The Age of the Conglomerates: A Novel of the Future

by Thomas Nevins

  “So that’s settled,” X said. “I’m staying put.”

  “PLEASE, DO NOT be alarmed,” a voice announced from within the darkness. “How can we help you?”

  After X gasped, she said, “Water?” If they were going to kill her, why bother to be polite?

  “Yes,” another voice answered, and X accepted the bottle of water from a hand that stretched out of the shadows.

  With that, two men stepped into X’s space. They were older then she was, but not by much.

  “We’re not as scary as we look,” the first voice said.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” the other one said.

  “Where am I?” X asked. Even though it seemed obvious, confirmation might be a good thing.

  “The New York City subway system. A convenient means of transportation, and…,” said the one that X associated with the second voice. He raised a finger, pointed toward the tunnel, and said, “Our home.”

  “Yours too,” the first voice said. “Welcome to the land of the Dyscards.”

  X had always thought of herself as a tough girl who could take whatever came her way, but this was more than she could have imagined and was sure more than she had ever dealt with before, including being kidnapped by the trench coat duo. She was glad she was in the dark. She took another sip of water in hopes that it would help her get ahold of her emotions. She felt like she was going to cry.

  She cupped her hand, poured water into her palm, and splashed the water into her face, just in case. She took a long pull from the bottle and swallowed hard. She had heard about the Dyscards, and some of her friends had dropped out of sight. She didn’t know much about it; nobody did. This wasn’t something the Conglomerates wanted in the media, or that families wanted to admit.

  Since these two were assigned to pick up the new arrivals, they had expected X’s dismay at waking up a Dyscard, and they were silent as they waited for her to catch her breath. The second man reached over and handed her a small towel. X wiped her face and started to tear up again. She felt as if these two had saved her, and maybe they had, but in truth they really hadn’t done much at all but hand her a towel and give her a bottle of water.

  She noticed the taste of what she was drinking. While it felt like water in consistency and texture, there was a sweet aftertaste that felt like it was giving X a lift. She held the bottle up to her face and said, “What is in this stuff?”

  “Good old tap water,” the first voice said. “That plus some tea and a few other tea-like ingredients.”

  “Where did you get tea?” X asked.

  “Does it matter?” the second voice wanted to know.

  X had to agree, but at least she wasn’t crying anymore. She was coming around, and her eyes were adjusting to her surroundings. She noticed that there was a dotted line of small blue lights that went in different directions until they veered off into the dark. There were red lights and yellow lights strategically placed. There was reflective tape over handrails along the walls and on the edges of steps. There were small boxes and alcoves that lined the walls. And there was writing on the walls, graffiti of all scripts and shapes, faded and fresh. Years of it, from the way it looked. The ringing in X’s ears had subsided, and she noticed the sound of water running and a steady drip. She could hear the hum of electricity.

  She pulled the towel away from her and saw that her head was bleeding.

  “Well, we’d better clean you up a bit before we go anywhere,” the second voice said, and grabbed at the strap across his shoulder. X flinched and pressed harder against the steel girder at her back.

  “Sorry,” both men said in unison. “Just a first aid kit.”

  One looked down the line of X’s chin as X watched his eyes come upon the pendant around her neck.

  “It’s funny that they let you down here with that,” the second voice said.

  “I probably wouldn’t let them near it,” X said, staring straight at the man. “Or anybody.”

  The first voice said, “It’s just unusual, that’s all.”

  The second man said, “You must’ve put up a good fight, though it looks like you paid the price.”

  X remembered what had happened, and there hadn’t been anything funny about it.

  THE TRENCH COAT pair had gotten on either side of X and were badgering her with questions. The male half was pecking the info into his phone as the woman asked X questions. She spoke in a clipped and measured manner, it seemed to X, as if the woman never took a breath. That explains it, X thought, she isn’t human. But X knew this couldn’t be true because it took a human to get a kick out of cruelty. The lady trench coat was clearly enjoying this.

  Since X couldn’t make out what the trench coat terror twins were saying, she decided to change her tack and appear as if she would cooperate, not really providing any answers but to see if she could determine what to do next. She was trying to detect if there was a way out that they might not have covered, when the woman reached into her hip pocket and came out with a spray that streamed into the air in front of X’s face. X immediately held her breath, but it was too late. X could see the fright in her mother’s eyes, but she wasn’t sure she saw regret.

  Then the arm of the trench-coated woman reached up toward X’s throat and the chain around her neck. X wasn’t thinking about her mother now. She wasn’t going to let them take her pendant. That was her mark, her identity, her X—safe, protected within a band of gold, guarding her heart. She had found it in an old shop downtown and had thought it must have been designed for her. She had worn it ever since. It was her validation, her name, X. This bitch wasn’t going to take it away from her. X didn’t hear her mother scream “No,” but it wouldn’t have mattered if she had.

