Episode One: Look Back in Anger (2 page)

She scratched at the dog’s ears and glanced around at all the perfectly landscaped yards and the redundant houses, each damn near identical save for the occasional pastel yard gnome or vividly painted front door—a ticky-tacky village with cute little cut-and-paste Stepford homes, courtesy of AnyTown USA. Why anyone would choose to live in one of the AnyTown projects was beyond her. If the dress codes and uniformity weren’t enough to be distasteful, the chemicals in the water more than did the trick. “They probably think he’s adorable.”

“They think he’s cheap. They think
I’m
cheap!” The way the man roared, they probably thought he was a bit of an ass too.

“Mr. Morris, there is little I can do. At best I can reset him to factory defaults, but that—”

“Then do
that
. It’s what I’m paying you for.”

“Sir, I can’t do that. You don’t want me to do that. It will
kill
him.”

The man’s brows furrowed. “Then take him back and have him junked, for all I care. Just get me a working dog.”

Sam sighed. Her head settled on the dog’s own. Why did people get pets if they saw the animals as nothing but lawn ornaments? It certainly made it easier to understand why most of the districts now required licensing and so much red tape. Living, breathing creatures were almost impossible to acquire because of people like Morris. “If I set him to factory default, he’ll lose everything that he is. He’ll be a completely different dog. It kills the dog you have now. Erases him. Wipes him clean. You don’t want that.”

“Why the hell would I care if it’s a completely different dog? As long as it’s a dog that doesn’t run around in circles making my whole family look like idiots.”

Sam snorted. Apparently, that was
his
job, and he was seriously protective of it. “Don’t you think your son would miss his dog?”

“He can keep the damn dog! Just fix it.”

“I really don’t feel comfortable with that, Mr. Morris. It’s just cruel and needless besides. He behaves like an authentic, and there is nothing cheap about that.”

The man seethed. His teeth pressed together in a snarl, and he paced away to kick a defenseless concrete gnome before stomping back to wag his finger menacingly in her face. She had the bristling urge to bite it. “Listen, you fucking cow. I paid for the full service plan. I don’t give two flying shits what some pig parading her fat bags around for all to see feels comfortable with.”

Sam’s face grew hot, her hand lifting to cinch her blazer closed to hide what little cleavage she knew was visible from her crouched position. She should have been used to the insults by now, to how colorful men got when being hateful. She wasn’t, and she knew herself well enough to know she probably never would be.

She might as well have been the last fat girl in existence, so all the assholes in the world seemed to leap at the chance to fling their stored-up vitriol her way on sight. It was rare for anyone who wasn’t perfect to show themselves anymore. People like her, who had some medical condition or were simply too poor to afford a trip to a physician or a handful of pills to control their size or other imperfections, now just hid in their homes. They lived through their DNI—direct neural interfaces—through virtual avatars, and through alternate realities they could program to accept them. Maybe even find them attractive. Sam wasn’t the sort to hide in her home or behind a data-jack in her head. She didn’t want to live a fantasy of being beautiful. Even if she were the type, without a clean bill of health, the cyber docs wouldn’t touch her.

“Don’t stare at me, cunt. Do your job.”

“I’m sorry.” She wasn’t. It was hard to shake the sting of the man’s words, though. For a moment she wondered if she needed a reboot to her own brain, to give it a swift kick to get the wheels turning again. Too bad she wasn’t a synthetic pet; she might have had a programmed response for assholes by now. “If you’re sure…”

“I’m positive. Fix the dog and move your fat ass along to a doughnut shop already.”

She looked between the dog’s ears, to the little red bicycle leaning against Mr. Morris’s garage door, and her gaze lingered there. The man’s son was going to come home and find his dog gone. No friendly head tilt and wagging tail to meet the child as he got off the school shuttle, just a shell of the beloved pet he’d probably nuzzled good-bye on his way off to morning classes. Mr. Morris was a monster.

But then again, she was the one actually killing the animal.

