Freedom Incorporated

Freedom
Incorporated

Peter Tylee

© 2005

This work is
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No
Derivative Works License. To view a copy of this license,
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Cover image by PJ
Lyon

Prologue

Not even the
toughest self-imposed code can put the multinationals in the
position of submitting to collective outside authority. On the
contrary, it gives them unprecedented power of another sort: the
power to draft their own privatized legal systems, to investigate
and police themselves, as quasi nation-states.

Naomi Klein – “No Logo”,
1999

Monday
,
March
25
,
1998

Greenbrier High School

Evans, Georgia, USA

It’s the real thing –
Suspension

High school senior Mike Cameron
is serving a one-day suspension today for wearing a Pepsi shirt to
Coke Day, an event Greenbrier High officials created to win a $500
contest held by the Coca-Cola Bottling Co.

Coke Day was Greenbrier High
School’s effort to win a competition in which schools around the
country had to come up with a plan to distribute Coke discount
cards in their local areas. School officials hosted a Coke Day and
invited Coke executives from Atlanta headquarters 100 miles away.
The day included, among other things, integrating Coke into class
instruction and a sea of human art. At one gathering students wore
red and white Coke shirts and lined up to spell the word ‘COKE’ for
an approving audience of Coke executives.

However, one human pixel was
proving to be less than co-operative. Mike Cameron was making up
part of the letter ‘C’ but wasn’t wearing his prescribed Coke
shirt.

“
I know it sounds bad –
‘Child suspended for wearing Pepsi shirt on Coke Day’,” Principal
Gloria Hamilton said. “It really would have been acceptable… if it
had just been in-house, but we had the regional president here and
people flew in from Atlanta to do us the honour of being resource
speakers. These students knew we had guests.”

Mrs Hamilton said Cameron also
ruined a school picture, something that had drawn a six-day
suspension in the past.

“
The first thing the
officials did was send the assistant to my classroom to get me,”
Mike Cameron said. “He took me to his office and told me some B.S.
about messing up the picture or something like that.”

Mike Cameron was then sent to
the Principal’s office. “When I went into her office she gave me a
speech about how I may have lost the school $500. Note this is the
most important problem with what I did, it must have been, it was
the first thing that came out of her mouth. Then she said something
about how I damaged the picture, that this was an important day for
the whole student body, and we all wanted this day to happen. But I
don’t remember being asked if I wanted this day.

“
I just sat in the chair
looking around, and I noticed about 20 12-packs of coke sitting by
a bookshelf in her office,” Mike reported.

The incident certainly provides
an insight into the degree to which commercialisation pervades
every element of our society. For Mike Cameron, suspension is
certainly the real thing – but it also leaves an unpleasant taste
in his mouth.

Chapter
1

There are
certain corporations which market themselves so aggressively, which
are so intent on stamping their image on everybody and every
street, that they build up a reservoir of resentment among thinking
people.

Jaggi Singh

Monday, September 13, 2066

Circular Quay

15:23 Sydney, Australia

Again it was Monday. And
deceptively it felt the same as any other Monday – the hunt was
on.

But
why?
Dan Sutherland wondered restlessly.

Why am I
doing this? Again?
And he gave the answer he always
gave:
Because it makes
sense.
Hunting provided a refuge, somewhere safe for
him to hide. It was just a pity he couldn’t also find asylum from
the turmoil in his mind.

He paused to scan the
surface of the harbour; water churned up by the departing ferries
sent eddies dancing from the quay. The pregnant clouds lost their
battle with gravity and a curtain of droplets
pattered
on the paving.
Perfect
. It matched his mood and
elicited a grim twist to one corner of his mouth. The men and women
around him scuttled for cover and before long only a dissident
child remained with Dan under the growing pelt. She stood
wide-eyed, holding out a small hand in a futile effort to clutch
the droplets that were disintegrating upon impact. A moment later
the child’s mother gripped her arm and tugged her under the
overcrowded eaves – to safety.

So Dan stood alone,
mesmerized by the spiralling pattern of chaos etched on the water
where the acidic rain mixed with the salt of the harbour. With
effort he cast his gaze over the jostling crowd, nurturing a seed
of envy and loathing it at the same time. Broken men could never
rejoin the synthetic world of the living. Or so he told
himself.

He watched as
they blundered into each other, rushing to return to their
cube-farms – claustrophobic squares of office space crammed in the
middle of a ninety-something story building. Most were frustrated
by the crush that each were, in turn, helping to create. No doubt
they’d share comments of ire with colleagues while sipping a latté
and shuddering at the nightmarish weather brewing outside their
glazed windows. Dan’s smile faded. He couldn’t bring himself to
care about his clothes and the rain wasn’t heavy enough to threaten
his lungs. He wore a tattered coat, well past its
use
-
by date. Only
his boots were of any value, and they were waterproof guaranteed.
He figured now was as good a time as any to put that to the
test.

The throng was
receding
and
he
re
commenced
worr
ying
about
his target. Dan knew he’d be easy to spot.
Adam.
He tested the man’s name in his
mind.
Adam Oaten.
He was wearing a distinctive brown beret, beneath which a few
wisps of greying hair protruded.
There you
are.
Dan spotted him walking toward quay
five and lengthened his stride to catch up.

