Company Town

by Madeline Ashby

  Lynch waved. The walls fell away. Joel stood surrounded by his family, talking with Síofra. He was totally unaware of how his older siblings—his much older siblings—were staring at him. But Hwa knew that look. It was so plain she felt a little embarrassed for them for being so obvious, and embarrassed for the kid for not picking up on it. They were jealous. They were jealous that this skinny little brat with no discernible skills was being picked first for a job they’d been training for since they were born. Jealous that Daddy loved Joel best. Jealous that he loved fucking—or maybe just inseminating—Joel’s mother, so much so that he wouldn’t shut up about it. Jealous that Joel would get all of the money and power and almost none of the hassle of putting up with the media maelstrom and bottomless fountain of bullshit that was Zachariah Lynch. Just plain jealous. And it was eating them up, inside. Hwa didn’t need special lenses or filters or access to one layer of reality or another to put that together. It was plain to see with the naked eye.

  Lynch could worry all he wanted about killer robots or reptoids or tentacle monsters from outside of time and space. It was probably easier for the old man than facing the truth. The people who really wanted Joel out of the picture were already in the room with him.

  “I have big plans for this town, Miss Go,” Lynch whispered. “And I’d like my son to be a part of them. Now, do we have a deal?”

  Hwa looked at Joel. He was so alone out there. Just this kid listening to all the adults. Wondering what all the fuss was. He gave her a very shy, hopeful smile.

  “You.” She pitched her voice at Joel, loud enough so his siblings shut up. “Come here.”

  Joel crossed the room to meet her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “You really want me for this job?”

  Joel smiled. He nodded emphatically. “Yes.”

  “It’ll be hard,” Hwa said. “Can you handle that?”

  Again he nodded.

  “I won’t go easy on you just because of your family name. I don’t give a shit about that. You want me to train you, then you follow my rules. You do what I say, when I say it, and how I say it. You don’t whine, and you don’t complain, but you do tell me if you’re hurt or you’re sick. Okay?”

  “I don’t get sick,” Joel said. “And I’ve never really been hurt.”

  Hwa grinned. “We’ll fix that.” She glanced at Joel’s father. “We have a deal.”

  “Good. Please give Daniel your contact information, and so on. We’ll need your Social Insurance Number. Joel, come with me.”

  And with that, the mirrors enclosed him once more. He was gone. The others in the room seemed to take that as their cue to leave. They drifted out of the room without saying good-bye, and took Joel with them. She saw him cast a glance at her over his shoulder as the mirrors closed behind him. Soon only Síofra was left.

  “So,” he said. “What did you see in the crystal ball?”

  4

  Bruises

  Hwa didn’t tell him what she’d seen in the crystal ball. Nor did she tell anyone. She was tempted to tell Mistress Séverine, when she handed in her notice, but her union rep seemed not to care about why she was leaving. “Of course you must take this job,” she had said. “It’s tailor-made for you.”

  “I’ll be back to school,” Hwa said. “And there’s health benefits. Better than the provincial plan.”

  Séverine had taken Hwa by the shoulders. “We will miss you. But opportunities are thin on the ground, in this place. You must take them as you find them.”

  And so they cashed out her pension, and Hwa put down first and last on a shitbox studio in Tower One. Eileen told her she should apply for something better, but even looking at places in Two or Three made her feel like a fake. It wasn’t like she had a lot of stuff, anyway. And she had no plans to entertain. School started the following week, and with it came a raft of shiny new toys Hwa was supposed to wear all the time. She wasn’t sure which she hated more: the specs, the bug in her ear, or the stupid tartan uniform.

  “Doesn’t it get distracting, like? Hearing me breathing?” Hwa asked.

  “Only at first,” her new boss said.

  Her feet pounded the pavement. She ducked under the trees that made up the Fitzgerald Causeway Arboretum. Without the rain pattering on the hood of her jacket, she could hear the edges of Síofra’s voice a little better. The implant made sure she got most of the bass tones and vowels as a rumble that trickled down her spine. Some consonants and sibilants, though, tended to fizzle out.

