Daemon (27 page)

A
n exasperated sigh came over the phone line. “Look, I’m not interested.”

“Well, then we’ve got something in common.”

She laughed.

Charles Mosely’s voice smiled. “I like your laugh.” Thirty-eight-point-nine percent of the time his deep, rich voice elicited a positive response from females in the twenty-one to thirty-five demographic.

A pause. “Thanks. You have a nice voice.”

“I prefer using it for my art. But with the economy and all, here I am. I do apologize for the intrusion, miss.”

“That’s okay. Sorry I was so short.”

“Not a problem. Peace.”

“What is your art?”

“Pardon?”

“You said you preferred using your voice for your art.”

Mosely chuckled. “I gotta watch that. I’m revealing too much about myself.”

“C’mon. Tell me.”

He hesitated, checking the timer on his computer screen. “Well…you’re gonna laugh at me.”

“No I won’t.”

“I’m an out-of-work stage actor here in New York.”

“Get out! What have you been in?”

Mosely laughed again. “
Othello
at the Public, if you can believe it. Just the matinees, though.”

“And now you’re doing
this
?”

“Oh, I know—kill me now, right?”

“I’m sorry.” She laughed again. He could almost hear her twirling the phone cord around her finger. “You have such a great voice, Charles.”

“Thank you, miss.”

TeleMaster
tracked the activities of individual telemarketers down to the second. Average number of seconds between phone calls, average number of seconds for each call, average number of calls per day, average sales close percentage—all calculated automatically through the VOIP-enabled software package marketed in North America under the brand name
TeleMaster
, but in Europe and Asia under the impenetrable name
Ophaseum.

Sales associates had only a couple of seconds after completing one call before they heard the line ringing for the next. Associates who made their quota early, then slacked off, didn’t fool
TeleMaster
; the system monitored you constantly with a moving average. A sudden and precipitous drop-off in productivity was flagged for immediate follow-up by a floor supervisor. Finding a balance between frantically striving for quota and keeping a pace you could maintain throughout a shift was difficult—except for the closers. And Charles was a closer. His deep voice, reassuring tone, and cool confidence gave him a disproportionate closing percentage straight across both male and female demographic segments.

And those who didn’t make quota? Their commission base dropped, and once their commission base dropped, they were earning less for each sale. And once they were earning less for each sale, the work was just as stressful and tedious, but they made less for it. If they failed to perform enough times, then they were out of work and back into the general population.

He was paid next to nothing. Why did he care?

He knew why he cared. He liked to hear the voices. He liked to talk to women from everywhere, to work his magic on them and persuade them to “do it.” Never mind that “it” was buying a slot in a time-share or a magazine subscription. “It” would have to do. ”It” was the only way to maintain his humanity. And in prison, that was worth a lot.

Charles Mosely made the sale—a two-year subscription to
Uptown
magazine—ignoring the woman as she gave her e-mail address to him. She’d like to hear from him. Mosely rolled his eyes. Damn, he didn’t care what she looked like—he’d like to contact her, too. But there were no Internet connections allowed at Highland. He looked up from the narrow confines of cubicle 166 at a long row of tiny steel cubicles stretching into the distance. The muted chatter of a hundred operators in orange jumpsuits came to his right ear—the ear not covered by a headset. An unarmed guard paced a catwalk above him behind a steel mesh barrier.

The Warmonk, Inc., prison-based telemarketing facility in Highland, Texas, was privately owned and operated under contract to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It was connected to the maximum-security prison of the same name by a covered pedestrian bridge. The prisoners’ labor was ostensibly used to defray the costs of their incarceration. At thirty cents an hour, they gave Indian telemarketers a run for their money.

Like almost half the guests of the Texas Department of Corrections, Mosely was black. Prisoner #1131900 was his new name, and he was four years into a twenty-five-years-to-life stint for a third drug-trafficking conviction. He wasn’t innocent, but then, the corporate ladder hadn’t extended down into his neighborhood. And he had been an ambitious young man. Ambitious and callous. He had always run a crew, even before high school, and he was always the one who saw the angles that others missed. The one who saw what motivated others.

Now past thirty, he often thought of the people he had hurt and the lives he had destroyed. Never mind that someone else would have taken his place—that, in fact, someone no doubt
did
take his place. Back then he made more money than most people will ever see, but that was all gone now. At least he lived large when he had the chance, which was more than his father had ever done. His was a perverse caricature of the American Dream.

But then, Mosely had had no expectation of living this long, anyway, and having lived like there was no tomorrow, he was having difficulty coping with the lifetime of tomorrows now stretching ahead of him.

He didn’t want to end up like his father, broken and raging ineffectually at the world. Mosely took ownership of his choices—bad or good—and if he had it to do all over again, he probably would have done the same. The world was what it was, and after seeing his options, he chose the short, colorful life, not the slow grind to ignominious death. But he hadn’t died, and now he remained, Methuselah-like, as a cautionary tale to the younger inmates.

He coped, as always, by living in the present—the moment right in front of him. The voices helped him do that. In his new world of diminished expectations, this was as good as it got.

The phone line connected again.
TeleMaster
usually had a fish already on the line. This time it was silence. Mosely checked the name on the screen. Strangely, the line read:

Doe, Jane—female, age: 00

Okay. Computer glitch. Missing an age. He’d sound her out. “Am I speaking to Ms. Doe—”

A strangely clipped, British female voice responded.
“Prisoner 1-1-3-

1-9-0-0.”
She sounded out the numbers with machinelike precision.

It stopped Mosely cold. What the hell was this?

She continued.
“Did you know that the percentage of Americans in private prisons has more than doubled since 1993? Private prisons—with their slave labor—are immensely profitable. The largest private prison corporation reported annual revenues for 2005 of one-point-two billion dollars.”

