A Tale Of Doings Page 12

  David and his team were locked in the RITE lab for the foreseeable future: Lab 4. upstarts was written in blue lettering on the door to their team’s apartment. There was no leaving until a solution was reached.

  Work comes before all else. Live to work, David thought. The luxury and convenience of the CEO’s housing staff was put at the twelve Upstarts’ disposal. Fresh honey loaves filled the cushioned workstation lounge with the smell of a bakery and made an excellent environment for creative thinking. David ate a huge meal, walked in a rooftop tropical garden, and bathed in a steaming bubble bath as he thought of ideas. The manager of the Upstarts had told them to relax and brainstorm two ideas. The team would then review the ideas and decide which was the best to develop further.

  David thought and thought. And then he fingered the small scrap of white paper on which the old man had written. He walked and thought. The day began to pass him by. Whenever an idea was forming, he got distracted by the letter. He had to get the letter to Gayle. David had no access to his usual media devices. He was isolated from the online reality and the broader world until the Upstarts came up with a useful idea.

  “Stop dreaming and think!” he reprimanded himself. David’s path led him back to the garden and then into a cozy brainstorm virtual simulator booth and then to an energy source station to munch on a snack. “Think, you dumb Upstart!” David yelled at the mirror in the human by-product depository stall. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “How do I get this letter out of my head? I need to get it to her so I can stop thinking about her and focus.” His distracted thoughts tormented him.

  David obsessively fingered the paper. Skin touching paper and mind touching heart. He thought and fingered the paper. His brand gave no indicating sensations as he thought. It was silent.

  It happened then. He was halfway through a mouthful of honey bread, reclining on a Thrive comfort sofa, when the idea came into his mind. The idea grew into a vivid mental reality as he plodded under the canopy of the jungle garden. The name and practical applications solidified in his mind. Oh, and the idea was good. It required almost zero infrastructure investment and played into Nnect’s strengths. The plan was called PPRE: Personal Physical Relationship Encounters.

  He stood atop a garden-covered tower and held the once-important small scrap of white paper far out over the ledge. He let it go. It floated haphazardly like an aimless white snowflake on a warm day until it disappeared. He did not need this paper anymore. “My idea was better than a handwritten note,” he declared to the wind. He would not get in trouble for sending letters again. He smirked. “Time to work.” His obsessive, distracting thoughts of Gayle faded like the white paper. His brand pumped him with energy.

  The PPRE idea involved going old-school, allowing normal employees the chance to pay for one-on-one dates. “This is new!” David declared as he let a shaving machine clean his chin. “Physical time with a person—call it match time or something stupid like that.” David let the washing robot clean him. As he stepped onto the tile, dripping wet, he continued his brainstorming monologue: “Every encounter should be protected by the physical safety clause, unlike Orns personal relationships. This service will go way beyond the current Nnect chat room offerings and give normal Productzens a taste of being Self-Purchased.” David let the air dryer blow on him.

  Currently only free people could date, meet in public, and get married. The beauty of the PPRE ideas was that Nnect could charge a lot of freedoms for the rights to a limited and controlled one-on-one dates. The relationship could be an ongoing, mutual investment by both parties, and this meant a new regular and predictable income stream. Nnect could charge for initial setup, continued membership, liability, and upkeep.

  PPRE: this was what David suggested to his team after the brainstorming session ended. It was voted the best idea. He retired early to his bed on the Nnect campus so that he could get started on the project early in the morning. “What an exciting day it’s been for you, Number Twenty-Three!” His brand shot a burst of adrenaline through him, encouraging his effort, before he slipped off into dreamland.

  Chapter 9

  Episode 3: Pitiable

  Phel woke up disoriented and confused. He spat and rubbed his eyes. The blackness around him was dark as night. He could feel swollen bruises angrily vying for attention. His mind was jumbled. Every movement was labored. His body’s condition, with all the aches and groans, reminded him of his brutal training days with the Sonz warriors.

  “Where am I?” he moaned. Something was wrong. This was not an innocent memory from his training days. Those days had been filled with dreams of gaining the attention of the princess of Alexoria. The fantasies of his mind faded and gave way to reality. Reality felt like repetitive heavy punches to the face.

  “Wha, wheerre, whoo,” he mumbled, choking on his bleeding tongue. His tongue felt thick and lazy. His throat gurgled with iron-tasting blood and salty sweat before he spat out the mixture into the dung at his feet.

  Blinking through teary eyes, he rubbed away some of the darkness and peered around him in dismay. The captured knight’s once-shiny armor was smeared and battered. His blue tunic with the sun of Alexoria was torn into shredded rags. His shield was discarded like rubbish next to him. He took a deep breath and tried to make sense of his surroundings. Brown rock, dripping with water, and green moss, squishy to the touch, surrounded him. He gagged as his nostrils filled with the scent of the place.

  “Shits of heaven, has something died here?” He pondered the smell. “Is that smell me?” He refused to believe that. The stench was overpowering.

