Dreams in the Tower Part 1

by Vrana, Andrew

  Dreams

  in the Tower

  Part 1

  Andrew Vrana

  Down on the street the brake lights trailed red tracers, the cars they belonged to giving off a heat that was visible even in the broiling summer air. All around the city, lights came on, heralding the night with gleaming rays of every color; but despite this vast neon palette the city’s hue was orange, like the flames the lights imitated. Inexorably the sun sank below the tallest building on its way to closing out another day, and the man looking out from the highest window smiled.

  Even if it was for the smallest of moments at the very end of the sunset, in that moment not even the sun stood higher than the Silte Corporation tower.

  His grin fading as fast as it had come, back to the reserved demeanor his years at the top had sculpted, the man in the highest room of the tallest tower turned his gaze along one unusually empty street. Down the street beneath the shadows of skyscrapers, a person with implant-enhanced vision might see from the tower a thousand little ants swelling into an army, waiting to launch their hungry march on Silte Corp. But they were just that: ants. He couldn’t even see them from where he stood, having rejected the implants and other body mods that were trendy among those in his social class. Still, he felt the ants’ swelling ripple and saw it as a threat not just to his company, but to himself as well. Because he was Silte…and Silte was he. Bound together like the self is to its fleeting physical form, it occupied a space of his existence beyond the limitations of his organic body.

  Turning from the window, he put his back to a city now the color of smoldering embers: the sun’s final salute to another day. His office, dim with the main lights off, was a relic; workspace meant little to him anymore. The walls were windows on three sides, and they may as well be letting sunlight shine through without casting a shadow, as if piercing an empty space. Desks, chairs, production models of next-big-things, priceless trinkets of antiquity—nothing mattered. If the windows were opened to the dusk, the winds would blow through the other side carrying nothing, because things which had no use to him were as good as nothing.

  All that really mattered was his voice and the mind whose dreams it conveyed. That’s all he did now, turn his ideas into reality. Everything else was just the means to attaining this, and it was incredibly effective; he need only speak a command and his wishes would be fulfilled. He could utter a single phrase and the bothersome ants gathering on that shadowy corner downtown would be done, dead, no longer troubling him.

  And perhaps he would give that command.

  It was a drastic action, but was there a choice? No, of course not. But it was still a tough decision, and not one to make lightly. He had already spent long hours pondering the dilemma. In the end, after all the points and counterpoints, the silent internal struggles, the worthless advice from artificial beings confined to computers, he had condensed the predicament into one vital question: What did he really want? A dozen different times he had come up with a dozen different answers. But the time for uncertainty was over. Making decisions was his job, and it had been his resolute nature, not indecisiveness, which had carried him to the top. So, turning back to the luminous cityscape, he asked the question of himself again.

  This time there was only one answer.

  1

  Dellia had tried—really tried—not to fall asleep, but the droning buzz of the late night news hadn’t been enough to counter the toll two nights of staying up waiting for something to happen had taken on her. She did not dream, though; a prolonged blink brought her from her sentry’s perch on the edge of the couch to a groggy, muss-haired state sprawled across the cushions and squinting at the head-splitting light of the television.

  She pushed herself up and sat there for few moments before realizing she had been asleep. Eyelids parted fractionally, she saw the light of morning was still absent; the ethereal glow illuminating the room came from the television on the far wall, which had woken back up when she had. It was still on ONN, the news network whose reluctance to report on the chaos downtown must have been what lulled her to sleep during her vigil. This wasn’t good. If I missed something…

  It was better not to think like that.

  Stretching and straightening her body, she tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. The small living room around her was unkempt and it bore the odor of too many sleepless nights. She had been neglecting cleanliness for a few weeks now; the thing for which she had been waiting for over a year, the impending event that had initiated the radical course of action in which she was now entrenched, was due to happen any day now.

  Video of a ragged crowd appeared on the TV screen, turning Dellia’s full attention to the news broadcast. Hundreds of men and women, young and old and every shade of human, were amassed at the base of a tower Dellia knew to be Silte Corporation’s headquarters. The mob, many of its members masked, was held at bay by metal barriers guarded on the opposite side by what appeared to be a private police riot squad. She was suddenly tense: some of the private cop organizations were known for their eagerness to kill. They had been the only upholders of justice for two decades now, and they could get away with just about anything if the right people were paid off.

  “TV: Volume twenty.” The device obliged, and the incoherent murmur of the report became words.

  “—and appear to be armed with gas bombs and other non-lethal weapons,” the news reader said over a close up of one private cop’s black riot mask. The shot panned out to show the crowd once again. “For those of you who may just be joining us, the Anti-Corp movement took a violent turn shortly after midnight, and ONN is keeping you informed. This morning, protesters who began gathering in cities across the nation on August 5th—yesterday—marched on Silte Corporation and many of its largest subsidiaries and affiliated businesses in America. Riots are being reported in major cities across the country; the footage you are seeing now comes from the Silte Corporation headquarters just north of the downtown area of Dallas. Silte has long been seen as the Anti-Corp movement’s primary target, being considered by many experts to be the most powerful corporate entity in history.”

