Chapter 7
Day One
Four Hours Earlier
(age twenty-four)
Kelli knew better than to wander off with a strange man—and it had been long enough, with Rowan, for that logic to apply. They were estranged.
Which was why she’d left Inspiration Callisto headquarters at lunchtime and gone to the shopping concourse.
Kelli wasn’t very experienced with shopping in person.
In Basic Housing it had been a thing only the prissy, popular, hair-braiding girls did, so they could clump in a group while they shopped and show off their good taste to each other.
If you just wanted to buy something useful, it was simpler to get it delivered.
Unless you were in a situation like Kelli’s, and twelve-hour express home delivery wasn’t fast enough, because it was lunchtime already and you were going to be wandering off with a strange man at four.
Kelli looked up distrustfully as she strode off the hyperloop into the concourse.
White tiles and gold trim along the walkways; shop fronts branching off in every kind of blazing color.
The shops all took pains to look distinct, even though they were all just Inspiration subsidiaries.
Music played so loudly and cheerfully that Kelli could hear it even through her noise-cancelling headphones, so she took the headphones off.
After a few minutes of effort and several gilt escalators, she found the store she’d been looking for, one that was full of electronics: it consisted of a little showroom where the customer discussed their needs with a sales interface.
The devices for sale were all behind glass, with mechanisms to rotate them forward or back for display, depending on a customer’s interest.
“I’m looking for . . .” said Kelli. She paused, racking her brains for the word. “Um, a device for discreet communication. Do you have any of those?”
The sales interface—a screen with a cartoon face like Kelli’s old robot, with a voice like a kindly uncle—sure did.
Kelli tapped her foot impatiently as it listed the specs of each model: some not quite what Kelli was looking for, some appropriate but pricey, plus a set of items that it was paid to promote no matter what the question was, each of which it offered up without a trace of shame and with a moderately to severely flimsy justification for why a person who liked discreet communication would want them.
Delivery interfaces were like this too, but at least when Kelli sat through the spiel from a delivery app, she didn’t have to do it standing in a loud and crowded concourse hall.
Finally she pointed to a small metallic crescent painted pink, the cheapest one that fit her needs.
It was small enough that it could fit over the face of her watch, and it looked like an innocuous bangle or hair ornament.
It came in pairs—one for the sender, another for the receiver.
It would need, like anything, to be connected to the rest of the wired network to function.
Once it was connected, the messages would be typed in, the old-fashioned way, and then separated into small disconnected packets.
Real encryption was illegal, of course, but the pink crescent’s packets would do a credible attempt at disguising themselves as innocuous messages—breakfast orders, for instance—until they reached their destination and were reassembled.
“Great for discreet safe calls on that next blind date,” the sales interface chirped, “or for texting your bestie from that work retreat without the boss knowing!”
Kelli thanked it and paid with her salary card.
“Thank you for shopping at Inspiration Electronics!” said the sales interface. “Before you leave, on a scale of one to ten, how likely would you be to recommend our business to a friend?”
“Um, seven,” said Kelli, because it was her civic duty to answer questions like that; but she didn’t have friends, so the question didn’t mean much. She walked away before it could ask her to elaborate on how it could have made her experience more satisfying.
She arrived back at work with a sense of grim satisfaction and the beginnings of a headache. As she stepped out of the elevator, she almost bumped into someone.
She did a double take. It was Kelli’s boss, Baz Rimmer—the man who managed all the script supervisors at the Callisto office.
Baz was a lanky white man with graying hair that he kept trimmed with a trendy circle beard.
He was normally all movement and energy, but today he stood there with his arms crossed.
Kelli frantically mentally checked herself trying to think what she’d done.
Was there a rule against leaving for her lunch break that she’d forgotten?
Maybe he’d looked through her messages and seen an unauthorized call, and maybe there was a rule she’d forgotten that said people weren’t supposed to take these calls, or were supposed to report them?
She checked her watch, then frowned more deeply.
“Hey, Kelli!” said Baz, with a joviality even she could tell was false. “Good to see you. The secretarial AI told me that you’re half an hour late coming back from your lunch break. That’s not like you, especially on a day when there’s a new outline. What’s up?”
Kelli mentally cursed herself. She’d been too nervous to keep track of the time. She’d been planning to talk to Baz anyway, but not like this.
“I . . . I got a call,” she stammered. “A weird call.”
“Really? Is everything okay?”
“No, everything’s—yes—well—I needed to—I mean—”
Kelli could supervise some of the best scripts in the business when she was focused, when the words were all there on the page and she heard them sing in her mind.
She didn’t like talking out loud nearly that much.
She usually managed, but all it took was one awkward moment and she’d fluster so hard that she stopped making sense.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
In for four, hold for four, out for four.
Kelli’s thought process, from the moment that she decided to go to the concourse, had been: What would Orlando do?
What if Kelli was a dashing, good-hearted pirate captain who stole from the rich and gave to the poor?
What would that person do, hearing a call like Rowan’s?
He would investigate. Even if it was a bad idea; Orlando was as curious as a cat.
But he would investigate cleverly. He might not tell someone like Baz what he was up to—Orlando was bad about that, often haring off on his own, annoying his crew, and explaining later—but he’d make sure that he had backup, in some form, and that he had a plan.
“I got a weird call from an old friend,” Kelli said at last, opening her eyes.
She couldn’t be as glib and quick-witted as Orlando, but she could make plans like him.
“It could be nothing, or it could be something dangerous—maybe even someone trying to undermine Inspiration’s business.
I’m going to check it out and see what happens.
But just in case, I want you to have this.
If anything dangerous does happen, I’ll message you. ”
She ceremoniously handed him one of the two pink crescents. Baz looked down at them quizzically.
“Kelli,” he said, “are you . . . going on a date?”
“What? No.” She flushed. “No, this is . . . this is serious. Probably. And I am never dating him, ever.”
“My mistake. It’s just that these are what girls these days use when they’re going on a date and they want to make a safe call.
Kelli, you know that I love and support you, but if you have a serious suspicion of corporate espionage, you should report it.
A team of community standards enforcement professionals can investigate.
” She didn’t like the pitying, amused look Baz was giving her.
“But if it’s personal business then, you know, that’s your business.
You really don’t have anyone outside this office to take a safe call, do you? ”
“That’s not the point. I . . .”
Kelli swallowed hard. Rowan had said there was something only she could do.
All the things that only Kelli could do, as far as she could think of, involved Inspiration’s business.
But if cops showed up to talk to Rowan, he’d know they weren’t Kelli and he’d run off.
He’d never show them what he’d been planning to show her.
And what if he wasn’t actually up to anything awful?
What if it really was only a friendly conversation?
She didn’t want to set community standards enforcement after him, if it was just that.
Besides, it wasn’t what Orlando would do.
“Whatever,” she amended. Orlando didn’t always correct people when they were wrong; this was one of his many roguish qualities. “The point is—will you keep this with you? Just for the weekend. Just in case.”
“I’d be honored,” said Baz, pocketing the crescent with another of those awful, pitying, amused looks.
“Normally this is where I’d say, oh, but Kelli, we were so hoping we’d see you at the Parakeet tonight.
It’s Friday, after all, and you know I’m always after you to join the other script supervisors for drinks.
But, given the circumstances? I’m just glad you’re getting out. Go have fun.”
Kelli nodded, squeezing her eyes shut with apprehension and relief.
When she got back to her office, she guiltily checked her messages again. She didn’t want Baz creeping in and checking them and seeing Rowan’s name, Rowan’s projected face. But she wasn’t very surprised when she found no trace of that message. It had already, somehow, erased itself.