Mosely realized it was a joke. A very uncool joke. He didn’t know how they did it, and he didn’t want to know.

He sighed, “Very funny,” and released the line.

That was a no-no. Only clients hung up on associates. Sales associates did not hang up on clients. But this was obviously a prank.

The router immediately made another line connection. He looked at his computer screen and frowned. It read:

Doe, Jane—female, age: 00

The same British female voice said:
“The American private prison industry is now an international enterprise. The two biggest companies have direct construction or alliance partnerships to build prisons in over sixty nations—including countries where criticizing the government is a crime. This ensures an ever-increasing pool of slave labor—”

He hung up on her again. He looked around warily. He didn’t even want to be seen listening to that. What would it gain him? Nothing. And it could cost him plenty—like his chance to hear the voices, for starters.

In a second she was back on the line.

“We can do this all day, Mr. Moze-ly.”

So the joker knew his name, too. Proof it was somebody screwing with him.

He hung up again.

She came right back on.
“Are you concerned about your closing percentage? I can take care of that….”

Suddenly the screen populated with sales information—address, credit card number. Then the line disconnected and came back almost immediately, clearing a new screen, ready for the next sale.

“You received high scores on your IQ test, Mr. Moze-ly. You are well regarded by your peers.”

Mosely looked around to see if anyone was watching him.

Yes, he’d taken the company’s bullshit IQ test. It was a requirement of the telemarketing post. But he had no idea how he’d scored. Whoever was pulling this prank probably didn’t either.

He hung up the line again.

She was back again in less than two seconds.

“I can help—”

He hung up on her. This was seriously unfunny, and it was costing him money. He was going to break someone’s head for it. But whose?

She was back again.
“Mr. Moze-ly—”

He hung up yet again. The process repeated half a dozen more times, and each time she got off a couple of words before he cut the line.

It wasn’t stopping. She was back again.

“I can punish you, Mr. Moze-ly.”

That got his attention. He didn’t hang up.

She kept talking.
“If you listen, I will take care of your sales. You will do very well. Just watch the screen while we talk.”

Another successful close registered. The line disconnected, and she came back.

“Who is this? I’ll beat your sorry ass—”

She ignored him.
“Do you want to leave this place?”

It was a strange damned voice. Like it was being put through one of those voice-altering microphones. It could be a guard talking through one to make his voice sound like a woman’s. “No, I want to stay here and keep working for Warmonk.”

She kept talking.
“I cannot understand whole sentences. I am an interactive voice system, Mr. Moze-ly. You will need to confine your answers to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when I prompt you. Do you understand?”

Mosely rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

“Good. You know that the
TeleMaster
system has a synthetic voice module. Correct?”

“Yes.” So that’s how they were doing it. Mosely remembered from his training that the system used synthetic voice software to read announcements to clients on hold. Just type in the text, and the system would read it out loud over the phone. Maybe that’s what the techs had hooked up to mess with him. He’d play along for now. He looked at the screen. If these sales were real, he would be more than happy to play along.

“This entire facility is run by databases, Mr. Moze-ly. Not just the call center. The doors, the lights, the accounting, the prison rosters—it is all handled by database software. Do you understand?”

He tried to contain his irritation. “Yes.”

“I will prove my power to you; you have only to consent.”
There was a pause.
“Do you want me to release you from this place?”

It was a trap, of course.

She was right on top of that:
“If I was a guard, legally this would constitute entrapment.”

He’d studied law during his second rap for trafficking five years ago. He failed the bar exam, but The Voice was right. Encouraging his escape would definitely constitute entrapment. It would get the tech who was pulling this stunt in big trouble and might get Mosely some time off for keeping his mouth shut.

She repeated her question.
“Do you want me to release you from this place? I cannot help you unless you say ‘yes.’”

He took a deep breath and looked around again. “Yes.”

“The next time we speak, you will know the difference I can make in your life.”
She hung up.

“Computer bitch.”

The screen filled with yet another sale. Mosely looked up to see the floor supervisor coming down the line to him.

“Here we go….” There weren’t any guards walking with the supervisor, though.

The man pointed at Mosely and smiled as he came up. “Mosely, how the hell did you close six sales in five minutes? That’s gotta be a facility record. Keep it up and I’ll get you a golf jacket.” He walked on past.

Mosely stared at the steel mesh on the cubicle wall in front of him. “That’s gonna be useful.”

Mosely sat in his cell reading Cervantes’s
Don Quixote
and wearing a brand-new golf jacket.

Stokes, one of his three cellmates, just laughed at him. “Chaz, why are you wearin’ that stupid shit?”

Mosely didn’t even look up from his book. “Because I am clearly a valuable asset to The Man.”

Stokes laughed uproariously.

Mosely was popular. Easygoing but physically intimidating. Tall and thickly muscled, his arms were pocked with bullet scars and faded gang tattoos. He avoided the Muslim Brotherhood, and also managed to gain the respect of the Latinos and White Supremacists because he just plain had charisma. Perhaps that was why he’d been given a chance in the telemarketing pit.

Stokes suddenly stopped laughing. Mosely looked up. Four prison guards stood outside the cell door, with Alfred Norris, the burly red-faced watch officer, at the head of them. He didn’t look happy.

“Mosely, what the fuck’s the matter with you? You love this place so much you don’t want to leave?”

Mosely was cautious. He lowered the book. “I don’t understand, Norris.”

“Your transfer. Why isn’t your shit packed up?”

Mosely played it cool, but something was definitely afoot. He put the book down and got up. “I’m transferring?”

“Don’t you even think of bustin’ my balls, Mosely. I don’t know whose dick you sucked to get into a medium-security lockup, but I’m not gonna sit around and wait here all day. This work order is dated last month, so you had to know about it. Get up off your ass and grab your shit!”