Dreams in the Tower Part 1 (3 page)

3

The hazy August morning was slowly fading, and still the bottom fifty-four floors of
Silte headquarters were empty. Mike Torres, in his spacious office on the 58
th
floor, was growing uneasy. The headquarters of the largest corporation in the world had suddenly placed over eight thousand employees on indefinite leave; it was as if someone had lopped off all but a tiny (though extremely important) portion of a brain and expected it to maintain control over its body.
What’s going on up there?
Mike asked himself.
Have Silvan and the board gone insane?

The truth was, Mike had caught occasional whiffs of something foul during his time as COO of
Silvan Ventures on Wall Street, but now that he was here, at the bright center of the Silte galaxy, it was more like a rank stench that seeped down from the 78
th
floor penthouse suite and pervaded the rest of the building—the rest of the world, even.

“Mr. Torres.” Elle, his virtual secretary, popped up on his desk screen, “Monika
Leutz is approaching.”

“Good,” Mike said.
Bad
, he thought. “Send her on in when she gets here.”

“Shall I send anything up?”

Mike thought for a moment. “Liquor,” he said. “Whatever’s her favorite.” He could use the liquid courage. He had been thinking about this meeting with a taste of bile in his mouth since Leutz messaged him about it early in the morning, but now he was positively dreading the inevitable confrontation. He had to demand answers, had to know why he had arrived to a nearly empty building this morning. “Crisis Procedure” was all he had gotten out of anyone on his level, but Leutz was Silte Corp’s unofficial second-in-command.

And it hadn’t taken him long to find
that
out. Officially, Monika Leutz was Senior Vice President of Operations up on the 61
st
floor—Mike’s own boss to whom he had been reporting since getting this position as Senior Operations Manager. But everyone knew she was the only one who ever went through those archaic oaken doors to Silvan’s suite upstairs. She was also the only one to receive and relay orders from Silvan himself, without going through a bot or virtual secretary; and no one, not even the executives above her, dared refuse anything she asked of them.

A noise behind Mike made him jump and turn swiftly in his chair.
The drinks
, he realized, calming himself. This office had
everything
: 3D conferencing panel, top-of-the-line smart desk, kitchen nook, private bathroom, an exquisitely comfortable couch he could lie down on, and this office delivery unit that brought him most anything he could think of (from where, he wasn’t sure). The little door on the unit opened to reveal two glasses, each containing two fingers of clear brown liquid covering several perfect cubes of ice, and an open bottle of some fancy whiskey with flamboyant cursive on the label. Mike drained one of the glasses as he was setting the other across the desk from him. He refilled his own glass just as the door to his office slid open.

“Mike,”
Leutz said as she crossed the room hurriedly with those impossibly long strides of hers. “I would have knocked, but your secretary said to come on in.” She took the seat Mike offered her across the desk. “For me?” Without waiting for a reply, she quaffed the whiskey and poured herself a second glass. Mike drained his own glass again and let her fill it for him.

“Look, Monika,” he began, letting the warmth of the whiskey drive on what he had been anxiously preparing for all morning, “you need to clear up a few things before you begin. What’s going on here? Why do I get in this morning to find most of the building empty? And this me
ssage about indefinite leave…” He trailed off, sensing her hard stare. She had a way of making him forget what he wanted to say.
Why does this woman scare me so much?

About a year or two shy of forty,
Leutz was tall and robust. She kept her dark hair in a close pixie cut and plastered it neatly against her head in a perfect mold the same way every day. Today, like most days, she wore a pair of slacks and a matching blouse—both dark gray and modest. As always, her cold blue eyes stared out from behind thin, rectangular smart glasses. Usually her pupils darted back and forth as she did things on the lens screens no one else could see, but just now her gaze was fixed intently on Mike, somehow warning him off and beckoning him closer all at once.

“You’re to the point this morning,” she observed. “I would be angry at you for speaking to me like that, but it so happens that’s exactly what I was here to talk to you about.”

