Freedom Incorporated Page 5

  Samantha narrowed her eyes and studied Jen’s pensive expression. “Like your grandfather?”

  Jen nodded, “Yes. I’ve given this a lot of thought.”

  “How?”

  Jen frowned. “I don’t honestly know...”

  Silence.

  “…but this is something I have to do.”

  Samantha nodded, understanding perfectly. “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

  Jen shrugged and started walking again. “I don’t know that either. We’ll think of something though.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes before returning to the somewhat less threatening subject of men, which provided plenty of entertainment to fill their journey back to Tweed Heads.

  *

  Wednesday, September 15, 2066

  04:27 Andamooka, South Australia

  Dan stretched lazily toward the ceiling and perversely enjoyed the pain that shot from his bruised back. The nightmares were back, haunting his sleep with memories he would have gladly erased. The night was silent, especially out in the desert. His property was over 30 kilometres from the centre of town. Nobody, not even the locals, came out this way.

  He shambled to his bathroom and ran some pink-tinged water for a shower. The hot water system groaned protestingly through the pipes he’d personally installed in the walls. At least,Dan noted, the damn computer selected the right temperature. He’d been having trouble with it recently and was thinking about getting someone out to examine it. An undersized fan laboured to siphon off the steam billowing from the cubicle and Dan slid into the curtain of heat, closing the glass behind him.

  The warmth seeped through his body, massaging the stiffness from his muscles by pelting them with needle-like drops. It stung, but Dan liked it that way. His lips twisted into a savage smile when he remembered how his wife had endlessly complained. She’d enjoyed taking showers with him but could never stand his settings. And for his part, Dan had never enjoyed the tepid showers she’d preferred.

  The agony of recollection thumped him like a fist in the stomach and knocked him to his knees. It took all his strength to keep from totally collapsing as he fought to keep the floodgate of memories closed. He remembered the last time it had happened, how his limp body had covered the drain and the bathroom had flooded while he just lay there, shaking. It wasn’t something he wanted to repeat.

  He regained his feet, then mindlessly soaped his skin and rinsed the grit from his body. He spent long minutes digging the dirt from beneath his fingernails, ignoring the sting of soap in the cuts on his hands.

  Katherine, Katherine… Katherine.He thought his wife’s name with each scrape of the brush under his nails.

  There were some things you just couldn’t let go.

  And this was one of them.

  The best he could hope for was to cram the thoughts back into his ill-treated mind and hope they never resurfaced. Of course, it never worked. But it was effective enough to let Dan live something that outwardly resembled a normal life.

  Finished with the shower, he dried and dressed in work clothes – another set of ragged garments from the endless sea of ragged garments brimming in his cupboard. He glanced at his watch and a bemused smile flirted across his lips. He remembered the advertisements PortaNet had used to extol the benefits of the portals, back in ’32 when the company was just starting. He wasn’t old enough to remember the original transmissions; he’d seen them on a tribute-to-portal-technology show aired on the company’s twenty-fifth anniversary. One particular commercial came vividly to mind – it depicted two social scientists explaining how portals would eliminate jetlag, allowing businesspeople to travel in comfort.

  Dan scoffed.

  How wrong they’d been. If anything, the jetlag situation had grown worse. Dan’s circadian rhythm was still working on London time. He’d spent most of the previous week there and it had thoroughly confused his wake-sleep cycle.

  He had no inclination of returning to bed and allowing his nightmares to manifest again. So, without anything else to distract his roving mind, Dan started the day in earnest. He cast a guilty look at his gym equipment, idle for months now. He sighed and walked quickly past. It seemed to laugh at him from beneath a layer of dust in the corner of his den.

  Breakfast was the same as it had been every morning for eleven months – rolled oats sprinkled with sultanas. It was the only thing he could be bothered making.

  Then Dan looked at his bottle. Its plastic surface was glossy white, as though Xantex had fabricated it in pristine laboratory conditions. Dan doubted it somehow. He held it loosely in his hands and read the prescription label, the same as he did every morning.