  Out of the darkness, he heard a growl and a bark. The noise surrounded him and echoed off the stone walls. His eyes focused, and his vision cleared a bit more. He was in a large oval pit the size of his old bedroom. He stifled a groan as he thought of the city of Castle Bend.

  Tears glimmered in his eyes. “Where am I?”

  Another growl. He saw a pack of mangy wolves on the other side of the pit. Phel scooted his feet, pushing himself against the stone at his back. He groveled like a beggar at the city gates. His confusion and fear didn’t give him a moment to reflect on his pathetic status. Thankfully, the dogs ignored him. He sighed and looked closer at their frantic activity on the other side of the small space. “Why are they leaving me alone?”

  Then he saw it. The wolves were busy tearing into one another and fighting over a hunk of carcass that bore the fallen crest of a knight of Alexoria, the golden dual sun. Phel vomited, realizing the dogs munched on a human carcass. He shrank farther into the dark stone at the edge of the pit. He looked up. He would never be able to climb out of this slick deep hole. Despair filled him.

  Minutes or hours later, Phel noticed a commotion near the unreachable rim of his prison. A grate was pulled off the hole, and sunlight beamed down. The noon sun was fierce. Human shadows moved around the top of the pit, and a large hook was snaked down. Phel’s eyes tried to adjust to the intensified light, but before he could focus and make sense of the metal hook and rope, it snagged his armor. Phel was hoisted forcibly out of the hole. He began to protest. He squirmed like a worm on a hook but could do nothing. The wolves noticed him for the first time. The animals growled, leaped, and bit at his dangling boots. His left foot was snagged by a sharp tooth. The wolf tasted blood and began to howl like a demon from the abyss.

  Before the animals could turn him into lunch, the captive was heaved up out of the hole. Phel’s captors roughly hit him and threw him into the cobblestone street. A row of burned stone and wood cottages lined one side of the street; boats lined the other. The fragrance of salt water was on the slight breeze. White stones and cliffs piled high on the outskirts of the village.

  “Waver Town!” This area is occupied by the enemy!

  He looked around fearfully as he was dragged through the fallen Alexorian village of Waver Town, now under the control of the Driston invaders. The war-battered town had once been a lovely village on the white cliffs of the ocean bu
t was now disfigured into a fortified camp and a headquarters for the invaders. Phel looked around in dismay and despair as his captors pushed him forward with jeers and blows. His bruised legs gave out; he face-planted. Mud oozed onto his skin and made a suctioning sound as a soldier pulled him to his feet once more.

  “Drane wantas him brought upta da mansion,” growled a warrior with a long braid, more wolf than man.

  “With Lord Meldz off on those secret raids, Drane’s word’s law.” Another solder jostled him forward.

  Phel knew from his debriefing with his squadron leader that the ruler of the invading force, Lord Meldz, often left on secret raiding trips with his elite warriors. It appeared that Lord Drane, second-in-command, had ordered the captured knight into his headquarters, a marble stone mansion, the residence of the deposed mayor.

  The command room was wide open and adjacent to the house’s courtyard; it took Phel’s eyes a moment to adjust to the firelight inside the dark room draped with thick red curtains. He was forced to his knees. There was a clanking as guards bound him with heavy iron chains. His body was too broken to respond with disdain or dissent. In the room with the fearsome black-bearded bear of a war chieftain known as Drane, there were a clutter of Driston citizens, a couple of elite warriors, and a local Sonz peasant whom Phel came later to know as Cledwyn.

  Phel looked to Cledwyn, a fellow citizen of Alexoria, for kindness. The farmer did not greet Phel with an embrace but instead immediately identified Phel as a Sonz knight.

  “See by his armor and insignia, this man is part of the newly trained squadron of the Sonz Guard.” It was clear the traitor traded information for his safety in the village. The farmer continued to betray the captured knight and the people of the good kingdom of the Sonz by telling Sir Drane, “He is most likely a messenger from the king to the northern armies that aggravate your advancement.”

  “Traitor!” Phel gasped. A soldier’s fist hit him across the jaw. He was silent.

  “How do you know this?” A look of wary intelligence flickered under the bushy commander’s brows.

  “Because of his age, the solo mission, and the location where you captured him.”

  Phel warned the traitor of a farmer with an angry stare. Silence, fool! he thought. How dare you betray your king to keep yourself alive.

  But the farmer pointed out to the invaders that a message would most likely be strapped on the inside of the warrior’s armor. “My wifey used to stitch the palace guards’ clothing before the pox took her kind soul.”

  Phel was searched and a letter found. Sir Drane of Driston ordered the discovered letter to be read. No one in the room could read the writing of the Sonz warriors; even the farmer could not. No one except Phel.

  “Read the inscription or die!”

  The young warrior refused.

  Sir Drane cursed the men of Driston who had killed all the intellectuals in the village of Waver Town, because no one who could read from the Sonz was left in the village.

  Drane brought Phel outside and killed a bowlegged villager in front of him. Still Phel refused to provide his assistance in reading the king’s message. Sir Drane beckoned his warriors to bring out more motivation for Phel.

  Two people were dragged before the broken warrior, a beautiful young woman and a scrawny teenage boy, both gagged and straining against their bonds.