Now thoroughly embarrassed by his rashness, Mike said, “I’m sorry, I… I didn’t know.” He sipped from his third glass of whiskey and set it back on his desk, nervously drumming his fingers on the cool, wet glass. “So, uh, please, go on.”

She stared at him for a lingering moment then looked at her own glass and said, “You’ve been in Mr.
Silvan’s corporate family for a while—since college, right? I thought so. Nearly twenty-five twenty years then. And last year you finally broke through the grind and landed a senior management position at headquarters.” Her eyes began fidgeting, and Mike wondered what she was looking at on her lenses. “Through this long, distinguished tenure,” she said with a trace of boredom, “you’ve certainly piqued the attention of the higher-ups—no need to worry, it’s a good thing.” She sipped from her glass. “
Loyalty
, Mike, that’s a thing few have, truly, and a thing everyone wants, a thing everyone needs. You have proven your loyalty, which is why you are one of the few people left in the building right now.”

She paused as if expecting a response, but Mike didn’t have anything to say to that. I
nstead he fiddled with the empty glass, the melting ice cubes clinking as the glass turned in his hand.

“The simple truth is,”
Leutz continued, “you’ve earned the right to know; Silvan and I agree on that. Do you want to know what’s going on here, Mike?”

“Yes,” he said hoarsely. He cleared his throat. “Yes.”

“I’m sure you’ve wondered,” she said, “about the major acquisitions Silte Corporation has been making these last, oh, five years or so. Maybe you’ve even realized Silte now owns sixty percent of the US communications industry, sixty-five percent of marketing,
eighty
percent of media and entertainment, forty of banking; the list goes on. What you may not realize is we now either own or are unofficially controlling more than three quarters of the US economy.” She sipped her whiskey. “Most of Congress is on our payroll—off the books, of course—as are all of the larger private police and paramilitary organizations. In short, you’re on the winning team.”

“What…” was all Mike could manage. Was all of this true? Mike knew
Silte had seen the greatest expansion of any company in the years since the Corporate Freedom Act was passed, but what was this about unofficial control? By the sound of it, Silvan was setting himself up to be the one true power in the country—no the universe; maybe he already was.

“As to what’s going on,”
Leutz continued mercilessly, “it’s what we call Crisis Procedure, which is really just a distraction from Project Unify.” She caressed the rim of her glasses a few times, still focused on whatever was going on behind those mysterious lenses. “Unify went into motion as soon as Silte Corp discreetly became majority shareholder of Google and Starmine last week. These Anti-Corper kids—we saw that coming a long time ago. We’ve already made a move on them, they just don’t know it yet.”

“Hold on,” Mike said. “What’s Unify?” He wanted to say, “Is
Silvan mentally unstable?” But he hadn’t had nearly enough whiskey for that.

“Unify is
it
. It’s the end and the beginning. The point at which our knowledge of the world as it is no longer informs what it will be. An economic singularity, if you will. Silte Corp will control all major sectors of the US economy in a matter of weeks, the global economy in a few months, and we’ll control the consumers themselves soon after…or we already do, depending on how you look at it.”

“Are you asking me,” Mike said
, “to help Silvan take over the world?”

“I’m asking you,”
Leutz corrected, “to help Silte Corporation build the future. “ She smiled at him, but only fleetingly. “Mr. Silvan assures me Unify is what’s best for humanity, and I am inclined to believe him. Can I count on you to do the same?”

No
, he thought. “Yes,” he said.

“Good.” Getting up, she removed the data ring she always wore on her right hand and tapped its round, flat surface on the desk screen’s input strip. “Now you have the full Unify r
eport—the stuff we can tell you, anyway. Finish up your work for today, but starting tomorrow we’ll have a special assignment for you.”

“Is there anything else I should know?” He didn’t expect her to answer, but
Leutz stopped and made a show of thinking for a moment.