With a reluctance that made her clumsy, she rubbed the sensitive tips of the dog’s ears and then gave the verbal command that would shut him down. Once he’d fallen to the side and lay flat on the ground, she pulled the tools she needed from her bag and opened his belly to find the control panel. She hesitated before punching in the factory reset code, but an impatient curse from Mr. Morris hurried her fingers along. And then she was done.

Sam sealed the dog up in silence, and then slung her tool bag over her shoulder before giving the voice command to activate the animal. She swallowed down the ache of tears as it stood, staggered a bit, and then tucked its tail between its trembling legs and froze there looking lost. A little too late, she wished she’d thought to slip something nasty into the animal’s programming, like Jerri’s Cujo virus. Or at the very least, a code to give the dog the compulsion to piss on the man’s shoes. “He’s all set.” She improvised a customer-service friendly smile. “Have a good day, Mr. Morris.”

He snarked after her, but she’d already turned her back on him, hurrying to her car to close herself inside its protective shell. Jerri could find someone else to take the punishment from here on in. No more AnyTown jobs.

* * * *

“The AnyTown project will of course be completely audited and overhauled. All agreements made with the local government will need to be thoroughly reevaluated.” Arles flicked another warped paper clip toward his stepfather’s desk. It landed on its rounded end to twirl brilliantly in that suspended moment before flopping over flat. Its hard lines emphasized a pair of words he was sure his adversary would assume purposeful—
title forfeit
.

There were several bent and misshapen paper clips all around Marx Donavan now, tiny metal pretzels of targeted malice, littering the surface of the austere document Arles had moments earlier dropped in front of the old man. The tragic little twists underscored numerous words, seemingly by design—incompetent, irrelevant, faulty…pickle. The last one was definitely an accident, but Arles was willing to bet Marx’s mind would find a way to twist it up just like all those mangled paper clips, desperate to find insult in the subtext. At least, he hoped so.

“Don’t look at me that way, Father. If you were an old dog, I’d have shot you in the back of the head and rolled you into a Dumpster years ago.” Arles’s voice was strong and unwavering; he knew this because he’d practiced it, acquired the illusion of authority as a skill. As young as he looked, a commanding presence was necessary for survival in the corporate world. Not that this meeting had anything to do with business. It was part pure pleasure, part necessity. “You should be very grateful for the severance package as outlined before you.”

“Grateful? I built Colfter Industries. Made it what it is. Been running it since before you found your dick, you sniveling little—”

“Running it right into the ground.” The years and accumulated karma had not been so likewise kind to the man sitting across the desk from Arles. Time hung on his stepfather like a visible account of his crimes, each glaring liver spot a scarlet letter for his corrupt acts and the vile life he’d led because of them. Arles stared into those spots, connecting them in his mind with bitter relish as they began to tremble and quake with Marx’s flaring temper.

Marx slammed a fist into the desk, sending brutalized paper clips hopping in all directions. “Colfter is
mine
.”

“The corporation is
Colfter
Industries, Father. I’m the only Colfter in this room.”

“You weaseled it away from me. Don’t expect me to play grateful for the crumbs some spineless little rat leaves me.”

Arles sighed. His stepfather’s yelling had an unnatural calming effect on his own desires to be hostile. If Marx Donavan wanted to cower, he’d certainly give him something to fear, but if Daddy preferred to lose his cool so early in the negotiations, Arles was more than willing to recline in his overpriced chair and revel in the ease of it. “The only investment you’ve been responsible for that is still in the black is the AnyTown project. And that only because of back-alley dealings you know I’ve never supported. On moral grounds.”

“What do you know of morality?”

“I know it’s immoral to steal from a dying woman, Father. I know
that
. It was my mother’s company, and her father’s before her. I’m the only one here with a moral leg to stand on.” Arles reclined again, ignoring the chair’s whine as he forced it to rock back past its designed limit.

“You can’t take Colfter from me.”

“I have. It’s done. Was always just a matter of time. You knew that.”

Marx slumped, his shoulders hanging heavy in his tailored suit. He shook his head, playing the part of the old man to the very extent of his skills as he buried his face behind age-worn hands. If one didn’t know better—if Arles didn’t know better—it might have inspired a hint of pity or a pang of guilt for putting one so soon to leave this world through such distress.