  “You get up earlier than I do, so I’ve had to adjust.”

  Hwa rounded the corner to the Fitzgerald Hub. It swung out wide into the North Atlantic, the easternmost edge of the city, a ring of green on the flat grey sea. Here the view was best. Better even than the view from the top of Tower Five, where Síofra had his office. Here you could forget the oil rig at the city’s core, the plumes of fire and smoke, the rusting honeycomb of containers that made up Tower One where Hwa lived. Here you couldn’t even see the train. It screamed along the track overhead, but she heard only the tail end of its wail as the rain diminished.

  “It’s better to get a run in before work. Better for the metabolism.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Síofra probably had a perfect metabolism. It would be a combination of deep brain stimulation that kept him from serotonin crashes, a vagus nerve implant that regulated his insulin production, and whatever gentle genetic optimization he’d had in utero. He was a regular goddamn Übermensch.

  “Look out your window,” she said.

  “Give me your eyes.”

  “I’m not wearing the specs.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re expensive. I could slip and fall while I’m running.”

  “Then we would give you new ones.”

  “Wouldn’t that come out of my pay?”

  A soft laugh that went down to the base of her spine. “Those were the last owners of this city. Lynch is different.”

  She rolled her neck until it popped. All the way across town, her boss hissed in sympathy. “Look out your window,” she reminded him.

  “Fine, fine.” An intake of breath. He was getting up. From his desk, or from his bed? “Oh,” he murmured.

  Hwa stared into the dawn behind the veil of rain. It was a line of golden fire on a dark sea. “I time it like this, sometimes,” she said. “Part of why I get up early.”

  “I see.”

  She heard thunder roll out on the waves, and in a curious stereo effect, heard the same sound reverberating through whatever room Síofra was in.

  “May I join you, tomorrow?”

  Hwa’s mouth worked. She was glad he couldn’t see her. The last person she’d had a regular running appointment with was her brother. Which meant she hadn’t run with anyone in three years. Then again, maybe it would be good for Síofra to learn the city from the ground up. He spent too much time shut up behind the gleaming ceramic louvers of Tower Five. He needed to see how things were on the streets their employer had just purchased.

  She grinned. “Think you can keep up with me?”

  “Oh, I think I can manage.”

  * * *

  Of course, Síofra managed just fine. He showed up outside Tower One at four thirty in the morning bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Like everything else about him, even his running form was annoyingly perfect. He kept his chin up and his back straight throughout the run. He breathed evenly and smoothly and carried on a conversation without any issues. At no point did he complain of a stitch in his side, or a bone spur in his heel, or tension in his quads. Nor did he suggest that they stretch their calves first, or warm up, or anything like that. He just started running.

  A botfly followed them the entire way.

  “Do we really need that?” Hwa asked. “We can ping for help, no problem, if something happens.” She gestured at the empty causeway. “Not that anything’s going to happen.”

  “What if you have a seizure?” her boss asked.
/>   Hwa almost pulled up short. It took real and sustained effort not to. She kept her eyes on the pavement, instead. They had talked about her condition only once. Most people never brought it up. Maybe that was a Canadian thing. After all, her boss had worked all over the world. They were probably a lot less polite in other places.

  “My condition’s in my halo,” she muttered.

  “Pardon?”

  “My halo has all my medical info,” she said, a little louder this time. She shook her watch. “If my specs detect a change in my eye movement, they broadcast my status on the emergency layer. Everyone can see it. Everyone with the right eyes, anyway.”

  “But you don’t wear your specs when you’re running,” he said, and pulled forward.