“Yeah,” she said. “The board members and all other executives are all long gone. The people, or rather things, that are doing their jobs are artificial personalities.”

“Oh.”

“Read that report, Mike.”
Leutz turned, crossed the office and disappeared through the automatic door, leaving Mike in stunned silence. His mouth was slightly open; the smell of stale whiskey was on his breath. His fingers and face felt numb, only in part from the whiskey.

“Elle,” he said, after a whole five minutes of motionless silence.

“Mr. Torres?” The bright, vaguely human face appeared at the top corner of his desk screen.

“You’re an artificial personality. Are you intelligent?”

“I am capable of performing any task within my programming that you ask me to perform, Mr. Torres.”

“That’s what I thought.” This meant
Silvan was now in total control of the board of directors. “Give me a summary of the Unify report.” He poured himself another glass of whiskey, this time filling it to the brim.

4

Sanon
Software, Inc. was a large enough company to own its own office building, but the building was only three stories and took up a relatively small portion of the Valley’s premium real estate. It was located far enough outside of downtown San Jose that Jason had to take the bus each morning. Sanon’s building was simple, and it looked older than it was, lacking the cutting-edge architecture the Apples and Googles of the world opted for. Jason didn’t care; this building was like another home to him and he was proud of it. But just now it looked less like a home and more like one of those drab, micromanaged places that made people dread waking up for work in the morning.

Jason used his employee ID at the door to enter, just as though he were going into work on any normal morning. But this did not feel normal at all. The fear and apprehension of what awaited upstairs hung around him like an infectious disease, every breath he took bringing in a lungful of its toxic gases. Inside, the building was unusua
lly quiet. He got solemn stares from two private cops and a supervisor he recognized from another floor as he walked by. He wondered if he had been the first to parade looming death before them.

No, he would not
die
; he hadn’t done anything to earn that fate yet. But there was a lingering uncertainty that had taken hold of him on the bus. Silte was getting ready to make a move on the Anti-Corp movement, and he just might get caught up in it. After all, he communicated regularly with at least one of the activists, two if Seito counted.

The elevator ride up to the third floor was the shortest Jason had ever experienced. On the top floor, he crossed the hall to the heavy glass door with ‘Suite 2’ on it in plain lettering. He paused for a moment, turned back and took a few steps away, then forced himself to face the door again and approach it. Reaching out he let his fingers hover over the handle…but he couldn’t do it. He had known of two people called into Suite 2, and neither had been seen again in the office, not even to clean out their desks.
Blacklisted. Was he next?

The door opened and he jumped.

“Mr. Delaney?” A woman about his age stood before him in a private cop’s blue office uniform. Some police insignia was printed on the pocket over her right breast, but with only a quick glance downward he wasn’t able to see which organization it represented. He might have thought she was attractive if she wasn’t giving him such a sour, slightly disgusted look. “Well?”

“Uh, yeah.
That’s me.”

“Then follow,” she said.

Following this woman seemed like a horrible thing to do. Private cops were involved here; he could be certain now he was in big trouble. Go through the door and they would have him. But then if he turned and ran they would still have him eventually, probably even before he made it down to the street. So he followed her through the door, catching a glimpse of the large central room bustling with more cops and two official-looking people who must be Silte representatives. He had no time to see what they were all so diligently working on before she led him into a small office not far from the entrance.

“Take a seat,” a different woman said as the one who had brought him in closed the door and wandered over to the opposite side of the room. He obeyed, sitting in the hard chair across the desk from the new woman. “Jason Delaney,” she said, looking at her tablet rather than at him. She was maybe ten years older than the
one who had brought him in, wearing similar police desk-job attire, though hers was more formal. Her auburn hair was short and wavy. She didn’t have the same outward hostility as the first woman, but her face was hard and not at all warm.