Arles had no pity to give the man—was fresh out. He sat forward, his long fingers slipping around the edge of an ornate golden-framed image screen on Marx’s desk. He had no doubt the gold was real, but the excess of it barely reached his notice. Instead he focused a little too longingly on the three young girls in the image trapped within that golden cage. They’d grown up well. “They’re lovely. How are they?”

“My daughters are no concern of yours.”

“Why, Father, my sisters are every
bit
my concern.” He traced a single face with the tip of his finger; the other two figures in the image faded into the background. “They look happy. Well, two of them do, anyway.” Marx made a grab for it, and Arles jerked the frame from the old man’s reach. The motion swiveled his chair again, spinning him until his stepfather was at his back.

“They are not your sisters.”

“I’m well aware.” Tears welled in his eyes, blurred his vision. The wet sting obscured the youngest girl in the photo who held the center of his attention, her arms wound tightly around the mangiest mutt he’d ever seen. It had been so long since she would even speak to him.

“You are no son of mine.” Marx had said as much before. The man could add all the spit and venom to the words that he wanted; it wouldn’t increase the hurt. In fact, Arles had found the wound had long gone. “You’re a piece of trash that came along with your mother. Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed.” It wasn’t what Marx had said that set his teeth clenching together so fiercely his jaw ached, not really. Rather it was the reminder of his mother and how she too had been fool enough to buy into Marx’s bullshit. “I’m not one of your little girls. You can’t get in
my
head, Fath—”

“Do
not
call me Father!”

“I’ve always known, you realize? That you married her only for what she could give you. Even as a boy I knew what you were.” When he swiveled about again to face the man, he’d erased all trace of emotion from his features. He set the image back on the desk, though a purposeful inch or two from its original place.

“Just tell me what it will take, Arles.” Marx hurried to right the photo, driven by some compulsion that amused Arles more than it should have. “What do I have to do to get you to crawl back under your rock where you came from and leave this family alone?”

“Tell me what you’ve done with Sammy.”

“Still at this, are we?” There was a definite snarl there. Arles was sure he saw a slip of the man’s decrepit facade in his warning tone. “Go to hell.”

“I heard recently she’s taken ill again. That’s strange, don’t you think? The other two girls are so healthy. Of course, they’ve put some serious distance between you and them, haven’t they?”

“She’s fine. My girls are none of your business.”

“Poor Sammy, always in the hospital. Even with all the money you have, that you have stolen from
me
, you can’t keep her well.”

“Money.” Marx’s voice was back to booming levels in a matter of breaths. “That’s all you’ve ever cared about, isn’t it? That’s all you think about. You take this company from me and you destroy all of us. The whole family.”

“But I’m not part of this family, remember?” Arles rode his chair in dizzy circles like some little boy reluctantly taking a lecture from his ill-tempered daddy. “I’m just the obstacle between you and what you want most. Always have been.”

“I was a father to you. And this is how I am repaid. I sent you to the best schools. You never wanted for anything.”

“I wanted my mother. How about that? I wanted a real family.”

“You wanted my girls, you sick little bastard. From the moment your mother brought you into our lives, that’s all you’ve ever wanted.”

Arles snorted. His spinning in the chair slowed, but he continued the deliberate round-and-round just to spite the man who’d beat him blue for the same action many times as a boy. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but it still seemed to irk the old man enough to be worth doing. “I was a child.”

“To hell you were! You were a snake then and you’re a snake now.”

“Really, Father, first I am a weasel, then a rat, and now I am a snake.” The sigh was long and dramatic, and he ended the chair’s motion long enough to deliver his reply with as much straight-faced bewilderment as he could manage. “You exhaust me with your pronouncements. I’ll never meet with your approval if you keep changing your expectations of me.”

“You insufferable ass—”

“See!” He gave the chair one final violent spin before rising from his seat to lean over the desk, both palms placed firmly on its smooth surface. “How am I supposed to keep up?”