  “Zyclone.” His lips felt soiled just speaking the name. It was, theoretically, the most powerful anti-depressant ever to come from a Xantex test-tube. Or so they kept telling everyone. Personally, Dan wasn’t sure he felt any different.

  That’s a lie.He tried to ignore the voice, but it was persistent. You’re losing yourself, mate.

  It was true, he felt numb. But he doubted that was any fault of the chemical in the capsules. Some emotions were stronger than ever – fury, grief, remorse. Theywere still there. Perhaps the edge was gone, but they were still powerful enough to wind him, to bring him to his knees.

  He flipped the cap, tossed a capsule to the back of his tongue and swallowed without water, all in one fluid motion. It scraped as it went down despite the gelatine coating and he reached for some orange juice to wash the feeling from his throat. Hmm… not many left.He made a mental note to stop by a pharmacy within the next few days.

  With a resigned sigh, he rubbed his fatigued eyes and cleaned up the kitchen before retreating to his study. Then he sank into his recliner and rested his feet on the desk. It was his favourite chair, perfectly moulded to the shape of his back and buttocks. He snuggled deeper into the fabric. It smelled musty; he admitted that. And Katherine had pleaded with him to get a new one, but he just couldn’t bare the thought of parting with it. Especially now. She’d said it didn’t go with any of their other furniture and not even Free-Breeze could remove the smell wafting from the cushions. Yes, Dan was glad he still had it; the study wouldn’t be the same if he’d relented. But today the ugly bruise on his back made it… not uncomfortable, but not comfortable either.

  He foolishly let his eyes wander to a photograph of his wife. Slowly, gently, he reached out and held the frame, gazing into her brilliant blue eyes.

  “Katherine.”

  Eleven months had passed since that cruel twist of fate had wrenched her from him, and still he’d barely begun the healing process. I wish you were here with me.He chewed his lip. Or me with you.He didn’t want to linger on that thought because he wasn’t sure he could stop himself if he did. Suicide had played heavily on his thoughts in the days and weeks immediately after she’d died. So maybe that means the medication is working.He hadn’t seriously contemplated killing himself since he’d started taking the Zyclone. His eyes drifted over her photograph. He remembered the way her hair kept getting caught in his mouth and it brought a smile unbidden to his lips.

  If it weren’t for his sister and his parents, he wasn’t sure he’d still be alive. Dan put the photograph down. I haven’t called Christine for…He picked up his phone and started dialling his sister’snumber before good sense stopped him and he hung up again. No, she’d be asleep.He wished he were better at expressing himself. He wished hewere able to tell his sister how much he appreciated everything she’d done for him. Dan couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to his family; it seemed his languishing depression had finally managed to push them away too. The realisation didn’t come as a surprise. He’d become a recluse, absorbed by his new line of work.

  Dan had failed his psychological evaluation after the sudden death of his wife and the dwindling New South Wales Police Department – one of the few surviving non-corporate police forces in an ever-privatising world – had relieved him from duty. With nothing left to do but s
it and contemplate his loss, he’d grown desperate for distraction. He’d found it rummaging in his desk drawers one evening when he stumbled across an invitation from UniForce. They’d been trying to entice him into a career change for years. The invitation included a glossy brochure professing the benefits of bounty hunting – choose your own hours; choose from a wide range of lists all with outstanding remuneration rates; choose who to apprehend; choose when and how you apprehend them.

  With nothing to lose, Dan had met with their liaison officer. And two months later, he was buying exclusive lists from their bounty co-ordinator.

  He had a knack for the hunt.

  Unified Enforcement, or UniForce, filled the growing void of law enforcement on an increasingly chaotic planet. They owed their legal powers of arrest to sanctions from the WEF, who saw the law enforcement branch – the Apprehension Division – of their ballooning organisation as a world-benefit. The Apprehension Division reviewed all UniForce petitions and decided which arrests to sanction. UniForce could only legally pursue sanctioned targets.