“I am Detective Sabrina Sorensen of the Guardian Police Association,” she said.
“San Francisco Bay Area branch.”  That didn’t make Jason feel any better about this situation. The GPA was the best of the best when it came to private cops. They had been working for the US government since the police strike and ensuing privatization two decades ago, but it seemed Silte had been able to buy them away from their twenty-year employer. “I’m overseeing all investigations here at Sanon Software,” the detective continued. “You’ve already met my partner, Detective Erris Hale.” She inclined her head toward the other woman, who was now seated behind her in the corner.

“You’re private police,” Jason said, feeling like they expected him to speak. “What are you doing here?”

“You may not have realized,” Detective Sorensen said, strangely patient. “Silte headquarters initiated their Crisis Procedure course of action early this morning, after the Anti-Corp attacks. All commercial structures and assets of Silte Corporation now have a garrison of third-party law enforcement and intelligence organization officers.” She fell silent again, tapping away on her tablet. The other detective stared at the wall, looking bored.

After a minute of tap-tapping and no words, Jason grew tired of their game. “Why am I here?” he blurted, his fear outweighed by his need to know.

As if she had been waiting for this, Detective Sorensen put her tablet away. She swiped her desk screen on, and opened something on it. For the first time, she looked directly at Jason and said, “Who is in this photo, Mr. Delaney?”

Jason leaned forward for a better look at the hunched figure on the screen—and realized it was himself. His hair was long, shaggy and ridiculous, his face scraggly with a beard and do
tted with a handful of red pimples; this was obviously from college, probably freshman year. In the picture he was sitting alone, smoking, at one of the metal picnic tables near his dorm and paying no mind to the camera. He could not recall this picture being taken.

“It’s me,” he said, leaning back.
“In college. But what does this—”

“How about this one.”
Detective Sorensen brought up a second photo. “Identify both people here, if you can.”

This time he knew right away who it was, and he was caught off guard. One of the two people in mid-conversation was him, but the other…now he
knew
he was cooked. Not only did they have a pic of him with Steph, but this was taken at a very private moment—by someone who was not supposed to be there, apparently. They were in a back room at the house Steph rented with some people back in college. She was angry, yelling at him. He remembered this; she had taken him back there after she’d found out he and Seito attempted to hack the school’s tuition site to get out of making their payments. That wasn’t what they were about, she had told him, after running out of profane insults and empty threats. It was the only time she had ever been mad at him, really mad.

But they had been alone and secluded then (Steph, he recalled, hadn’t wanted the others to see her blow up). Who took this photo, then? Either the house had been bugged or someone i
nside had been spying; either case made Jason feel betrayed and scared—mostly scared. Were they expecting him to blab on Steph, or was this a test?

“That’s me,” he said, easing the words out and keeping his voice from shaking, “with my friend Stephanie from college.”

“Very good, Mr. Delaney,” the detective said, without a trace of enthusiasm. “One more and you win it all. You know what to do.”

This one showed him and Steph again, now seven years older than in the last picture. Studying it for a moment, Jason figured it had to be from two weeks ago, the only time he’d seen her in person in the last six months, when she had dragged him and Seito to a fundraising party over in Palo Alto at some billionaire’s house. Jason and Steph were seated next to each other on the train. Seito’s arm was just visible on Steph’s other side, but apparently he wasn’t important here.

Jason was sure of it now: they knew all about Steph’s involvement in the Anti-Corp, and they had connected him to her. An accessory to crimes against Silte Corp, and all he’d ever done was keep quiet, as benign as he was hapless. How many others were sitting uncomfortably on hard chairs in Silte offices, staring at pictures of themselves with Steph, about to pay the toll of her friendship? Or maybe he was the only one dumb enough to get involved without protecting himself.

Nothing to do but accept it.

“It’s me and Steph.” It came out as nearly a whisper.

“Excellent.” She wiped the photo away and returned the screen to its blank state. “I b
elieve you realize, now, exactly who we are and what knowledge we possess. I think you also know why we have you here.”

