Freedom Incorporated Read online

  He’d graced her with one of the charismatic smiles that came so naturally to him. “I’m nothing like your father Jen,” he’d said gently. “When I see something wrong I have to do something about it.” He could tell she didn’t understand so he elaborated. “At school, have you ever had the feeling that one of the rules was wrong?”

  She’d thought about that for a moment before answering. “Yes, we have to stay inside during lunch, but I want to sit under the trees.” She pouted.

  “Do your friends feel the same?” he asked, gently guiding her to understanding.

  “Yes.” She nodded.

  “But no one does anything about it, right?”

  “No.” And understanding slowly began to dawn.

  “So, it’s up to you little Jenny.”

  At the time she’d felt dwarfed by the immensity of the task. “But how?”

  “If you want to eat under the trees you have to think of a plan that’ll make the teachers listen. Sometimes just telling them what you want is enough. Other times you have to stage a protest, or get the other students to sign a petition. What do you think?”

  “I’ll get my friends and we’ll ask together.” She squealed in delight. “Maybe then we can sit outside!” She understood now, her grandfather had a passion for life but he had to live it his way.

  “So you see kiddo?” he’d said. “If we don’t do anything we can’t expect anyone else to do it either. Activists are people with principles and enough moral conviction to stand up for what they believe is right.”

  Jen had soaked up his wealth of advice.

  “And the way things are going…”

  “Mike!” Jen’s mother had berated him. “Stop filling her head with all that.”

  But it was too late. His passion for doing what he thought was right had rubbed off on her already. She’d assimilated his critical commentary on society and bottled it inside for nearly two decades until she found a way to challenge society’s problems on her own.

  Jen opened her eyes to the darkness and whispered, “And that’s why I’m following Mike, Dad.”

  Then, too abruptly, the memory was gone and she began to wonder whether David and Samantha had made any progress.

  *

  Tuesday, September 14, 2066

  08:26Baltimore, USA

  Cigar smoke hung stale in the air and plastered the expensive furniture with a film of grime that needed constant attention lest it get out of control. Esteban slouched lazily on the sofa in the back room, naked from the waist up and puffing of his fine Cuban. He enjoyed the taste, he’d always associated it with success and not even the end with the sticky drool could detract from the experience.

  A moan accompanied the persistent squeak of rusted springs, wafting from somewhere else in the compound. It had apersistenturgency to it, something animalistic and ferocious. Esteban took another deep drag and practiced blowing a halo of smoke. He’d always wanted to master that trick.

  “Fuck Junior makes a lot of noise.” Adrian tossed the Fortune magazine he was reading onto the coffee table in disgust, his concentration ruined.

  Esteban nodded mutely, pursing his lips to better form a ring of smoke. The slimy end finally began to nauseate him and he snapped out of his reverie and snuffed the cigar out on the plate he was using as an ashtray. He clapped his hands together hard enough to tingle the nerves beneath his skin and ran his fingers through his slightly knotted black hair. “Now thisis what I’m talkin’ about.” A smile split his face and his neat row of white teeth beamed at Adrian.

  “What?” Adrian grunted, still suffering from a hangover. He didn’t appreciate Esteban’s clapping and loud talk.

  “This!” Esteban swept his arms around the room. “Haven’t you ever dreamt of this moment?”

  The squeaking finally stopped after a climactic groan.

  “You’re still drunk.” Adrian gingerly massaged his temples.

  “No I’m not!” Esteban frowned and strapped his arms to his sides. The haze in his eyes lifted just long enough for a decent glare.

  Junior shuffled into the room, shading his eyes from the muted light with a sweaty arm. His real name was Frank Albert Hansen, but so was his father’s, so everyone called him Junior – something he loathed with a passion. He held an upper-middle management position at the colossal computer manufacturer Global Integrated Systems and pined for admittance to the senior-staff boardroom. Some said he was nearly there; after all, the sales portfolio for his branch of the company had outperformed all the others. A favour here, a slight boost in performance there, and he’d be in. Nobody ever noticed the super discounts and promotional freebies offered to NeroTek from his office. Even if they did, and even if somebody bothered to investigate, they’d find a valid company profile, a legitimate company number and employees on the payroll. The fact that NeroTek didn’t actually exist was buried beneath enough bureaucratic red tape to deter even the staunchest investigator.

