Blood Zero Sky (2 page)

~~~

Exposition for the dying:

In N-Hub 3, on the west coast of America Division, two hundred teenagers were having a party. They were drinking illegal alcohol, engaging in lewd dancing, and, according to official accounts, participating in unspecified “perverse acts.” It’s unclear how the tragedy happened—maybe the security squadmen followed some of the kids to the party, or maybe one of the partygoers was secretly an HR informant—who knows? According to the news report, the squadmen ran across a discarded flyer with an anarchy symbol on it and the word “EMANCIPATE,” along with the address of a big abandoned warehouse on the edge of the city, in an area called the industrial arc. At the time, I believed what the newsmen said about how the party was discovered. Now, it doesn’t seem at all likely. Why would the kids be so stupid as to put something that damning into print? It would be suicide.

However it happened, the security squad surrounded the teenagers, barred the doors, and set the structure ablaze without regard for the cries for help, the cursing, the screaming, or the last dying strains of music coming from within as the loudspeakers finally melted and the roof caved in. At least half the kids inside died in the fire.

The rest disappeared.

The following Sunday, Reverend Jimmy Shaw referenced the incident on his biweekly television program as an example of, in his words “God’s punishment to those who stray from the narrow path of righteousness,” and all across America Division millions of heads solemnly nodded their agreement. Hallelujah.

N-Hub 27 (formerly Buffalo, New York): a man dies in his office, a five-by-five-foot cubicle, his IC (mind-integrated computer/phone) interface still in his hand. N-Corp’s regional coroner discovered that he died of sleep deprivation. He was sixty-one million dollars in debt. The interest rate on his loan was a little over 30 percent—pretty standard. He lost his apartment. He lost his car. He lost his seat in the Church since he could no longer tithe, and because of it, he lost his highly religious wife to another man. A lesser person might’ve jumped off a tall building or gone the standard route and allowed himself to be shipped to a work camp to pay off his debt by indenturing himself for sixty years. But not this guy. He was working day and night to earn his life back. Admirable.

Unfortunately, this proved an impossible task. Though he was in N-Corp’s upper management, he was unable to earn overtime—just a straight, hourly wage. The trouble was there weren’t enough hours. Who’d have thought you could actually die of sleep deprivation? Turns out, you can.

These events are common knowledge. They made it onto a couple of the lesser-known N-Info news sites, but nobody cared. Nobody.

Especially not me.

~~~

Randal and I are sweaty, breathing heavily. Our voices echo against the walls of this empty, twenty-foot-wide square room, the home of my 3W3DI, a three-wall 3-D imager. It’s a pretty expensive toy, but I enjoy watching sports—and with an imager like this, where the picture appears on three walls and is augmented with holographic technology, one truly feels in the center of the game. At least that’s what we tell the people who spend two years’ wages on one.

Right now, Randal and I are using it to play one of our favorite video games. It’s basically the same as that old sport racquetball—except in Rocketball rallies are occasionally interrupted by attacking holographic pterodactyls or dragons, and the games can take place in any number of virtual environments, from the courtyard of a Mayan temple to the surface of Mars.

“May, you g-gonna serve it, or wait for it to hatch?” Randal asks, as I bounce the ball—a holographic fireball that looks kind of like a comet—off the floor a few times. Randal’s spinning his plastic racket in his hand, bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet and looking comically rotund. His headband is soggy with sweat, but the look on his chubby face is fierce.

He’s never beat me at Rocketball in his life, and normally he never could—except for today, for some reason, I’m thinking of letting him win. The score on the screen says 13–14.
What the hell
,
why not give the guy a break? I’m feeling generous,
I think, and I serve.

It’s a good point, long and hard fought—but at the end, I make a show of running into the wall and missing my shot, giving him the victory.

The room erupts into a shower of multicolored, holographic fireworks that sizzle around us like burning confetti as dramatic music plays and a banner appears on the screen declaring: RANDAL WINS!

“Dammit!” I yell, chucking my racquet against the wall. If I don’t make a show of poor sportsmanship, he’d know immediately that I threw the game. If he ever actually beat me, I’d break a lot more than my racquet; I’d probably hang myself.

“Well, well, well,” says Randal loudly. Though his face is ruddy and he’s still wheezing, he stinks of pride. “David has slain G-g-goliath.”

As he grins and dances a comical little victory jig, I immediately regret giving him the pity-win. What possessed me to do it anyway? If Dad knew I deliberately let someone beat me at anything, he’d say I’ve gone soft.

“Lucky you,” I grumble.

“You alright? You hit that wall pretty good,” he says.