  X was going down but she wasn’t out. She focused her will into her leg and pumped her knee at the female officer, catching her in the crotch. The female agent bent over as if she had been shot; the male agent intervened. X transferred her will to her hands as her nails lashed out at the approaching officer, at the soft spot below his chin. He grabbed X by the wrists.

  “I thought you said no violent tendencies,” the male agent screamed at X’s mother as the cell phone skipped across the floor.

  “She’s never been like this before,” her mother said.

  “Let her keep the thing,” the female officer said, her hand between her legs. To X’s mother, the agent said, “We were just making sure she didn’t choke on it.” Her mother was crying now, but still she did nothing to help her daughter.

  The female agent in the trench coat straightened herself up; the male agent had retrieved the phone and was punching something onto the pad. The female agent gave X’s mother the transfer code and receipt. Her mother was still crying. But X didn’t see that now as her eyes rolled back into her head.

  “We’re on our way,” the female agent said into her phone. “We had to put her out.” That was the last thing that X heard before she came to in the land of the Dyscards. And that was the last image of Ximena her mother had, and that picture stayed with her a long, long time.

  X PULLED HERSELF together. The two men with her waited; they had been through this many times before. They also would never forget their first time coming to this place. There had been no welcoming for them, as there was now. They knew to wait, as the kids who had come here had been drugged, gassed, sprayed, or worse, to get them to come in the first place. Some were dealing with chemical dependency and some had been beaten. It looked to these two like this girl had gotten the full bloody treatment.

  They often told the new Dyscards that they may not have wanted to come here but soon they wouldn’t want to leave. Kids never believed them because some things about human nature never change, no matter what they did to genetic makeup. There were certain traits people shared, skepticism being among them.

  Unpredictability was another. No matter how many comparison studies were conducted, profiles offered, roles and scenarios figured out, there was always the variable of human emoti
on that was impossible to forecast. So these two whose job it was to gather the newly discarded had found it best to wait for the kids to adjust. They hadn’t done so well by this one, and they were beginning to become concerned that she wasn’t coming round. This wasn’t abnormal, however, since most of the new arrivals felt scared and resentful at what had brought them here in the first place. It wasn’t as if they had something to miss. It appeared this girl had gotten the full realization of what was happening to her pretty late in the picture, and she saw the totality of her predicament all at once.

  “If you like, X, we might be able to help you,” the first voice finally said.

  “How did you know my name?” X asked.

  “Just a guess. And then there’s your necklace,” the second voice said.

  “If X is your name, you’ll fit in fine down here,” the first one said.

  “You’ll learn more later,” the other said, “but down here you get to pick your own name. Seeing as how it was your parents who named you and those same parents who threw you out, one of the things you can do is give yourself your own new name. But in your case, I don’t know. Your parents named you X?”

  “Not really.”

  This was a lot for X to take in, but the part that X was stuck on was the “parents who threw you out” part. She really hadn’t thought of it that way. She had thought it was more complicated than that. But, when you came down to it, that pretty much summed it up.

  The welcome guys felt they had at least brought X out of her brooding, and they determined a little bit about her state of mind.

  “Well, I guess I gave myself that name—X, I mean. My mother gave me a name I shortened to X.”

  “Couldn’t get much shorter,” one said.

  X replied, “I guess not,” as if she hadn’t thought of that before either.

  “So, you’re ahead of the game,” the other said.

  “Either that, or behind,” X said.

  “Ha,” was their simultaneous response.

  “Let’s clean you up a bit,” one of them suggested. He was feeling X’s time of panic had passed and that she might let them assist her.

  “Or perhaps you would like to clean yourself up a bit instead,” the other said, and that sounded good to her. For his part he had felt the possession and the protection she gave her pendant as well as her name, and he thought that quality showed a strong sense of independence and that X would probably prefer to do things for herself.

  “Thanks,” X said.

  He reached back and brought the satchel that he had behind him around. He opened the bag and took out a foil envelope, tore it open, and took out a moist sterile disposable towel. “Here, clean your hands with this one first,” he said. That was when X noticed he was wearing gloves that were barely perceptible. “It has an antibacterial that will clean you up, and then you can use this antiseptic spray that will form a temporary bandage that will dissolve on its own.”

  X flinched, remembering the spray from the female agent, and the second guy said, “Look, you don’t have to.”

  “Well, we’ve no time for that now, ’cause here comes a train.”

  X didn’t hear or see a thing, and she didn’t feel anything either, but she followed the two as they pressed themselves against a girder, one on either side of her. They wrapped their arms around her as another stainless steel express roared past them like a storm. X could feel the transfer of the train’s vibration into her cheek, all the way into the roots of her teeth. The ringing in her ears returned. The side of the girder was warm, and the sensation of the vibration became like a dentist’s drill in X’s head.

  And just like that, the train was gone, leaving a wake of dust and debris swirling behind it.

  Once the rumble had passed, X said, “Now, with a little luck, I’ll be fine.”