  They shared the burden of keeping their secret buried. Adrian knew how to fool the system from seven years at law school, Junior had access to the required databases via his security clearance at Global Integrated Systems, and Esteban was their secret weapon. They would only unleash him if the unthinkable happened. He alone had the power to remove anyone silly enough to stand in their way, and he reminded Adrian and Junior of that at every opportunity. It would be difficult to argue he was their leader, but he carried more sway in group decisions because he was the only one who’d survive if somebody shook the bag.

  Esteban waved good morning to Junior and swaggered behind the bar. The fridge was elegant, blending perfectly with the other fittings. Not even cigar smoke could dim its highly polished stainless-steel front. “Want a bud?”

  Adrian scoffed. “You’ve gotta be kidding? I’m due at work in a half-an-hour. Some of us work in the Easternstates.”

  Junior shook his head and flopped onto the third couch, sinking deep into the comfortable cushions. “I’m out. I’ve got a meeting with Deakins in the morning and if he smells piss on my breath I can kiss my promotion on the arse.”

  Esteban selected a beer according to criteria only he understood and held it up to the light, watching the beads of condensation trickle down the slender neck of the bottle. It made his mouth water. He used the bottle opener under the bar and flicked the cap across the room by balancing it between his middle finger and thumb and snapping his fingers beside his ear. The bottle cap whistled as it arced across the room, then struck the far wall and flopped into some moss that blanketed the base of a pot plant.

  “Do you have to do that?” Adrian peered around the thin rims of his glasses. “I don’t think the others like finding your beer caps everywhere.”

  “Fuck the others.” Esteban was wise enough to keep his voice low in case the ‘others’ were nearby.

  “What if they say something?” Adrian was busy adjusting his tie and collar; something was off kilter, he just wasn’t sure what.

  “Let me tell you a story about the last person that objected to my bottle caps.” Esteban flopped onto the couch and kicked his feet onto the coffee table with a grace that belied his sobriety. “Once upon a time I was contracted to do some uptight arse.”

  Adrian and Junior shared a look.

  “He was blowin’ the whistle on some governmental toxic shit scam. This is going back a few years, back when the government still held some sway. So he’s a real do-gooder little fuck and he has to be whacked. So I started trailing him, you know, to get to know his patterns. I was at that for what felt like a months and I tell you, this guy was soboring. He was the sort of mousewho’d finish work at six and be home by five-past, even on a Friday. He didn’t have any friends, or if he did that scarecrow bitch he called a wife frightened them away. So I was getting ready for the job and decided to show this prick some excitement before I sent him on his way. He got a message from his ‘wife’,” – Esteban made the quotation marks with his fingers – “and she told him to meet him in this
bar in Chicago. Junior, you know the one I mean.” Esteban clicked his fingers, trying to remember. After a moment the frustration got to him and he scowled. “You know… well shit it doesn’t matter a flying-fuck anyway. So we’re at this bar and I buy him a beer but he says no thanks. So anyway, I flick my bottle cap at the bartender when he’s turned away and got him smack in the back of the head.”

  He stopped to take a swig on the beer, swilling the liquid around in his mouth to remove the fur from his teeth before swallowing.

  “And you know what this guy did?”

  Adrian looked impatientand tried to hurry the story along. “What?”

  “He says I should apologise to the barkeep.” Esteban paused, as if he expected the gravity of his words needed time to sink in. “Me.Apologise! Well I slapped a 20 on the bar and left. So this guy’s waiting for his ‘wife’ for near on three hours before giving up and heading home. But he never makes it, he just – poof – vanishes, nobody ever found his carcass.” He left the insinuations hanging, the way he usually did. Even when he was drunk, his survival instincts saved him from confessing to anything he shouldn’t.

  Adrian stood. “Fascinating, truly.” He drew a neatly folded handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at the memory of perspiration on his brow. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. I need some aspirin before work.” He picked up his briefcase and headed toward the portals.

