“
Maybe now she
can lay him to rest, grieve for her loss and pick up what’s left of
her life.” But Dan said it half-heartedly; he knew how hard it was
to pick up the pieces of a shattered life. He’d been trying for
eleven months and didn’t feel any closer to a rebuilt life than he
had on day one. Still, he wished well for others.
H
e occasionally needed to
hear a success story to believe there was still hope for
him
.
“
I doubt it.”
Chuck was barely whispering. “Xantex’s prescription didn’t work
fast enough and she did herself in too.”
Dan swallowed hard,
understanding all too well the way she felt. “Then I hope she finds
peace.”
It wasn’t what he needed
to hear. It sapped his strength.
The Australian
government, whether through efficiency or carelessness, had
combined
the roles of immigration, customs
and security. Dan wished other countries would do the same; it made
things easy on travellers. So, now that Chuck’s scanner had logged
Dan’s details, Dan was free to enter the county
.
They each nodded farewell and
Dan headed to the domestic portals where he
selected his home address. He was thinking about the final entry on
his list.
I’m tired so you’ll have to wait
a while
. He scowled.
If it’s you at all.
Chapter
3
I wake up
every morning, jump in the shower, look down at the symbol, and
that pumps me up for the day. It’s to remind me every day what I
have to do, which is, “Just Do It.”
24-year-old Internet
entrepreneur Carmine Colettion on his decision to get a Nike swoosh
tattooed on his navel, December 1997.
Thursday, September 16,
2066
Elustra
Giga-Mall
14:44 Melbourne,
Australia
The mall was
crowded.
It always was.
Such was the price to pay for living in the hub of the
thirty-seventh Elustra undertaking. It truly was impressive; Jen
had to admit that.
A little over the top
though.
It was an Elustra committee
brainchild – that’d wanted to increase efficiency. It chilled Jen
to think of them sitting around a conference room, scoffing
hors d’oeuvres
,
downing
C
hampaign and concocting
their
plan for the Elustra
Giga-Mall. The complex was actually three enormous columns arranged
in a triangle with an artificially maintained garden in the middle.
Each pillar was a staggering testament to the accomplishments of
civil engineering. They each occupied three square-kilometres of
earth – made brackish due to the raising water table – and each
rose 125 stories into the sky. The tubes and connecting tunnels
that linked the three pillars resembled the feeding and refuse
tubes of a hospitalised monster.
The primary
pillar was the epicentre of the Elustra world. It was a
credit-maniac’s nightmare and a kleptomaniac’s delight. An array of
retail stores, all operated by the colossal giga-corporation,
catered for every conceivable desire. Jen frowned and tried to
think of something
Elustra had
forgotten but couldn’t. There were 400 food
stalls, 60 restaurants, and 7 department stores – all with names
based on the Elustra trademark: Little Elustra, Big Elustra,
Lustre, Lust Elm, Elustra Cute, Mini Elustra, and Gigantic Elustra.
Jen had lost count but the information board proudly boasted there
were 16 cinemas, 5 supermarkets, 90 clothing stores, 17 chemists,
18 hairdressers and over 300 other specialty shops selling
everything from ‘antiques’ to computer games.
Impressive
. Jen begrudgingly
admitted. If she couldn’t find something on the outside, she knew
she’d find it here – Elustra guaranteed it. As one of their
favourite advertisements said, “If you can’t find it at Elustra, it
doesn’t exist.” Jen believed it.
And the
convenience!
Jen marvelled that they could
operate every store in the mall for 8,760 hours a year.
8,784 hours in a leap year,
Jen remembered. They’d built their business on pure,
unadulterated capitalism. And Jen was standing at the pinnacle. It
frightened her a little and she could see a similarly uneasy
expression on Samantha’s face.
The second
Elustra pillar housed the management team’s offices. A few years
ago it had featured in Fortune magazine, which reported it to have
the most luxurious offices money could buy. And that had been the
case until the other giga-corporations matched Elustra’s grandeur
to stem the tide of quality staff they were losing to the giant
retailer’s extravagance. Jen couldn’t remember how many offices the
building hosted and couldn’t be bothered sitting through one of the
information screenings
to find out. The
boring presentations ran in a loop,
24 hours
a day.
The final
pillar housed the residences, everything from one-bedroom bachelor
pads to expansive executive homes. Elustra had spared no expense.
The building materials, workmanship, finish and fittings were all
first class. They’d even soundproofed the walls to give every
resident the sensation they were in a freestanding house.
Or so they say.
Jen had
never heard a firsthand resident’s account, probably because their
contracts forbid them to disclose company secrets. Every resident
over the age of eighteen was an employee, and the Elustra
Foundation thoroughly indoctrinated the teenagers who were
approaching legal working age. As a result, they tended to fight
ferociously to keep a position in the company, even if that meant
doing menial work such as scrubbing the scum off the nest of pipes
in the basement.
It was the
perfect biosphere to hawk wares. Jen knew it, Samantha knew it, and
most of the people living there knew it. But that was what they
wanted. Or that’s what Elustra had contracted them to say if
anybody asked. Jen wished she had an information pipeline into the
giga-mall, but the iron-fisted approach taken by Elustra’s infamous
security force made that impossible.
And it
was rare to find an Elustra employee in the outside world; they had
no need of that anymore. They lived branded lives, Elustra Lives™.
What need did they have of the outside world? Didn’t Elustra supply
everything they could possibly want?