  Anyone with the relevant skills was welcome to apply for a bounty-hunting license. The successful applicants could then purchase lists of wanted felons, suspects, or a combination of the two. There were also various categories on sale. Bounty-hunters could purchase large lists that UniForce sold multiple times – forcing them to compete for bounties with several other hunters – shorter lists with only a few competitors, or exclusive lists of ten names that they could pursue alone.

  The exclusive lists were especially expensive and only good hunters could turn a profit. Dan calculated that hunters paying for exclusive lists would need to return three targets before earning back their initial investment. But few hunters bothered with exclusive lists because those targets were also the hardest to capture. UniForce reserved their sale for elite hunters, those that had proven their ability by consistently dominating the easier lists.

  But for the past three months, Dan had purchased exclusive lists – which explained his displeasure to see the Raven stealing his bounties. Dan pensively rubbed the stubble on his chin, wondering what he should do about it.

  The ugly fact was, there was very little he could do. UniForce wasn’t the type of corporation he could accuse of double-dealing. No.He shook his head. Dan needed proof before he could confront anybody with anything.

  He arched an eyebrow and his recently ignited resentment flared up. He wouldn’t mind if it was anybody else. But that fucker’s dangerous.He hated the Raven and hated running into him. Periodically crossing paths with the Raven had convinced Dan to switch to exclusive lists in the first place.

  If I just had proof.He wondered if it would be enough to prove the Raven took a bounty from Dan’s list. He knew it wasn’t. UniForce was unlikely to find such evidence in their database. Dan scowled.

  So I do nothing.It irked him, but he had no option.Either he quit bounty hunting, or he playedaccording to the rules UniForce put on the table.

  *

  Tuesday, September 14, 2066

  UniForce Headquarters

  18:20 San Francisco, USA

  Jackie watched the rain trickle down her window.

  It streamed in rivulets across the glass, sliding one way and then the other in its journey to… Where?She supposed the small rivulets would merge with larger streams and then flow into the torrent-choked stormwater drains and finally out into the bay. Mergers.Her ensuing smile pulled her cosmetically altered skin tightly across her bones, giving her a cheaply manufactured mannequin look. She felt the stretch in her cheeks and uttered one of her favourite epithets at the surgeon who’d done the damage. Surgeon?Her mind used the term loosely.

  She clenched her jaw – she looked more human that way, and she knew it. So the surgical disaster had snuffed her infrequent smiles. Now she just looked stern, something she didn’t mind in the least. Her rich chocolate hair was also fake, though a good enough forgery to look authentic. Nobody had yet guessed that she used three different shades of brown to achieve the natural look. Certainly nobody had guessed she was turning grey.

  Her skin was brown and leathery, the product of extensive cosmetic surgery and too many hours wasted in a tanning bed. Sunshine was for the hoi polloi. Executives used tanning salons – safer, faster, better – for 1,000 Credits an hour. And the salons threw in free dermal-hydration treatment. But for all that, her teeth were white, despite her daily regime of seven cups of coffee. And her eyes sparkledintensely blue – bluer than even contact lenses could make them. Ironically, her irises were real, though nobody believed it.

  Her black suit bulged in places it oughtn’t and lacked volume in places shewould’ve preferred it. She knew she was fighting a losing battle, but she wasn’t yet ready to give in and rigidly stuck to her routine in the gym. Absently she felt her bicep; it felt strong under the flabby padding. But, infuriatingly, the firmness of the muscle tended to highlight the ocean of blubber on top. She grunted disgustedly and shifted her thoughts back out the window.

  San Francisco looked beautiful in the twilight, no matter what any of the others said. But she wasn’t ready to pack up and head home yet, the day had only just begun to get interesting. Besides, there was depressingly little for her to go home to– her cute little mixed-breed dog, Sasha, and the mounting pile of dishes. She needed a technician to fix her dishwasher and made a mental note to call one.

  Her buzzer honked and the tiny strobe light attached to the communication panel started to flash. She decided it would have to go; the damn thing gave her a headache whenever it went off.

  “Yes?” She snapped irritably.