“I’m fine. You should ask the wall.”

I can tell he buys my sore-loser act, because his grin gets even bigger. He shakes his head at me.

“Man,” he says, “I’m sure glad I’m your friend, because whenever I imagine myself on your bad side—whew!”

He laughs, and I smile in spite of myself. Randal, my oldest friend. Hard to believe we hadn’t seen each other for almost eight years, then—bam—we’re assigned to work together on this budget presentation. Talk about luck.

It’s good to have him back—but unsettling, too, because of how much he’s changed. Take his stutter, for example. He wasn’t always like that. Back in high school, he was just a quiet, handsome, normal guy. But smart as hell. Then he got accepted to Cranton. Cranktown, everyone calls it. Now, they have him on one of N-Corp’s proprietary neuroenhancement drugs, nicknamed Peak. Thanks to this wondrous advance in medical science, he’s a genius. And he can hardly say a sentence without stuttering. And he can’t sleep at night. And he’s gained forty-five pounds. And he works twenty-one hours a day.

But he has a great penthouse apartment.

Despite how much he’s changed (or maybe because of it) Randal is a good friend. And we’ve made the Rocketball a regular thing. Only who’d have thought I would ever let the lard-ass beat me?

“So, May . . . ” he begins, “we really have to talk about these numbers.”

I’d forced him to hold off on talking business until our Rocketball match was done. I could tell it was hard for him—Peakers are notoriously single-minded when it comes to work—but he’d managed to restrain himself. Now that we’re getting into it, though, he’s like a dog that just got let off his leash.

He wrangles his gym bag out of a cubby in the wall and digs his IC out of it. This is last season’s IC model. The new one is sleeker and smaller, and can be strapped to your wrist like an old-fashioned wristwatch. Still, this IC will do the trick. It has all the computing power a person could want; it’s fully integrated with the Company network, cross-controlled, and has a 3-D holographic display setting. Not bad—although as soon as the next gen comes out in a few months, this one will be completely obsolete.

As soon as he looks down at it, the screen changes as the device begins pulling the files Randal is thinking of showing me off the Company network.

“See, I was going over the numbers and I kept finding discrepancies with the revenue p-p-p-projections. . . . Oh, sidebar: there’s something strange with the Africa Division accounting. There’s a ridiculous amount of money being allocated to the Human Resources budget, which doesn’t make any sense because we’re just now ramping up there. Of course, recruiting new personnel is expensive, but nothing like this—not even close. You should talk to your dad. He should really ask Blackwell about it. . . . ”

Blackwell. Vice President of Human Resources, overseer of N-Corp’s security division—and jackass extraordinaire. But as usual, Randal has veered off topic.

“The revenue projections?” I remind him.

“Right, right. The p-projections . . . ”

Randal blinks twice, and the screen of the little IC in his hand changes. He squints, and it casts a holographic projection into the air in front of us. The blinking and squinting aren’t really necessary, of course, but the new ICs were only released last year, and most people are still getting used to using them.

The mandatory IC/Cross Interface program was my first major project when I started with the Company. Cross implantation had started quite a while ago, and most higher-credit-level people in the Company, like me, had their cross implants for years before it became required. It was our job to get the holdouts excited about the process.

The task seemed pretty daunting at first. I had to convince everyone in America Division to get a black implant in the shape of a cross put in under the skin of their left cheek. Oh, yes—and it’s wired into your brain. It seemed so much different from selling an imager or a new car, but I soon discovered that all the sales and marketing tricks I learned in school applied perfectly. Features and benefits: the cross allows everyone to control their electronic devices with their thoughts—no more pesky touch screens or keyboards! It speeds up security procedures at airports and Company security checkpoints because your ID information is stored inside it! It makes cash and credit cards obsolete since all your account information is encoded in the cross, which can be scanned at every cashier station Companywide! And it even ensures that the marketing you receive—the imager ads, IC ads—all of them are tailored to your thoughts! You think about ice cream, we advertise ice cream to you. Talk about convenience!
Get yours today!

But the real genius was the way we rolled the program out. For the first year, only the high-credit-level workers and their families were allowed to get a cross implant, so it became a symbol of social status, power, success. As the months went by, we released it to mid-credit-level workers, then the low-level ones. By the time crosses became mandatory, everyone was clamoring to have one. And we gave it to them—at a considerable profit.

The program was an incredible success. My father was never more proud of me.

But now, Randal is talking numbers.

“ . . . But if you look at the next chart, you can see these projections are inaccurate. When you adjust for all the variables, the real growth in these sectors is slowing. And when you take into account the p-projected demographics changes—”

“Randal, cut to the chase.”