Openings at an Elustra
mall occasionally appeared in the online papers and Jen wondered
what sort of people would actually apply for them. Nevertheless,
there was a wide variety of positions available: office juniors,
highly paid and overstressed executives, cleaners, security guards,
building maintenance orderlies, doctors, dentists, medical
specialists, engineers to keep the sophisticated equipment in
proper working order… Elustra needed them all to keep their
workforce healthy, to keep it free of decay. But the advertisements
never mentioned the burnt-out employees Elustra discarded, thereby
creating the vacancies.
With such a
large structure, transportation could prove a problem. Or it would
prove a problem if Elustra hadn’t put portals everywhere. They were
free for all residents – one of the perquisites of having a
microchip branded by an oppressive corporation. The portals
positively riddled the structure, though somebody could only access
the areas for which he or she had the
appropriate
clearance.
And one of
Elustra’s manufacturing plants had fabricated every product in the
mall –including the ‘antiques’
. But the
factories didn’t have a shiny enough public image, so they’d
never
been a candidate
for
integration with
the
perfectly balanced triangle.
Elustra brushed them to the fringes where they occupied
deserts
and swamps,
operated in sweatshop conditions wherever the local laws were
lax enough to permit it.
The business
model had proved successful
; Elustra’s
pilot program in Los Angeles demonstrated that. It was so
successful that
they began stamping
out
malls
as fast
as their construction crews could find the materials. They
scattered the first ten across the United States where the newly
enlisted Elustra employees welcomed them wholeheartedly and
everyone else eyed them with suspicion. The fact that
Elustra only
built malls
on cheap, unwanted land was probably what helped them survive their
youth. Who needed to be close to the cities when your patrons could
portal from anywhere? So their enormous
triangles
,
which
looked more like huge turds from
a distance, multiplied without resistance. Their introduction into
Canada and Australia went smoothly, but the Europeans complained
bitterly about the decimation of their old-world skyline and
protests rocked the streets until Elustra relocated to Russia,
where they weren’t so finicky about
outward
appearances
. In order to compensate for
the
added cost of long
distance
portaling,
Elustra subsidised all portal activity from
Western Europe into their Russian malls
.
It worked
.
Europeans flocked to Elustra’s malls and brought their money with
them
.
A flood of
money.
It was hardly
surprising that
other multinationals sought
to copy Elustra’s
success
and soon the gargantuan
developments speckled
the globe. Every
multinational attempted to diversify, preying upon vaguely
dissimilar segments of society. But Elustra was the original model
and it would always hold a special place in the hearts and minds
of
the people
.
For Jen, that special
place was a stinging clot that choked her of oxygen.
Samantha
looked longingly at a plasma screen that
was
spew
ing
commercial propaganda at the
passers-by. “What I wouldn’t give to hack that and get some
real
exposure.”
Jen was in a good mood
and her enthusiasm nearly rivalled Samantha’s effervescent
exuberance. “We’re on the verge of getting a much bigger canvass
than a plasma screen.”
Samantha beamed and said,
“I know. Exciting, isn’t it?”
Jen nodded and turned
sideways to squeeze past a porky man whose buttoned shirt had
popped beneath his considerable gut, revealing a tangle of
belly-hair. She suppressed a shudder and asked, “So what exactly
are we looking for anyway?”
“
I need a new
top.” Samantha despaired to think of her wardrobe, it was just
so,
camp.
“
Yeah, me
too.” Jen wanted to toss all her worn clothing in the bin and start
afresh, but then remembered her grandfather’s warning and stubbed
her desire before it got out of control. Her clothes were
functional and that was good enough. She hated the part of herself
that desired more. It wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t natural. It was
the advertisements weaselling their way into her subconscious and
influencing her actions like the jerk of a puppet’s
strings.
“…
I think.”
Samantha was saying something that Jen didn’t quite catch. “Or
maybe beige.”
Excited
children were tugging on the arms of exhausted parents, clustering
around the window of Luke’s Lucky Pet Store. Jen doubted that
anybody by the name of Luke had ever worked
there
.
T
here was a Luke’s Lucky Pet Store in
all Elustra giga-malls.
Hmm… those
kittens
are
cute
though
. She knew why Elustra wanted to sell
them. Owning a pet raised the rent in a person’s apartment by 20
Credits a week and it meant the inhabitants needed to purchase cat
food, flea collars, and small balls that tinkled when they rolled.
And that wasn’t mentioning visits to the veterinarian. But one
kitten was particularly cute. It was unsteady on its long back legs
and it wobbled when it ran about the pen, playing with its siblings
in the sawdust.
Jen made a longing face,
similar to the pestering children. “Oh, can we get one?”
“
Yeah sure,
it’ll love living on your yacht,” Samantha said
facetiously.
Jen poked her
in the ribs. “Well,
that
one loves water. You can tell by
the way it walks – it’s not wobbly, it’s got sea legs!”
Samantha doubled with
laughter. “Sure girl.”
They were halfway back to
the food court, or the junk-food court as the locals called it,
when Jen reflected on the serious side of their combined
excitement. “We should think about how to use our window of
opportunity.” She talked in codes, all the better to hide their
intentions from the ever-watchful corporate eyes and ever-listening
corporate ears.
Samantha knew what she
meant. “I’ve been thinking about that too.” She opened the throttle
on her imagination. “We could send a message to other-”