  “You do have us,” one said.

  “The Lucky Brothers, I’ll call you,” X said, and she added, “And I’m lucky to have you, really. Thanks. I’m sorry for how I reacted. It’s all kind of unexpected, you know?”

  “Well, maybe it is time we introduced ourselves.”

  “You don’t have to,” X said. “You’re Lucky Brother Number One and he’s Lucky Brother Number Two. If I can name myself, why can’t I name you?”

  “Well, we are brothers,” Lucky Brother Number Two finally said. “But I don’t know how lucky I am for that privilege.”

  “You two are real brothers?” X asked.

  “It’s worse than that,” Lucky Brother Number Two said. “We’re twins.”

  “Enough,” his brother added. “We’ve got to get out of here. Why don’t you take my arm?” Lucky Brother Number One put his hand on his hip, making a hoop of his arm as a target. X put her arm through the opening, and Lucky Brother Number One did feel lucky, although X was a little too young for him. He never thought of the kids they picked up that way. In this case the sensation that passed through him was the current of privilege.

  “Look,” X said, “I was set up by my own mother. Set upon by a Conglomerate version of you guys.” Now it was the brothers’ turn to be offended, and they wondered what a Conglomerate version of them would be like. “I get gassed and then beaten in a true demonstration of Conglomerate rage. I wake up. I’m disoriented in a dark strange place that smells like piss and carbon monoxide. I’m bleeding. I’ve got a concussion, I’m sure. And then I am almost hit by a train!” X couldn’t help it; she stopped to absorb it all. “And then I meet you guys. Believe me, I am grateful, but now I am going to have to navigate tunnels, avoid more trains, meet new people who look funny and name themselves.”

  Then the ground started to shake. X had never heard of an earthquake in Manhattan, but she was sure that the world had cracked open, and then another train went by, and then another in the opposite direction.

  The grip of the brothers tightened around X. The wind whooshed violently enough to knock them over.

  “The best thing about that is?” Lucky Brother Number One asked.

  “It’s over,” the other replied.

  The Next Day

  In the capital city of the Conglomerate nation, Manhattan, Christine Salter’s alarm sounded, “Good Morning, Christine.” And what followed were selected recommendations from her personal profile for her own New Year / New You opportunities: news from her financial portfolio, her daily diet tip. Christine reached over to turn it off. She didn’t feel like starting her day with a sales pitch. She got dressed and started the second day of the New Year.

  “What a year already,” she said, “and it’s only been one night.” The dark had dissolved into ascending angles of light. She knew that she would have to go back to work at the Pool and carry on with med center business as usual. As a manager, it was up to Christine to challenge the team to overcome their difficulties with the loss of Gabriel and perform for the good of the company. But her heart wasn’t in it and she was worried and confused.

  The previous day Christine had not been allowed to get comfortable from the moment she had been escorted into the elevator at the med center until the time the cops had dropped her off at her apartment. Once she’d gotten home, Christine had climbed out of her dress and gone directly into the shower and scrubbed everything, including her memory, beneath the redeeming steam. She’d then wrapped herself in a terry cloth robe and positioned herself between the hissing radiator and the cold night air and fallen asleep in the chair.

  When she had arrived at the med center earlier on New Year’s morning, she’d thought she would assume control of the situation. Instead she was surprised that all they wanted was her cooperation. She hadn’t even made it out of the elevator before the investigator sent from the office of the Conglomerates had advised her to answer honestly what she had uncovered about Gabriel Cruz’s subversive activities and to explain why she had not reported these allegations to the Health and Human Services Corporation management committee. While they had lost their lead suspect, the investigation into the breach of security at the
med center would continue. They repeated questions as to what she knew of Gabriel’s involvement with others at the facility and the real nature of their relationship.

  That’s what got Christine the most. She really didn’t know anything about her relationship to Gabriel or about his activities, and that hurt. She didn’t want to admit it. Had he used her? That hurt even more. Christine had differences with her parents and had distanced herself from them even before she had moved away. She really hadn’t had many relationships—until Gabriel, the first person she had come to trust, and now he had betrayed her, but she didn’t want to believe that. She loved him. That was real, she believed it still. He had to care for her. She couldn’t have been that wrong about what was happening between them. Could she?

  The investigator alleged that Gabriel was with the radicals and had undermined the genetic reengineering process with impunity, all within the department of genetic development at the center, Salter’s department. Christine had countered that her ignorance hardly amounted to collaboration. But ignorance was not a defense on which Christine had ever relied. She said that she had not reported her findings to management because she had been sure there was an explanation. After all, Cruz had been a model employee and Conglomerate. She’d wanted to confirm the numbers, and if there had been a problem, of course she would have reported it, corrected it, and assured the Conglomerate management of her commitment to the team and the team’s commitment to profit.

  Then the Conglomerate party interrogator let it fly. The bastard asked, “So, who do you think would want Cruz dead?”