  Tuning out the too-calm voice, Dellia stood and felt the blanket slide off her bare legs. She navigated the dirty clothes and food trash littering the floor and made her way to the single window in her company-provided apartment. Parting the blinds with one slender finger, she peered out at the early morning; the North Dallas street was tranquil and pristine, echoing nothing of what was going on ten minutes down the highway.

  Having always hated the tiny, dilapidated apartment she had been placed in without much of a choice, Dellia was now secretly thankful for being stuck out here on the northern outskirts, near the labs. She only hoped the mob didn’t decide to go after Silte’s medical research venture, OpenLife Biomedical, after the private cops chased them away from Silte headquarters. Surely they would find some other target. As a highly organized group they had to know that Silte Corp covertly owned (or secretly funded and thus operated) most of the businesses in the city. In fact, Dallas’s urban nucleus had more than doubled in the fourteen years since Silte’s tower went up, and that was thanks almost exclusively to Silte’s eagerness to offer lush office space in a brand new building in the city to whichever company wanted to become its next major acquisition. The more companies Silte bought out, the farther the urbanization spread.

  “We have new reports coming in…” the anchor said. Dellia went back to the couch to watch. “We can now confirm that the protesters are targeting local divisions and, uh, various other assets of Silte Corporation across the nation.” But which ones? she thought. “We advise that you do not approach any business or property with ties to Silte if at all possible until
further notice. Our team has put together a map of the currently affected areas which you will find on our ONN app. I’ll give you a moment.”

  Searching the room with her eyes, she located her tablet near the couch under a discarded pair of jeans. With trembling fingers she managed to sync it with the TV to bring up a map of the US. She tapped the flashing icon and the map zoomed to her location; she only had to scroll a short way to be sure the area between her apartment and the lab was safe. Zooming out showed that the only red blobs indicating threats were centered around Silte headquarters, far enough away to be safe—for now.

  I better hurry anyway, she thought, already in the process of pulling the jeans on. If they get to the lab before me… She had to be in and out first, just to be sure. She had no way of knowing just how far they might take it; the news seemed to be content with a vague description of the night’s events and hadn’t elaborated. Dellia had a disturbing vision of an angry group of protesters ambushing her on the way there and killing her just for being tied to Silte. The tragic part was, she could soon be their only salvation…if Silte did what she suspected they were planning to do.

  But they might not use it.

  That hope was quickly shattered when she looked up at the TV. The live footage, focused again on the swarm around the Silte skyscraper, showed private cops tossing gas bombs into the crowds. People looked away from where the canisters fell, some shielding their noses and mouths in anticipation, but the gas never came—at least not in a form they could see. Dellia knew what was there, though.

  They had used it, the bioweapon. She had no choice now but to carry on with the plan.

  “Uh, we’re not sure what we are seeing there,” the nervous anchor said as the shot returned to his makeup-caked face. He seemed to be half-paying attention to a sound in his right ear that only he could hear. Perhaps it was just the cynicism that came with years of working for a Silte company, but somehow Dellia knew the man was being carefully coached on how to continue with this story while maintaining the network’s best interests—or something like that. ONN, it would seem, feared Silte. Or was controlled by Silte; both were equally probable.

  Censorship or no, Dellia had seen all she needed to see. She went to her bedroom and donned slip-on sneakers, then traded her worn T-shirt for a less casual plain blue blouse so she wouldn’t look too suspicious going into work at three in the morning. She filled an old backpack with a couple changes of clothes, her tablet, and a few other essentials. Glancing around, she felt a creeping regret about leaving everything behind. No time to get materialistic. She made sure to turn off all the lights and devices before leaving her bedroom.

  In the living room, the TV still droned on. “I don’t think anybody realized violence like what we saw tonight would come from the thus-far peaceful Anti-Corp movement.” The anchor was talking to a second man on screen. “Yet the protesters tonight viciously attacked the brave Guardian Police Association officers with what appears to be makeshift gas bombs. As a society, are we going to put up with this?”

  The man’s shameless lie was appalling. Dellia had seen the video—in fact millions had probably seen it, or would tomorrow. But seeing was secondary to being told what to think for too many people. Those people would believe the lie every time, and that infuriated her. “TV: Off,” she said.

  “Well, I think, Vic, that the thugs got what they deserved and—”

  “TV: OFF!”

  Dellia slammed the door behind her when she stormed out, frustrated at far too many things to be able to calm herself down. Her heart was racing now; she soared down the three flights of stairs, letting the thick, tepid air of a summer night in North Texas fill her lungs.

  * * *

  The quarter-mile to OpenLife Biomedical was uneventful enough to reveal—to Dellia’s relief—the news hadn’t been lying about that at least. In fact the pre-dawn dark seemed much emptier than it should be, eerily calm in the face of the storm blowing itself out a short distance away. Had they really overlooked the research labs at OpenLife, the keystone to Silte’s domineering position in the pharmaceuticals market? Or perhaps they had simply poured the entirety of their strength in this area into the fruitless siege on the Silte Corp tower. Either way, this movement was falling well short of the sophisticated terrorist cell some of the media had made them out to be.