  “And I need a shower.” Junior stood too.

  “But we’ve got hours before work.” Esteban drained the last of his beer. He already knew he wouldn’t take another; he didn’t particularly enjoy drinking alone.

  “Yeah but I feel disgusting and sticky.” Junior couldn’t stifle a smile. “You know how it is.”

  So Esteban was alone. He shrugged and swaggered to the toilets, letting out a content sigh when he emptied his bladder. His urine was dark and pungent, his kidneys overworked from the beer he’d consumed the previous night.

  His birth parents were Hispanic, though that meant nothing to him. He was a capitalist child, a pure product of market forces. His true parents were Supply and Demand, and his only siblings were Price and Contract. Esteban scratched the hair on his chest; it ran the length of his abdomen and merged with the forest on his groin. Taut muscles rippled under his skin. A gruelling daily routine of push-ups, weights and sit-ups kept him the fine physical specimen that he was. His physique was his last link to the past – to the part of his life that he’denjoyed the most, the only part capable of thrilling him. And now it’s gone.His eyes narrowed and hatred made him punch the flush sensor hard enough to rattle the reservoir nestled in the wall.

  I’ll get you back.Revenge flirted with his mind.

  He washed his hands and admired his biceps, triceps, lats and abs in the mirror. I’ll get you, you little fuck, worse than you ever thought was possible.Then he dried his hands with the blow dryer.

  Esteban was the assassination co-ordinator for UniForce, the company that specialised in the detection and apprehension of convicted felons for warrants that the criminal division of the WEF sanctioned. At least, that’s what the company’s glossy brochure said. There was no mention of the assassination branch because, technically, it didn’t exist. No fame, no glory, no pat on the back for a job well done – Esteban could expect nothing like that for his clandestine role in securing peace on Earth. But the lack of recognition didn’t bother him, much. Appreciation from the CEO was enough to quench his thirst for praise. But it did bother him that he could never again work in the field as an active assassin.

  “I’ll squeeze your balls so hard you’ll wish your daddy never raped your mommy.” He knew it was possible to ruin someone’s life without taking it; he’d succeeded with that already. But he wanted more; he needed to inflict more pain than he could physically beat out of someone. Torture is, after all, most effective when performed inside the victim’s mind. Thoughts could cut more painfully than blades or lasers. Esteban knew that a body was a poor vessel for the delivery of pain,but he was only just learning how much fun it could be to ruin someone’s life.

  He went back to his bedchamber and watched Claire from the doorway. He didn’t cast a shadow but his mere presence was enough to stir her. He couldn’t be sure whether she’d been asleep. Just watching her there, naked and sprawled on the bed caused the sweet rush of blood to his groin.

  She raised her head from the pillow, her sunken eyes void of emotion. She knew what he was there for, just as the other women knew when their masters entered their chambers. It’d been so long since she’d last seen the sky that her skin was pale and thin, almost waxy. Claire rolled onto her back when Esteban unzipped his fly and kneeled on the bed. Her ribs stuck out alarmingly and her skin stretched over them as if whoever had assembled her forgot the padding and added the outer layer prematurely. But her breasts were unnaturally large and looked odd juxtaposed with her gaunt frame.

  She spread her legs. The thought of resistance never registered with her anymore, it hadn’t registered for a long time. Months? Years? She couldn’t remember. Time had blurred into one endless thread of misery. A wince crossed her face when he thrust too deep and it hurt when he pulled her limp hair. His breath reeked of stale beer and cigars and she turned her head aside when he tried to kiss her on the mouth, regretting it when he thrust deeply as punishment.

  When he was finished he stood over her, stroking her forehead without emotion. She rolled away, feeling nauseated by the stickiness between her legs. Then he fingered her scar, the tip of his finger tracing the inch-long incision where the surgeon had extracted her microchip.

  How appropriate.The voice in Claire’s head scoffed in contempt. I should be dead.Such was the power he held over her. With a simple twitch of his finger and a light brush across her skin, he’d reminded her that she was forever the property of the Guild. There was only one way out of a building that had no doors, and she couldn’t operate the portals without a microchip. So they’d trapped her there, in a living death with a handful of equally mistreated sufferers.

