Freedom Incorporated (7 page)

“
I hope they
shut the system down! But even if they don’t, we’ve still
won.”

“
This round.”
Jen’s smile dissolved as she thought about the long-term
ramifications of their actions and about what they still had to do.
“It hasn’t even begun yet.”

Samantha disagreed. “Sure
it has. It began decades ago. It just slowed down recently, that’s
all. But we’re helping to speed it back up again.”

Jen shook her
head and said, “No we aren’t.” The thought punched her in the
stomach, knocking the wind from her. She knew they were barely more
than vandals.
So far.
But her grandfather’s vision had
n’
t rotted with his corpse; it lived
on, skipping a generation to saturate Jennifer Cameron with a sense
of purpose. “We haven’t started yet.” She turned to face her friend
– her only friend, aside from Cookie. The other people in her life
were mere acquaintances. How could she call them friends if they
knew nothing about her secret life as a jammer? And she couldn’t
tell them, they wouldn’t understand. Nobody understood. Nobody
except Samantha and Cookie.

Samantha stopped,
returned the look, and said, “Why do you say that? We’ve been
jamming for two years.”

“
And
what
ha
ve we
achieved?” It came out harsher than she intended and Jen
immediately regretted her tone. She bit her lip and reminded
herself that Samantha was
n’
t the enemy. “I don’t want to be
just a jammer.”

“
Then what do
you want?”

Jen clenched
her jaw and absently brushed her hair back
over her shoulder
where it belonged.
“I want to be an activist. A real one.”

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
.
H
e’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
s
oiled
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.
They
were
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 t
oday the ugly bruise on his back made it… not
un
comfortable, 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’s
number 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 he
were
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 sit 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 e
n
tice 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.