  “PaulSavage here to see you.” Joanne’s voice sounded clear through the latest in speaker technology. They’ve gone too far this time,Jackie thought, annoyed that she couldn’t pin down the source of the sound. It made everything sound larger than life, almost as though the voices came from inside her head.

  “Send him in.” Jackie pushed back from her desk with a sigh and waited, less than patiently.

  Her massive wooden doors, intricately carved with Michelangelo’s cherubs, swung ponderously inward and PaulSavage shuffled into the room. She’d never met a man with a weaker spine or less direction in life. She noted, with irritation, that he didn’t bother to hide his grey hair. And he’d clearly given up fighting the spare tyre sagging around his middle. It’s easy for men.She hated it, but it was still true. Even in the socially conscious ‘60s, women had be beautiful while men could let themselves go. Seven decades of social commentators hadn’t yet raised enough public awareness of what her favourite author had called The Beauty Myth. Typical,Jackie thought. The public is so stupid.

  “Yes?” She tried to pre-empt his rambling greeting.

  “Uh – yes. Uh… hello, Jackie.”

  She’d obviously failed.

  “I have some… things that I’d like you to, uh, take a look at. Uh, if you wouldn’t mind?”

  Jackie fought the urge to sigh and stifled it into a semi-normal breath. “What is it?”

  Paul ambled to her desk, zigzagging inefficiently. Inefficiency tended to be his hallmark.

  He looks drunk.Jackie wondered whether he’d spent the day in a bar and tested the air with her nose, trying to detect alcohol on his breath.

  Paul oftenlookeddrunk, though he partook in alcoholic beverages strictly after work and restrained himself to a glass of wine with dinner. He was once a real boozer until the doctors warned him that what was left of his pathetic balance would dissolve entirely if he kept it up. The alcohol was sustaining a strain of bacteria that feasted on something in his inner ear. They’d tried antibiotics with little success; it was one of the resistant strains. Experts blamed the prevalence of antibacterial products and over-prescription of antibiotics in the late twentieth century. The practice had lasted until the ‘30s when antibiotics finally lost their kick. Paul didn’t really have anyone to blame but himself, or society’s selfish ways. After all, he’d used antibacterial soap, antibacterial di
shwashing liquid and antibacterial household cleaners just like everybody else. And so the bacteria in PaulSavage’s head continued to eat, and he grew less steady on his feet by the day.

  He placed a thin manila folder on Jackie’s desk. “It’s for the, uh, shareholder meeting.”

  Jackie didn’t take her eyes off him and didn’t reach for the folder. She waited for him to explain.

  She waited a long time.

  Eventually Paul said, “There are some puzzling, uh, yes, troubling figures projected for the final quarter.” When he frowned, his big bushy eyebrows came forward so far they nearly pushed his glasses off. He removed thespectacles and took a moment to rub a tired hand over his ruddy face. “If you could take a look at them, uh, before the meeting then that’d, uh… that’d be great.”

  It was times like these that Jackie had no idea why she bothered with Mr Savage. Like any of his work will make it to the meeting. Jackie reminded herself not to smile. What a fool. You’re my puppet, dear Savage, you’ll do and say everything I want you to.“Okay, I’ll take a look.”

  Paul nodded his thanks with a friendly smile. Jackie was yet to decide whether it was genuine or whether he could turn warmth on at will. She wished she could do that.

  “Thanks, uh… Jackie.” Paul took his leave and shuffled in the general direction of the door, unaware that Jackie Donald’s eyes were boring into his skull from behind. With what seemed like a colossal effort, he closed the doors behind him.

  And, finally, he was gone from Jackie’s sight.

  “Stupid dumb-shit goddamn motherfucker.” Jackie had learnt to swear from her one and only boyfriend back in college. She rocked in her chair, inwardly twitching at the thought of PaulSavage running a shareholder meeting. But it had to be that way. Paul wasthe public head of the company. Only a handful of people knew Jackie was the real CEO. She could count them on one hand: PaulSavage, James Ellerman, Michele Roche, Esteban Valdez and Carole Lam. And the WEF of course, but they didn’t really count.