is it?”

  “No. Not anymore. I’m sorry.”

  “An apology alone is insufficient, of course. Something will have to be done. Other than the berry prank, I mean.”

  Xavier looked up, searching the CEO’s eyes but still battling a case of the giggles. “What will you do?”

  “What Carl Intoeverylifeali should have done, back on that stage.”

  Xavier frowned. “What?”

  The CEO reached behind his back, producing a gold-plated paralyzer. He pointed it at the Hand’s head. “This.” He fired, and Xavier fell to the ground, slumping sideways against the table, which didn’t budge. His brain could no longer administer his autonomic nervous system, and yet he could offer no reaction as his heartbeat slowed, and his organs shut down, one-by-one.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The wall opposite their cell no longer played the news, and Carl could guess why. Just before the reps shut it off the anchors had started seeming desperate, and their propaganda became palpable, clumsy. It was simple for Carl and Anders to infer just how effective they’d been from the extraordinary measures now being taken to discredit them and their work. The reps didn’t want them to know they’d won a major victory.

  “The bastards want us demoralized,” Carl muttered.

  Anders heard him, and snorted. “No they don’t. Why would they care? In a few hours we’ll be on a prison barge.”

  “Oh, they care. They’ll care until the moment we’re gone for good. Until then, they fear us.”

  “You shouldn’t act so calm and confident when I know you’re not.”

  “You shouldn’t be so irritable all the time.”

  They were both irritable. Everyone knew prison barge conditions were bad, which worried Carl, since things were always worse than they were publicly known to be. But today his irritation had another cause: what would come before the prison barge.

  A Customer Service Representative appeared at their cell, waving, which made the bars slide sideways until they disappeared inside a crevice inside the wall. “Today is the day, gentlemen,” the rep said.

  “What,” Carl said, “only one rep to escort both of us?”

  The rep smirked. “One is all that’s needed.”

  “Bastards,” Carl muttered again.

  The rep led them through the Station, and then through the Air Earthport, which was mostly empty. That made sense—the reps wouldn’t want to do this while an Air Earth flight was leaving, with lots of people busy bidding goodbye to their relatives. The reps would want as many as possible in attendance at the public shaming.

  It wasn’t called a public shaming, though that was what it was. They called it a press conference, and they held one eve
ry time a barge took on a new batch of prisoners. Everyone in Dodge was invited, and attending conferred a LifeRank boost. As Carl emerged into the sunlight, the first natural light he’d seen in days, he saw that this press conference was very well attended indeed. Probably record-breaking.

  A podium faced the crowd, the new prisoners lined up alongside it, their backs to Carl. Two empty spots waited to either side of the podium, and the rep led him and Anders there. To the left of the square a vendor stand was set up, where the crowd could buy rotten produce after the event. Then would come a march to the docks, during which the crowd would be invited to pelt the prisoners with squishy tomatoes and hard little apples. It was all very archaic, and very effective, too. The woman who sold the produce always made plenty of money, and she sat high in the leaderboards. Her name was Barbara Wersbrin. She ran a hothouse that produced food grown only to spoil.

  The reps’ top public relations executive took the podium and cleared her throat. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “The people you see arrayed beside me all agreed to LifeRank’s Terms of Service, and yet their behavior has shown an utter disregard for that agreement. The beauty of LifeRank is that its leaderboards account for even those who violate it, pushing them to the very bottom ranks, where they are subject to prosecution. Those with low LifeRank aren’t just unproductive members of society. They pose a real threat to it.”

  The PR exec pointed at a potbellied man on the end of the line. “This man is a hoarder who refuses to recycle. He takes up resources needed by the rest of Dodge. He will settle his debt to us on a prison barge.” The exec paused for the customary booing, but none came. She frowned, and pointed at another prisoner. “This woman claims she’s Schrödinger reborn, insisting she’s entitled to anything she wants without paying for it. She will spend a decade harvesting refuse for energy to balance her theft.”

  The silence stretched on, punctuated by the exec’s nervous coughing. “This woman persisted in violating CabLab’s trademark, despite repeated warnings.” Carl knew that really meant the accused wouldn’t stop criticizing CabLab online, and probably the crowd knew it too.

  The PR exec began to stumble over her words, keeping her eyes glued to the tablet lying on the podium for longer and longer. A frown clouded her brow. Normally these press conferences were almost festive affairs, characterized by loud cheering for the persecution of unorthodoxy. Today, nothing.

  Finally, the exec got around to Anders and Carl. “This man,” she said, pointing at Anders, “helped disseminate stolen corporate documents—a gross betrayal of his employer, Xavier Ofvalour, the Hand of the Market.”

  The crowd failed utterly to react. The exec cleared her throat, repositioned her tablet, and pointed at Carl. “And this man. This man. His employers at SafeTalk treated him well, and the Hand himself took him under his wing. This man, this common man who under normal circumstances could never expect to receive such special treatment. He found himself on the fast track to buying a plane ticket and traveling to the New World, maybe even in the first-tier section of an Air Earthplane. Did he thank his superiors for this? Did he spend his every spare moment expressing his gratitude? No.” She shook her head, rallying from her prior lapse in confidence. “Instead, he was a prime mover in disseminating the illegally obtained documents I mentioned earlier. Not only that, when he was on stage with Xavier Ofvalour, after the broadcast feed cut out, he held a paralyzer to the Hand’s head and threatened his very life.”