  Before she could dwell much more on this, the lab building was looming before her. Seven stories tall and taking up twice the area of the office buildings on either side, this was as much her home as the apartment down the street. Dellia scanned the rows of dark windows lining the skeletal white walls, but she could see no lights or signs of activity. Instead of walking up to the double doors at the front, she turned down the side street and walked around the building to the employee’s back entrance. The light coming through the glass door made her a little nervous: she did not have the time or patience to talk her way out of an early morning encounter with a supervisor or a nosy technician. Or even—she shuddered at the thought—the Silte-appointed lab director. There were no cars in the parking lot, but she had no way of knowing if Director Adelson’s company vehicle was in the private underground lot.

  Trying not to think about how she might escape such a meeting, Dellia punched the door code into the LED keypad, which became faintly luminous at her touch. The door remained motionless. Again, she punched in the 6-digit code, this time with fervent determination. Nothing for a few seconds—but then the screen flashed the words ‘Crisis Procedure.’ She had been expecting something like this, though she had hoped things would turn out differently. This almost assured her that Adelson was here; he wouldn’t stay home during an event like this, even if he had that choice.

  “Employee name and department,” an androgynous voice said. Shit. It seemed she had to give herself away to get in, and if Adelson was here, he would be monitoring who was going in and out.

  “Dellia Thomas. Viral pathogen research.”

  “Please wait.” There was a brief moment of silence. “Senior Researcher Dellia Thomas, please place your right thumb on the scanner.” She complied and a few seconds later the door swung inward.

  The lab building had never been so eerily calm and silent in Dellia’s memory. Beyond the back door entryway, the lights were off, but dim safety lights detected her movement and flickered on in quick succession as she hurried down the hallway. Each door that broke the perpetuity of the solid white walls was closed and, as far as she could guess, locked from the outside. But she couldn’t get excited about her apparent solitude; anyone she wanted to avoid would be in an office upstairs. Or hurrying down to meet me. She turned right down a hallway and took much longer strides until she reached the lab elevator on the west side of the building.

  After she had punched in the elevator code twice with no result, the slightly outdated panel changed to a thumb scanner and flashed instructions, which she followed with less patience now. Just as the elevator doors began to open, there was a soft ding behind her and she spun on the spot in time to see the door of the private lift recede, revealing the taut face of Lorne Adelson.

  “Dellia Thomas,” he said in his usual empty tone. “You’re here early.”

  “Good morning, Director Adelson,” Dellia said somewhat perfunctorily. She reached an arm behind her to keep the elevator from closing.

  He looked at the glowing screen on his wrist, though Dellia was sure he knew exactly what time it was, then looked up at her and said, “3:47 a.m. is a little early for a researcher to be coming into work.”

  At his dubious stare her mind went to the explanation she had thought up on the way over. “Well, you know, with everything going on right now… I mean, some of the news reports…” She couldn’t seem to complete a sentence under his icy, almost knowing gaze. “Anyway, I thought—I mean I knew—the lab would be in Crisis Procedure. How could it not be? I guess I felt safer here. What if those horrible people found out my connection to Silte and knew where I lived?” It was an irrational fea
r, but she sold it with manufactured vulnerability.

  With a courteous smile Adelson glanced quickly down at her attire—clothes she would never usually wear to the lab—and at her backpack. His smile widened a bit as he said, “Right, well, no shame in being afraid. I’ll be checking on some things down here before I go up to my office, in case you need me.” He turned and walked away towards the front of the building, glancing over his shoulder briefly.

  He knows, Dellia thought, panicking as the elevator door closed and she pushed the B-2 button. He knows and it’s over. I’m dead. All those people…

  But there was nothing else to do at this point except keep moving forward with her now-evolving plan. They would’ve come after her anyway: she knew too much, and someone would have stumbled upon her secret project eventually. Hiding would have done nothing but delay the inevitable. What she was doing now could make that inevitable come a lot sooner, but at least there was a chance to save some lives, a fact made infinitely more significant because she had helped make this situation possible, even if she hadn’t known until it was too late.

  Like always, the underground labs were cold. She flipped on the main lights and hurried down the corridor of glass walls to her personal workspace—an office of sorts. Grabbing a key and pocketing an old flash drive she kept in the bottom drawer of her desk, she crossed the hall nervously and entered the spare lab that was currently serving as a storage room for everyone who worked in this section. The room was empty except for a work table and a row of cabinets, all of which contained boxes of files, broken equipment, and whatever else her coworkers didn’t want cluttering up their workstations. She went to the far right cabinet and opened it, keeping her eyes open for anything out of place that may confirm her worst fear that someone had already been here. Of course, she could have kept it in a locked freezer behind a security door with other ongoing projects, but that would have been obvious—and no more hindrance to the type of person who would want to find it than an old storage cabinet.