  “No, don’t,” Phel begged, not believing they would kill more innocents.

  Drane raised his sword above the teen. Phel did not flinch. No one would kill a bound youth. Drane swung his cruel sword and killed the teen. The head bounced to Phel’s feet and dripped blood on his battered boots.

  Phel was shocked. How brutal is this man?

  The sword lifted once more, above the blonde.

  Chapter 10

  Café Miscreants

  Quarter 1, Day 5

  The PPRE project idea took off. David’s RITE team selected it as the best option. The first product proposal draft had been sent to the managers of the RITE the day before, and David’s entire team of Upstarts was allowed an afternoon off to wait for the manager’s review. The RITE managers were coordinating several other development teams and comparing the results. Once the review came back, the team would have to get to work implementing and marketing the chosen service. Feasibility and quality testing would then take place. If the service passed the rigorous testing, then the CEO’s board would review the product, give input, and sign off on the launch. David’s direct managers seemed thrilled, so the chances were high in the Upstarts favor.

  David went out to a local Mega Consumption Mall to try to connect with Gayle on his break. He found a high-speed computer communicator in a local café.

  David ran his twitching fingers nervously through his curling bedhead and stared intently, a dazed, lost-in-thought expression on his face. He was zoned out. He waited for a reply message to his most recent attempt at buying a connection with Gayle; being blocked on one platform did not exclude trying another avenue.

  “By Rex himself, I despise unproductive waiting,” David moaned. “Shit stock luck,” he thought when he saw no response. Normally his brand discouraged this sort of obsessive, wasteful behavior. Normally wasn’t today though. He focused all his attention on the subject on his screen. Would she say yes?

  The cyber relationship clock of opportunity ticked rapidly into the realm of most unlikely to be compatible. Cyber relationship interaction was a well-known phenomenon because of the aggressive analysis on human behavioral conversational avenues and its resultant profits. Hundreds of statistics files on the subject were using up prominent storage space in the Nnect resource library. David himself had several pictorial charts hanging on his desk exploring cyber-chatting phenomena between men and women. Two days without an interaction meant the sender was being deliberately ignored; David was on the verge of becoming what the charts called desperate and needy. The final stages, as displayed by his charts, included interaction categories such as creepy, deplorable, disinterested, and worst. People flirted up and down the charts into the various realms throughout their lifetime. The conversational reactions were a fascinating key to sales. Regrets, happiness, financial security, loneliness, desire, rejection, attraction, desperation, and connection all played tug-of-war with the human heart as the individuals either engaged in uplifting communication that was appreciated by others or helplessly fought for attention and fulfillment by using others who never responded or appreciated the attention.

  Doc Gus had told David that it was commonly believed that humans desired acceptance. “You might want acceptance, David, but sometimes you have to let things go and wait for the correct timing. Timing is crucial,” Doc Gus had said.

  David ignored the advice, plowing ahead despite the rejection. “What could a Mindmonk know about relationships?”

  Prior to the RITE lockdown, David had typed, “My fellow user, product Abigayle-25 of Thrive, will you partner with me in an online relationship?” Clear, concise, and heartfelt. Or so David had believed. What could go wrong? He hit send on the chat relationship request.

  Gayle had sent a default rejection. No message.

  Today, David had sent ten messages to her:

  Message one: “Miss Abigayle, what is the reason for not accepting my request?”

  Message two: “Twenty-Five, I saw you at the gym. We interacted successfully.”

  Message three; “How would you like to exercise near each other again?”

  Message four: “I received your handwritten note.”

  Message five: “I am employed by Nnect in a very reputable sector. I have hopes of buying my freedom one day.”

  Message six: “Would you talk to me already, by the stock. What have I done to deserve such disrespect?”

  Message seven: “Selfie would encourage me to act in line with my stock quality and training protocols. My last message was out of line.”

  Message eight: “I am confused why I’m not good enough. I develop myself every day.”
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  Message nine: “If you have another relationship, I’m OK still talking.”

  Message ten: “I found you very enjoyable to look at. Please, please. Not sure what to type.”

  There was no response to his fruitless messages in the relationship chat box. David decided to go on the relationship application review section and give negative feedback about Abigayle-25 and her methods of communication. He wrote, “This user refuses to dialogue. It is quite dehumanizing.”

  David looked at the chat box. No responses. But a note popped up on the screen under his feedback comment. Abigayle-25 wrote, “David-23, come see me in person. Let me know when.”

  She will meet but won’t answer my chats or accept our online relationship status request? David was confused. He did not know what to think of that. So he waited for her elaboration.

  The cyber relationship clock ticked, it ticked, and it ticked. The clock was something inside the initially hopeful David that taunted him and played on his fears and condemned him for being some human freak that could not connect with others. Ironically, David-23 spent his whole life creating connection services, but apparently, he could not do it himself when he wanted to. David had never noticed this deficiency before, or at least his brand normally helped him ignore his symptoms of boredom and loneliness. He rubbed his fingers along the textured blue letters of his comforting tattoo. Odd—his brand guide was still dull and less responsive than normal.