  “You stink.” Esteban snarled at her.

  Look who’s talking.She didn’t dare breathe the words.

  “Take a shower before I get home tonight, okay?” He waited in vain. “Okay? Answer me!”

  She mustered the strength to nod though he would never understand the effort it required. “I will.”

  Satisfied, Esteban wrapped a towel around his legs and headed for the showers, light-headed from beer and the exertion of sex. With his desires slaked, he turned his thoughts to what was waiting for him at head-office in San Francisco. Yeah, you’re gonna wish you never heard the name Esteban Garcia Valdez you motherfucker.

  Chapter 2

  I picture the reality in which we live in terms of military occupation. We are occupied the way the French and Norwegians were occupied by the Nazis during World War II,but this time by an army of marketeers. We have to reclaim our country from those who occupy it on behalf of their global masters.

  Ursula Franklin, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, 1998.

  Tuesday, September 14, 2066

  Sydney University, Camperdown Campus

  23:55 Sydney, Australia

  Samantha was giggling uncontrollably.

  Jen looked fearfully around and tried to hush her. “Quiet would you? You’ll attract security.”

  One hand gripped her midriff while the other wiped tears of mirth from the corner of her eye. “Are you serious?”

  Jen nodded forlornly and it started Samantha on a fresh bout of giggling. Jen doubted she’d be ready to see the humour for some time yet, but merely watching her friend was enough to draw a smile, despite her usually serious demeanour.

  She waited for Samantha to compose herself before asking, “What about you? You’ve never had one go wrong?”

  Samantha shook her head. “Not that badly. What’d you do then?”

  “What else could I do? I told him I’d think about it and portaled out of there as fast as
I could.”

  “So has he called yet?”

  Jen nodded again. “But I’m screening them. I’d rather not speak to him again if I can help it.”

  They crouched near a vending machine at the front of the Faculty of Education. The massive sandstone buildings were impressive at night, lit up the way they were. Streamers of light licked the aging sandstone blocks, attracting moths and other flying insects. The low pH in the rain from the past few days was slowly eating away at the very fabric of the building and granules of sand stuck to Jen’s skin when she placed a palm against the structure. She dusted her hands together to remove the grit. After portaling back to their apartment in Tweed Heads she’d traded her oversized shirt for a tight-fitting tank top. She expected the night to be warm, especially if they had some exercise. She’d bleached the white fabric to the point of fluorescence in the last wash, and she thought it’d be wise to do something about it if they went ahead with the plan.

  A rucksack of equipment hung loosely from one shoulder. “Are you sure you know how to do this?”

  Samantha rolled her eyes. “Quit worrying would you? I know what I’m doing.”

  Jen wasn’t convinced. She knew Cookie wouldn’t have a problem, but they’d never tripped this model of circuit alone before. Electronic schematics flashed across her mind whenever she closed her eyes. A bridge here, power supply there, this board boosts the power, that board formats the image, this one does the scaling, and thatboard scans the transmission. There came a point where all the images blurred into one and she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. She just hoped she’d make sense of it when they were standing in front of it.

  Still have to get there first,Jen reminded herself.They’d be lucky just to get a shot at the jam; security around the University had tightened in recent months due to petitioning from Global Integrated Systems. They didn’t appreciate vandals destroying their equipment and they were growing tired of dispatching technicians to fix it. The Australian president, Mark Strathfield, was a Global Integrated Systems lapdog. Everyone knew it. Nobody complained – they’d voted for him. They’d voted for the policies that Global Integrated Systems had proposed anyway, Mark Strathfield was just a puppet. But along with his three-year term – only nine-months complete – came changes beneficial to the goliath computer manufacturer. Besides the lucrative advertising contract, they’d stitched a deal granting the corporation first recruiting rights from University graduates. Then there were the big bucks they tossed at curriculum development, whichhad the effect of whitewashing history texts and strategically placing commercials inside lecture theatres. It riled Jen to think of the Suits sitting around a boardroom, hammering out deals that affected the quality of her education.