Ferries were
such an antiquated mode of transportation, so slow and inefficient.
Dan wondered how they managed to stay in business; he didn’t know
anyone who used them, except holidaymakers. He scanned the boards
before stepping out of the rain and shaking the beaded water off
his coat. Rivercats to Parramatta departed from quay five, all-stop
services – express ferries didn’t operate outside peak-hour. He
joined the queue at the ticket terminal and craned his neck to
watch Adam select his destination, but the terminal was at an
inconvenient angle and Adam’s hunched shoulders blocked his view.
Dan frowned, wondering whether
Adam
was
being
deliberately cautious. He’d been careful, but
there was no such thing as
too
careful, not when hunting. Soon it
was his turn at the terminal and he purchased a ticket to the end
of the line, eyebrows rising when the fare blinked on the
display.
So that’s how they turn a
profit.
He walked reluctantly through the
gates and the sensor read his microchip, automatically deducting
the exorbitant fare from his linked account.

He felt his left eyelid
pulse and ran the back of his hand across his face, watching as
Adam sagged into a seat at the end of the pier. Dan edged his way
past the other passengers to lean against the railing. There he
watched. And waited. He caught a dim flash of light from somewhere
out at sea and braced for a thunderclap that never
arrived.

He studied the
mark. Time’s cruel touch had aged him since the photographs in his
file and a quiver of curiosity played across Dan’s face.
I wonder what he did.
He
recalled the words:
moderate danger –
approach with caution.
But Dan couldn’t see
anything dangerous about him.

With an effort
he pushed his thoughts aside and focused on his task. Only the
insane would apprehend him there.
Too
public.
Dan preferred something quieter and
was content to wait and see where Adam led him.

The ferry
arrived. A bedraggled deckhand sluggishly tossed some rope to
secure the rivercat to the pier and hauled on the line until the
ferry jolted
against
the protective foam. The young man’s muscles bulged under his
oilskin and he was panting from exertion by the time he’d
swung
a
ramp to the
pier. For their part, the passengers disembarked quickly. They
trotted from the ferry holding up hats and half-opened umbrellas to
stay dry.

With a resigned sigh, the
deckhand swung the gate and, like cattle, herded the new ruck of
passengers aboard. Dan deferred to the others, preferring to board
last. He wanted to be sure that Adam would already be sitting so he
could choose his seat accordingly. He always had a reason for his
actions. His wife had called it exasperatingly pedantic, but Dan
preferred the term efficient. This way he never wasted energy;
everything he did worked toward a goal.

Oddly, a
feeling of boyish excitement swelled from deep within when he
boarded. The thought a ferry trip revived something he thought
he
’
d lost
forever.
Enjoyment?
He wasn’t sure, but then, he didn’t really want to know. It
was irrelevant. It felt good, and good things should never be
analysed. Analysis had the power to destroy.

The deckhand
looked impatient
,
waiting for a secret signal from the Captain. When it arrived
he closed the gate, kicked the gangway back to the pier and
released the lines. With a whirr of the motors the ferry backed
from the quay like a skittish cat, causing the brave passengers on
deck to choke on diesel smog. It wasn’t until the Captain swung the
helm and reversed his port engine that the ferry spun, proudly
pointing toward the harbour and sparing the passengers from the
noxious fumes. The Captain then pushed both throttles to the stops
and the rivercat lurched forward, leaving turbulent water in its
wake.

Dan fought the
urge to go and stand on deck. The tantalising thought of a breeze
ruffling his hair and the lure
of
salt spray on his lips were almost too much to
bear. Despite the lashing rain that would sting his eyes, and
despite the pain his flesh would suffer the next day, the thrill
still beckoned him. But today he was busy.
Today it’s business.
So he contented
himself with gazing at the other river-craft from his
droplet-streaked window.

Lightning
flashed just before they passed under the Harbour Bridge and it lit
the water with a copper-green tinge. But this time there was also a
thunderclap and Dan felt it reverberate in his knees. He pressed
his cheek to the window and glimpsed the Bridge, barely for long
enough to admire the miracle civil engineers
had
perform
ed
so long ago. But the rivercat raced
ahead, spearing a path through the smaller craft that were brave
enough – or foolish enough – to be on the harbour in the brewing
storm.

*

The Raven fingered his
scar, tenderly.

Black was his
colour. Stealth was his virtue. And hunting was his game. Today was
no different. But he needed an omen and it frustrated him that none
had yet arrived. His coat gently flapped in the slow drizzle,
shining black with the wetness. The Raven brushed it aside,
reaching into the folds of his clothing to stroke his Redback-PX7.
Banned by the international convention of ‘38, the Redback had all
but vanished, held only by a scattering of terrorists and
law-snubbing pistol enthusiasts. It fired pellets of glass that
detonated an inch into the victim’s flesh, but its nanotoxin
payload was the real miracle. Most men would
have
shivered at the thought, but the
Raven was intimately familiar with this kind of convulsing
death.