He clears his throat, shifts on his feet, tugs at his beard.

“The C-Company is going to lose money this year.”

I stare at him, stunned.

“That’s not possible.”

“B-but it is. Look at the numbers again. . . . ”

We set up in the dining room of my condo and spend all night poring over the data. Finally, even without a high dose of Peak flowing through my brain, I realize that Randal is right. N-Corp, the Company that literally runs half of the world, is poised to experience a financial loss for the first time in over thirty years.

“What do we d-do?” Randal asks as we sit together at midnight amid the remnants of our takeout dinner.

I sit for a moment, drumming my fingers on the table.

“We tell the board,” I say finally. “That was our assignment, right? You assess the computer’s revenue projections and I present the findings.”

“B-but, May, they’re not going to like the report.”

Randal is right. There’s no telling what might happen when we announce news like this. To say that the Company is going to have a loss is the modern-day equivalent of Galileo saying the Earth isn’t the center of the universe. Then there’s my dad. For the last twenty-five years, he’s had the nickname “Doctor Profit.” He’s not going to be too happy, either.

Randal looks distraught. “It’s going to get ugly, May. No matter who your d-dad is, the board is going to
crucify
you up there.”

I give Randal the most reassuring smile I can muster. “Maybe,” I say, “but it’s the truth. And like Jimmy Shaw says, the truth will set you free. ”

—Chapter ØØ2—

“We walk a path rife with distraction!
Lust, laziness, violence; these vices might come at you from anywhere. The Devil is great with booby traps. He’s a wily hunter. You’d better watch out, or you might get caught. Then, even the Company can’t help you. No, then you’ll be on your own. Unprofitables, anarchists, queers, cross-dressers, they’ve all fallen into the Devil’s grip. But I’ll tell you how to say clear of those traps. Hard work. Piety. Follow those Company policies and your Ten Commandments, you’d better believe it. Turn with me to the book of Deuteronomy. . . . ”

So sayeth Jimmy Shaw from his bejeweled Company pulpit. I turn off the imager screen.

Jimmy: the consummate jovial Southern gentleman, my father’s old college roommate and long-time best friend. I still remember the candy treats old Uncle Jimmy used to bring me when he’d come by the house for Sunday dinner. Even after he stopped visiting, I still never missed an episode of
The Jimmy Shaw Hour in Christ.
The show’s host was always warm, friendly, loving, and around at least two nights a week (on the imager, at least)—all things that my father was not. His sermons made me think of something bigger than myself. And late at night as I lay in bed alone after my evening prayers, I used to think I could really feel God there with me, just like Jimmy said he was.

I still pray twice a day, still believe in God and in Jesus—although in a much more vague way than I used to. I still hear Jimmy Shaw’s homey sayings drifting through my head, especially when I’m contemplating doing something he wouldn’t approve of. But lately, my taste for the show has soured, along with my taste for just about everything else in my life.

It’s the evening after Randal beat me at Rocketball. I’m at home, showered, styled, wearing nice clothes. Alone.

I rise from my N-Lux suede reclining couch and pace my apartment like a panther, watching the shapes my shadow makes on the wall as I pass.

From somewhere below a sound bleeds through, the washed-out blare of music and the braying of laughter from some unknown neighbor’s imager. As much as they charge for this apartment, the Company still didn’t go to the expense of soundproofing the floors.

As alone as I am, humanity still seeps in.

Now I stalk faster, trying to outrun the sound or distract myself from it, but there’s no escape. Through the floor rise the words of a commercial. This jingle is particularly inane and pervasive:

You wanna get it, you gotta face it!
Face it, it’s your identity!
N-Corp!

Even now, with no imager in sight, the vision of the goofy guy from that commercial stumbles through my head. There he is: walking, swinging his cane, falling down, looking like—who’s that film star, from black-and-white silent films? Charlie Chaplin. This guy in the commercial falls down and hits his face on a manhole cover and gets that mark of the cross on his cheek, then suddenly his black-and-white world becomes color; doors open for him, birds land on his shoulders, women come to fawn over him, and his hard-luck antics seem to be at an end. Welcome to the wonderful world of credit, Charlie! Welcome to the life of an N-Corp debtor-worker!

Welcome.

The maddening commercial plays all the time, just to make sure no one forgets that the cross implant is a wonderful thing. Naturally, all commercials played in this region are N-Corp commercials, designed to market N-Corp products, just as all imager shows are produced by N-Corp Media division. The repetition is enough to drive a person insane, but research shows it’s the most effective way to get a message across—and anyway, it’s all I’ve ever known.