  The route took them along the Demasduwit Causeway, around Tower Two, down the Sinclair Causeway, and back to Tower Two. New ads on new surfaces greeted them as they passed. The new city departments each had their own cuddly mascot AI that tried to remind Hwa about what she needed for her new apartment. They waved to her from pop-up carts and shop windows. They showed her sales on merchandise from brands she didn’t recognize, brands Lynch had partnered with. New Arcadia was a captive audience, after all; the whole city was like one big focus group. She did her best to ignore the ads. Even if she were interested, she had no time to pay attention. It was a school day, which meant Hwa had to scope New Arcadia Secondary before Joel Lynch arrived for class. This meant showering and dressing in the locker room, which meant she had to finish at a certain time, which meant eating on schedule, too. If she ate before the run, she tended to throw up.

  She was going to explain all this, when Síofra slowed down and pulled up to Hwa’s favourite 24-hour cart and held up two fingers. “Two Number Sixes,” he said. He stood first one one leg and then another, pulling his calf up behind him as he did. From behind the counter, old Jorge squinted at him until Hwa jogged up to join him. Then he smiled.

  “You have a friend!” He made it sound like she’d just run a marathon. Which it felt like she had—keeping up with Síofra had left her legs trembling and her skin dripping.

  “He’s my boss.” She leaned over and spat out some of the phlegm that had boiled up to her throat during the run. “What he said. And peameal.” She blinked at Síofra through sweat. He was looking away, probably reading something in his lenses. One of his legs jagged up and down, seemingly without his knowledge. “You like peameal?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Peameal. Bacon. Do you like it? They print it special here.”

  “Oh. I suppose.”

  She glanced at Jorge. “Peameal. On the side.”

  Jorge handed them their coffees while the rest of the breakfast cooked. Now the city was waking up, and the riggers joining the morning shift were on their way to the platform. A few of them stood blinking at the other carts as they waited for them to open up.

  “How did you know my order?” Hwa asked.

  Síofra rolled his neck. It crunched. He was avoiding the answer. Hwa already suspected what he would say. Finally, he said it. “I see the purchases you make with the corporate currency.”

  She scowled. “I don’t always have the eggs baked in avocado, you know. Sometimes I have green juice.”

  “Not since the cucumbers went out of season.”

  Hwa stared. “You’re stalking me.”

  “I’m not stalking you. This is just how Lynch does things. We know what all our people buy in the canteen at lunch, because they use our watches to do it. It helps us know what food to buy. That way everyone can have their favourite thing. The schools here do the same thing—it informs the farm floors what to grow. This is no different.”

  Hwa sighed. “I miss being union.”

  * * *

  Joel Lynch’s vehicle drove him to the school’s main entrance exactly fifteen minutes before the first bell. Hwa stood waiting for him outside the doors. He waved their way in—the school still did not recognize her face, years after she’d dropped out—and smirked at her.

  “How are your legs?” he asked.

  “Christ, does my boss tell you everything?”

  “Daniel just said I should go easy on you, today!” Joel tried hard to look innocent. “And that maybe we didn’t have to do leg day today, if you didn’t really want to.”

  “You trying to get out of your workout?”

  “Oh, no! Not at all! I was just thinking that—”

  “Good, because we’re still doing leg day. My job is protecting you, and how I protect you is making you better able to protect yourself. Somebody tries to take you, I need you to crush his instep with one kick and then run like hell. Both of which involve your legs.”

  “So, leg day.”

  Hwa nodded. “Leg day.”

  “You can crush someone’s instep with one kick?”

  Hwa rolled her eyes and hoped her specs caught it. “Of course I can,” she subvocalized.

  “I think I’d pay good money to see that.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing I’m on the payroll, then.”

  The school day proceeded just like all the others. Announcements. Lectures. Worksheets. French. Past imperfect, future imperfect. Lunch. People staring at Joel, then sending each other quick messages. Hwa saw it all in the specs—the messages drifting across her vision like dandelion fairies. In her vision, the messages turned red when Joel’s name came up. For the most part, it didn’t. While she wore the uniform and took the classes just like the other students, they knew why she was there. They knew she was watching. They knew about her old job.

  “Hwa?”

  Hwa turned away from the station where Joel was attempting squats. Hanna Oleson wore last year’s volleyball t-shirt and mismatched socks. She also had a wicked bruise on her left arm. And she wouldn’t quite look Hwa in the eye.