They had him, but he wouldn’t give in. You only fear something until it happens. It had happened; now his defiance could take over. “Not at all,” he said in a voice he hoped sounded fearless and perhaps even a little friendly.

“Don’t give us that shit,” Detective Hale said from her corner.

“Please,
Erris,” Sorensen said. Then, to Jason, “You know Stephanie Washington. You’ve known her since you were both enrolled at San Jose State. You’ve had personal, face-to-face interactions with her as recently as the evening of July twenty-sixth.”

Being friends with a
Silte enemy would be his downfall, it seemed. So much for leaving the idealistic hacktivist stuff back in college; it came back to him in the end. “You don’t
know
that,” he said stubbornly. “Those are just incidental photos, maybe not even legally obtained. You don’t know anything…about me, or anything.”

“What we
know
,” Sorensen said, “Is that you are Jason Louis Delaney, Software Director at Sanon Software, Incorporated. We
know
you live in an apartment in one of the old converted buildings on Bassett Street. And we
know
that you have a personal relationship with the known Anti-Corp terrorist Stephanie Washington.” She was only as firm as she needed to be, but Jason felt his defiance slipping away. “Now,” she said, “you can cooperate and tell us what we need to know about Miss Washington, or maybe you can be the next one we investigate.”

“Make things easier for all of us,” Detective Hale piped up, “and just forget about your friendship for a little bit.”

They’re not after me?
This took Jason by surprise. He sat with his mouth half-open, unsure of what to say, stumped by the dilemma they had presented to him. On the one hand, it seemed like it wouldn’t be the blacklist after all; on the other, he would have to rat out a close friend. He couldn’t do that—but he had to. He had a job, a life: not things he could throw away easily. He had to do
something
to protect himself. Maybe he could slip through by telling them useless things; he could pretend not to know about her involvement with the AC, bluff his way out.
Tell them what they already know and make them think it’s all
I
know.
It could work.

Sorry Steph
, he thought, his mind made up. She would probably fry whether he went down with her or not. The sharks had smelled her blood and found it irresistible.

“What did Steph do?” he asked, careful to make the question sound genuine. “Terrorism, you said?”

“We’ll get to that,” Sorensen said. “Let’s start with college. We know that you and Miss Washington were involved in the computer-hacking activist group non-E. What was the nature of this group?”

There was no point in dancing around the question; Jason had grown tired of the game a
lready. “We were young. We were idealistic kids who thought we could change things and make the world better. You know how it goes.”

“And what were your goals? What were you trying to achieve?”

“To be honest,” Jason said, “we were never really that organized; we just wanted to do
something
. We were all just old enough to be truly angry about the Corporate Freedom Act, and we started hearing the horror stories of unchecked power in capitalism. We wanted to act against what we saw as a danger to society. We never got around to much activity, though.”

Detective Hale had begun tapping away on her tablet in the corner, probably making notes of his account. Sorensen turned on the privacy setting on her desk screen so Jason saw o
nly a black screen from his angle. She scrolled around for a while then said, “Tell me about your part in non-E. You were a hacker?”

“No, I was never into that stuff.” The conversation’s turn back to himself made him nervous, but the fear was behind him now. He gestured at the building around him as he said, “Software
design. I’m more of a creative type. Always have been. I designed apps—for the group to use.” He stopped with that. These two didn’t need to know about the phantom apps he had invented that others could plant on people’s tablets and use for any number of nefarious purposes. Nor did they need to know about the ultra-high-security private communication app that he suspected the Anti-Corp was still using today—at least some updated version of it. And that was something that had always caused him anxiety; the special app Seito used to talk to AC people didn’t
look
like Jason’s work, but if it was someone might look at the code and trace it back to him if they were really determined.

“Software design.”
Sorensen was skeptical.

“I told you, we weren’t an organized hacktivist group attacking governments and banks and stuff. We were just some friends with big ideas.”