As suddenly as it rose, the auditory apparition descends back into the floor. My downstairs neighbors, whoever they are, seem to have given up on the imager and gone to bed.

Thank God.

Still wandering, I cross to the window. It’s twice as tall as I am and runs the whole length of my apartment. Viewed from the exterior, my entire building, all 106 stories of it, looks either like a huge mirror or a massive imager, depending on the time of day and whether the ads are on or off. Now they’re off. Gazing out from here, thousands of other mirrored buildings stand in row upon endless row, as far as the eye can see. Each streetlight below has fifty twins by the time it reaches my eye. Everything is a reflection of a reflection of a reflection. The sky is in the last throes of sunset, and by now the city is mostly dark. My apartment is quiet all around me. I reach out, putting my hand to the glass, and see one more reflection: there’s me—or a reverse image of me—staring back.

I lean my forehead against my forehead.

There: my short, messy dark hair; my big, dark eyes; pale, white skin; thin arms; awkward lips.

And of course, there’s the black cross implanted in my left cheek, two inches by one inch. I know it’s sifting through my mind and try my hardest to divert my thoughts to an acceptable subject—like work, or friends, or what I want to buy myself next—but tonight it’s impossible.

Instead, a scene fills my mind of an old-fashioned bar, full of laughter and loud voices and cigarette smoke, where everyone is packed in so close they can’t help but touch one another. In one corner, somebody bangs away on an old piano. Here, nobody is worried about money, about cars or clothes or plastic surgery. Nobody is afraid of being judged or demoted or fined for cursing. Nobody is worried about their credit level or about Human Resources agents watching them. They blurt out jokes, sacrilegious comments and double entendres, carelessly and endlessly. Young lovers go home together—to their own little houses, not big fancy apartments—and nobody whispers as they leave. The music follows them out the doors, into the streets, and when people pass the stumbling, laughing couples, instead of calling the security squad, they smile.

I don’t know where this imaginary bar came from. Certainly, no place like it has existed in my lifetime. Most likely, I gleaned it from one of my father’s stories about his epic college years. Wherever I got it, my mind wanders to this fictitious bar a lot. Maybe everybody has their own ridiculous utopia; this is mine.

And, of course, it’s filled with hot, flirtatious young women. Some vices are too much a part of you to be torn away completely.

I turn back to my apartment. The air-conditioner hums. The carpet stretches away across the living room, a vast field of perfect white. There’s my imager, my stereo, my desk, my table and chairs, my N-Art signed prints of holo-photos from that famous photographer—I forget his name. All of it’s here, everything I could ever want. I take this inventory a lot, as a sort of mathematical exercise. I am equal to the sum of these treasures. That’s the formula. By everyone’s calculations, I’m doing brilliantly. Within fifteen years, I’ll be a Blackie, free and clear of any Company debt.

There’s my elaborate fish tank, my robot cat, my leather sofas . . . and silence.

My few friends are all working late and will have to wake up early for work. My father is in N-Hub 119, a place once called Mexico City, on business. I am alone.

Outside my door, the security squadmen pass by, laughing. They patrol every building like this. They are everywhere. I could invite them in, I suppose, give them a drink, share a little cake. If one of them was a woman, maybe . . .

I walk to the fridge and take out a cupcake purchased especially for the occasion. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

But why invite the squadmen in? They aren’t my friends. They don’t know me, and I don’t like them.

Nobody knows me
, whispers a voice in my mind.

And that’s true, no one does. Some vices do that to a girl.

So I sit and eat my cake alone. I try not to think of Randal’s dire prediction of the Company’s coming loss.

I put on my N-Elita silk pajamas, wash my face, say Jimmy Shaw’s prayer for health, wealth, and power, and go to bed.