  That did bring some murmurs from the crowd. Violent crime was practically unheard of in Dodge, and when it did occur it was almost exclusively the province of the young.

  “He is nothing more than a terrorist,” the exec said. “He will spend thirty-one years on the barges.”

  Anger surged through Carl, and he balled his fists, stepping forward before any of the reps could stop him. “My only crime is trying to free children from exploitation!” he yelled. “A system that persecutes you for that is a sick one.”

  This time, the crowd did react—by erupting into cheering and stamping. Carl shot a look back at the PR exec and saw that her anxiety was now plain on her face. Behind her, many of the reps stood with one foot forward, as though they were poised to take action but unsure of what that action should be.

  After a protracted moment, the exec spoke again. “This concludes the press conference, then. Please take this time to purchase produce for your personal use while on the march. Ms. Barbara Wersbrin will register your purchases and ensure that they count toward your LifeRank.”

  No one moved toward Wersbrin’s stand. The exec cleared her throat once more.

  “Half price!” Wersbrin shouted, her deep voice reaching every ear without need of amplification. “Half price off produce today.”

  That was unprecedented. And yet no one moved to buy.

  Carl grinned at Anders, who looked as tense as the reps. Then he saw Carl’s smile, and he sprouted one of his own, seeming to relax. They were winning.

  The rep who’d escorted them here grabbed Carl’s arms roughly from behind, with another rep grabbing Anders. They were forced to start marching down the road, toward the waiting prison barge. The crowd followed, silent now, but glaring at the reps. One woman clenched her hands and unclenched them repeatedly, veins standing out on her forearms. What could paralyzers do against such a throng, if they decided to attack? The reps had never been faced with such open opposition.

  Natalie Lemonade had not been among the assembled prisoners, which didn’t surprise Carl. She’d probably been escorted onto the barge early, as a tactical move by the reps. The public would be even more enamored of her than they were of Carl. The FutureBrite leaks had vindicated her actions, after months of persecution from SafeTalk, the media, and the reps. The corporate elites had inadvertently martyred her, and now they wanted her gone, as quickly and as quietly as possible.

  But because of his open defiance while on stage with Xavier Ofvalour, they couldn’t afford to squirrel Carl away without some sort of public display. They needed to make an example of him. But they’d fumbled their opportunity.

  Carl felt grateful that his reunion with Natalie would happen later than he’d anticipated. In confronting Xavier, he’d sacrificed his future in an effort to protect her. It hadn’t worked, of course, but the purity of the gesture remained, and it made him feel slightly embarrassed about facing her again.

  Around halfway through the march, someone in the crowd began to shout Carl’s name, a lone voice amidst the tense silence, sounding thin and a little pathetic. But then someone else took up the cry, and someone else, and soon the entire crowd was shouting it, marching in time to the beat the chant created. “Carl Intoeverylifeali! Carl Intoeverylifeali! Carl Intoeverylifeali!”

  “Amazing,” Anders shouted over the din. “It’s just like the organized protests of long ago. A forgotten art, but we’re remembering it again. The walk of shame has become a march of dissent.”

  The rep holding Anders shook him, grunting for him to shut up. But the words were spoken, and they couldn’t be unspoken. Just like the FutureBrite docs couldn’t be unleaked.

  The crowd carried on chanting as the prison barge came into view before them, a gleaming leviathan. Carl was a hero to these people. He gave them hope, the same hope Natalie had once given him.

  Four words took form in his brain, sliding down to his tongue and sitting there, waiting to be spoken: I am the messiah. He could shout it now, and they would believe him, he felt sure. It would bring them peace to know Schrödinger had finally, actually been reborn. It would mean he’d return someday, as destiny doubtless prescribed, to free them from their bondage and toil in this world of heartless corporations. He opened his mouth to say it. “I—”

  He was the focus of the crowd’s attention, and they fell instantly silent to hear his words. Everyone looked at him with expectation. The rep holding his arms tightened his grip.

  Years of keeping his true identity hidden came crashing down. What would reveali
ng himself now accomplish? It wouldn’t give them hope. It would make them feel abandoned, forlorn after his departure.

  “I thank you,” he said instead. And the rep marched him toward a filthy metal ramp, slick with slime and seaweed.

  Craven New World, Book 2 in the Out of Dodge series, is available now!

  Even a prisoner can have an agenda.

  For daring to oppose the ruling corporations, Carl is shackled and escorted aboard one of the horrific prison barges - vessels designed to break those considered problematic by Dodgian society. Carl decides he will not be broken. Instead, he starts building a rebellion on the high seas. The barge captains are merciless, however, and if Carl isn't careful, he might just get his lifelong wish: to live in the New World...

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  About the Author

  Scott Bartlett was born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where he lives. He is a fiction author who mostly writes science fiction nowadays, though he’s dabbled in humor and literary fiction.

  The author’s medieval comedy novel, Royal Flush, won the H. R. (Bill) Percy Prize, and his contemporary novel Taking Stock, about a young writer struggling with depression, won the Percy Janes First Novel Award, as well as the Lawrence Jackson Writers Award. Taking Stock was also a semi-finalist in the 2014 Best Kindle Book Awards.