know. I want to channel your ambition. I want my employees to be where they belong. So I want you to think seriously about your future. I want you to be alert to new opportunities. There may be a way to tap your energies, who knows? But first you have to prove you can meet the expectations of our work environment here.'
'And if I can't?'
'United Corporations has the right job, in the right place, for everyone.' The threat was clear. 'It's time to grow up.'
The reprimand gnawed at Daniel the rest of the day. It confirmed what he already knew, that his career was going nowhere. Grow up? He felt sometimes that he was the only grown-up in a pyramid of obedient children. Yet he'd trapped himself in a pointless strategy of mild rebellion that accomplished nothing except to keep him from rising above Level 31. There was a very real chance Cox could choose to send him down for insubordination and poor performance, at which time he'd become a pariah to whatever level had to take him in. The Mona Pietris of this world would regard him as toxic waste.
Worse than this gloomy review of his prospects was his suspicion of betrayal by Raven. Had she tattled on his hacking boast? If not, the timing of his section leader's lecture was remarkably coincidental. If so, why? Because he hadn't jumped at the chance to vacation in a continent once ravaged by plague? Ridiculous. Yet doubt built on doubt. Was it mere coincidence that he'd met a lone, pretty woman out running in the dimness of predawn, so incongruous and enigmatic? Everything about her seemed so different from other women he had known: challenging, independent, mysterious, like a… rebel. A priestess. A spy.
To spy on what? Daniel Dyson, low-level key clicker in one of a million ant nests of capitalism? The man on a path to nowhere? It was absurd. Spies are supposed to seduce their victims, not dismiss them in an underground tunnel. Computer files had been erased to the electronic waste bin with more ceremony than he'd been dumped by Raven. She'd probably already forgotten his existence.
He'd not forgotten her, however. She was a misfit and argumentative, but then so was he. Accordingly, he was intrigued by her. No other woman he'd met questioned so much. He'd believed for a moment that they felt the same things, shared the same longings. The fact she'd seemed to conclude otherwise had left him all the more determined to prove it to her.
He'd once thought he had all the time and all the women in the world. Not that he was particularly successful at romantic conquest, but rather that romantic possibility seemed theoretically inexhaustible. There were six billion women! He looked for flaws because he was naive enough to expect perfection. And so when he fell in love with a woman named Katrina who'd subsequently proven challenging in her eccentricities, he'd let her go. He'd been too proud to risk failure by trying to win her over. Too arrogant to accept her faults.
She'd haunted him for the next three years.
Now he had that same sense of puzzled excitement again. As if he knew Raven. One sojourn in a glorified sewer pipe and she'd brought back that same rush of unstable desire. An echo of pained longing. And now the reprimand had linked them again, right?
You idiot, he kept repeating to himself. Leave her alone.
The admonition did no good. He walked after work to clear his head of her and yet the city seemed vacuous. The incessant pop songs of the cafes and arcades seemed annoyingly repetitious. The iridescent avenues, ablaze from shows and pleasure palaces, seemed like a deliberate distraction from whatever he was truly straining to see. He couldn't decide what to eat from the food court choices, where ever more inventive spicing had so exhausted his palate that he could taste nothing at all. He finally retreated to his apartment and scanned eight minutes of entertainment listings, finding nothing that engaged either his mind or his emotions. He had nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one he wanted to see. Except her. Had she betrayed him?
He sat on his terrace and watched the artificial suns of advertisers rise into the dark sky once more as he chewed on a Ready-Meal. Life was easy if you simply went along, he conceded. Work was usually an undemanding set of rote motions, his pay was adequate for all but the silliest luxuries, and entertainment could be as all- consuming as one wished. Other people lived for baseball or theater or console games and seemed content. Why couldn't he? Why did he do?
Damn her. It was necessary to find her for his own peace of mind. He'd put it to her plainly: did you rat on me? She'd deny it. He'd ask for a meeting to clear the air. If she showed, it would be excuse enough to…
He didn't even know her last name. Yeah, you know what you were thinking with.
He went to his terminal and sat for a moment, drumming his fingers in frustration. What was the name of her vacation company? Outback Adventure? He ran computer searches for it and found nothing, which was strange. Had it all been a lie?
He ran searches under her name. Raven. He turned up ornithology texts and Native American legends, but no address or link. Good grief. And he was contemplating mucking about with truth cookies? He was a humbled hacker, his electronic trail at Microcore embarrassingly plain. An amateur in an age when privacy consultants made millions.
So it was decision time. How serious was he? Did he really care?
Of course he did. It was a challenge now. It wasn't boring, like Microcore. He called Fitzroy. The one-time cop had the pals, the codes, and an e-vault full of passwords. But it would cost Daniel a thousand dollars, a day's wages, to get a lead on a woman who had rejected him. Foolish, he knew.
Dammit though, he wanted to confront her. He wanted to know.
'Yeah?' Fitzroy's grizzled head, swollen to giant dimension on Daniel's vid-wall, popped into view. Christ, the man was ugly at that resolution. Bagged, rheumy eyes, sallow skin, veined nose. Nobody had to be homely anymore: why didn't the guy get a laser-lift? Because he lived in his machine, not the world: a cyber hermit. It was the one place he had power, his own personal heaven.
'I need something.'
'Hold on.' The screen fuzzed, came back. Fitzroy had switched on his scrambler. 'Yeah?'
'A woman.'
'What a surprise. Geez, I've never heard that one before.'
'I've got a first name and some tourist outfit she says she might sign on with, but that's all. I need their numbers. Can you get it?'
The private detective snorted. 'That's it?'
'If it's easy, maybe you can give me a discount.'
'Fuck that. Give me what you got.'
'Her name's Raven.'
'Raven? What the hell kind of astral handle is that? She a fucking Indian or something?'
'No. Maybe. I don't know, what does it matter?'
'You couldn't get her last name?'
'It didn't come up.'
'Gotcha. Well, what's her company? Where does she live?'
'I don't know. I first ran into her in Calabria and met her later at Pitney Tube.'
'Geez. Either the shortest relationship in history or you move quicker, with less talk, than anybody I've heard of. You don't know anything about her?'
'If I knew anything I wouldn't need you. Look, I may be getting jacked around here- I'm suspicious of her- so's there's a company I want you to check out. Called GeneChem. Heard of it?'
'Spell it. There's only about fifty million fucking gene-soft-micro-tech bullshit companies out there by now, all of them farting vaporware and DNA that doesn't work. I wish they'd go back to vanity names you can remember. Like Chrysler. Or Kellogg. What was wrong with that? Mine is Fitzroy Investigations. Simple. Honest. None of this net-web-splice-tel crap, you know?'
'Right.' Daniel spelled it. 'Now, this Raven says she's going on a trip with a company whose name you'll like. Simple. Honest. Outback Adventure.'
'Outdoor Adventure? This is, what, swing sets? Pickle ball?'
'Outback, not outdoor. Adventure travel.'
'Oh yeah, right. Bugs and dirt. Jesus, people are stupid. That's another five hundred.'
'Why can't I ever get a discount, Fitzroy?'
'Because I have to eat.' He clicked off.