So ends my twenty-fifth birthday.

~~~

The next day.

I sit at the conference table with my team, dreaming up ways to make people buy things they don’t need. It’s not a difficult task by any means. The way it works is simple: we only produce a few models of each product, and we promote them so much before they come out that everyone goes out and buys them instantly, no matter the cost.

The challenge, as my father confided to me on the day I was hired into the N-Corp marketing department, is that, truthfully, N-Corp products aren’t that exciting. We’re the only company operating in the Western Hemisphere, and that means that there are no other companies’ products on the market for us to compete with. Since there’s no competition, there’s no financial incentive for us to innovate. So this new IC is no better than the last one, except that it’s green instead of silver, it has a slightly narrower screen, and you can strap it to your wrist. Of course, the fellows at Cranton are coming up with new stuff every day, but most of it is never developed, or if it does get developed, it’s never brought to the market.

“Just enough to keep the lemmings entertained,” was my father’s axiom when it came to rolling out new products. “It’s not the product they need, May, it’s the need itself. They need to need something. It could be a sports car or a can of peanuts. It’s the distraction they crave.”

To make that distraction work to the fullest, my mission is to make the new product, whatever it may be, more than just a necessity; it must be an obsession. The desire for it must eclipse all else in the consumer’s life.

Easy.

Ads appear on the imagers located inside your shower, on the doors of public toilet stalls, on the surface of your desk at work, inside commuter trains and elevators, in shopping plazas, inside your car, in the backs of the pews at church, in street signs, on the screen of your IC, in the living room of your apartment, in the ceiling above your bed, on the exterior of every building, of course, and in a million other places. The line between thought and suggestion is forever and irrevocably erased—that’s my job.

Today, my marketing team and I sit in suede chairs around a huge ebony and mother-of-pearl inlaid conference table. A giant crucifix hangs on the far wall. I’m almost falling asleep as my team brainstorms about the launch plan for the new IC.

They’ll be mandatory equipment for all Company employees by the end of the year, but those who want to buy it now can do so—at a 300 percent markup.

My job is to make everyone want it now.

“She should hold the IC next to her bra, like this,” says Miller, a pasty young man in a wrinkled tie.

The screen at the center of the table lights up and displays Miller’s sloppy sketch of a ferocious-looking, half-naked girl standing before a fireworks-laced night sky, holding her IC. On the top right-hand corner of the sketch, the N-Corp logo with its big, black cross appears.

“Yeah,” Dagny says thoughtfully, “I like that, but we need a man in there, too. And text. Something like: ‘I know what you’re thinking.’”

“Not bad,” Jeff says.

“That’s good,” Kate agrees.

“Is the guy shirtless?” Carter asks.

“Of course,” Dagny scoffs.

“Does he have an IC, too? Or are they both holding on to hers? Maybe he’s looking at her screen—you know, trying to see what she’s uploading,” Miller offers.

“Or should he have his own? Maybe they’re back-to-back, both engrossed. Like the IC is so fascinating, they don’t even notice each other,” Carter says.

Dagny shakes her head. “One IC says luxury. It says there aren’t enough ICs for everyone, so if you’re lucky enough to get your hands on one, you’d better snatch it up.”

“What do you think, May?” asks Miller, turning his bloodshot, sleep-deprived eyes to me.

Dagny watches me expectantly, too. Her face is round and plump, and the cross under her left eyes makes her features look strangely proportioned, as if she’s just stepped out of a painting by Picasso. Or maybe I just need more coffee.

“Hmmm,” I yawn. “What market is this going to be focused on again?”

“Mostly prime time imager—and we were thinking of using a variation of it as the tag during
The Jimmy Shaw Hour in Christ,”
Dagny replies.

I nod, but before I can speak, there’s a din in the hallway, and we all look out the glass wall of the conference room. Four members of the security squad march down the hallway toward us. As they approach, the white letters “HR” stitched on the chest of their black military uniforms are clearly visible.

“Uh-oh,” Carter says under his breath.

“Who do you think it is this time?” Jeff whispers.

“You,” Miller jokes, then cackles quietly at his own joke.

“Shut up,” I bark. The squadmen are coming right toward us.

The glass conference room doors slide open as they approach, and the leader steps forward. “Dagny Marot?” he asks.

For the first time since the squadmen appeared, I notice Dagny’s demeanor. Her face pale, she stares down at the screen of the IC clutched in her trembling hands.

“Dagny Marot?” the squad member asks again, and when she doesn’t respond, he nods to one of the other men. “Scan her cross.”

The squad member lifts his IC—a slightly larger, more durable version of the one I carry. It beeps.

“Identity confirmed,” the squad member says. “Dagny Marot, you are hereby repossessed by N-Corp.”

Dagny is on her feet now, her chair tipping over as she backpedals toward the window.

“No,” she says. “I’m working on the IC launch. I’m scheduled for a raise. And I’m saving credit. I moved into a smaller apartment. I—I—you need me! Tell them, May!”

The squadmen grab Dagny. She fights for a moment, then groans pitifully and goes limp as the squadmen put the handcuffs on her and lead her from the room. As they depart, the lead squad member’s speech drones on: “. . . Per your employment contract, you will be incarcerated in a Company work camp until your debt load has been reduced to a satisfactory level. If you should fail to—”

The doors slip shut behind them. Through the glass, my team and I watch as they drag Dagny away down the hall, leaving a tense silence in their wake. A few curious heads poke out of the cubicles they pass before quickly disappearing again.