  “Yeah?” Hwa asked.

  “Coach says you guys can have the leg press first.”

  “Oh, good. Thanks.” She made Hanna meet her gaze. The other girl’s eyes were bleary, red-rimmed. Shit. “What happened to your arm?”

  “Oh, um … I fell?” Hanna weakly flailed the injured arm. “During practise? And someone pulled me up? Too hard?”

  Hwa nodded slowly. “Right. Sure. That happens.”

  Hanna smiled. It came on sudden and bright. Too sudden. Too bright. “Everything’s fine, now.”

  Hwa moved, and Hanna shuffled away to join the volleyball team. She turned back to Joel. He’d already put the weights down. She was about to say something about his slacking off, when he asked: “Do you know her?”

  Hwa turned and looked at Hanna. She stood a little apart from the others, tugging a sweatshirt on over her bruised arm. She took eye drops from the pocket and applied them first to one eye, and then the other. “I know her mother,” Hwa said.

  * * *

  Mollie Oleson looked a little rounder than Hwa remembered her. She couldn’t remember their last appointment together, which meant it had probably happened months ago. After that time Angel choked her out. Mollie was more of a catch-as-catch-can kind of operator—she only listed herself as available to the USWC 314 when she felt like it. It kept her dues low and her involvement minimal. But as a member she was entitled to the same protection as a full-timer.

  Hwa sidled up to her in the children’s section of the Benevolent Irish Society charity shop. Mollie stood hanging little baggies of old fabtoys on a pegboard. “We close in fifteen minutes,” she said, under her breath.

  “Even for me?” Hwa asked.

  “Hwa!” Mollie beamed, and threw her arms around Hwa. Like her daughter, she was one of those women who really only looked pretty when she was happy. Unlike her daughter, she was good at faking it.

  “What are you at?”

  “I got a new place,” Hwa said. “Thought it was time for some new stuff.”

  Mollie’s smile faltered. “Oh, yeah…” She adjusted a stuffed polar bear on a shelf so that it faced forward. “How’s that going? Working for the Lynches
, I mean?”

  “The little one is all right,” Hwa said. “Skinny little bugger. I’m training him. He’s in for a trimming.”

  Mollie gave a terse little smile. “Well, good luck to you. About time you got out of the game, I’d say. A girl your age should be thinking about the future. You don’t want to wind up…” She gestured around the store, rather than finishing the sentence.

  “I saw Hanna at school, today. Made me think to come here.”

  Mollie’s hands stilled their work. “Oh? How was she? I haven’t seen her since this morning.” She looked out the window to the autumn darkness. “Closing shift, and all.”

  Hwa nodded. “She’s good.” She licked her lips. It was worth a shot. She had to try. “Her boyfriend’s a bit of a dick, though.”

  Mollie laughed. “Hanna doesn’t have a boyfriend! She has no time, between school and volleyball and her job.”

  “Her job?”

  “Skipper’s,” Mollie said. “You know, taking orders, bussing tables, the like. It’s not much, but it’s a job.”

  “Right,” Hwa said. “Well, my mistake. I guess that guy was just flirting with her.”

  “Well, I’ll give you the employee discount, just for sharing that little tidbit. Now I have something to tease her with, b’y?”

  “Oh, don’t do that,” Hwa said. “I don’t want her to know I told on her.”

  * * *

  At home, Hwa used her Lynch employee log-in to access the Prefect city management system. Lynch installed it overnight during a presumed brownout, using a day-zero exploit to deliver the viral load that was their surveillance overlay. It was easier than doing individual installations, Síofra had explained to her. Some kids in what was once part of Russia had used a similar exploit to gain access to a Lynch reactor in Kansas. That was fifteen years ago.

  Now it was a shiny interface that followed Hwa wherever she went. Or rather, wherever she let it. Her refrigerator and her washroom mirror were both too old for it. So it lived in her specs, and in the display unit Lynch insisted on outfitting her with. That made it the most expensive thing in what was a very cheap studio apartment.