NEW WORLD TRILOGY (Trilogy Title) (6 page)

"His kids aren't angels either.  I remember the way they looked at me.  Just no respect at all," adds another.

"How old are they?" asks Ikaros nonchalantly, trying not to be too curious.

"About ten and twelve, I think," answers a secretary.

Ikaros nods and the others continue chatting without him while he scrolls through his album list until he finds 1988's
Suffer
, the old but still highly-revered classic album by Bad Religion, the California punk band.  The door opens to the ground floor as the first song starts, and Ikaros hangs back waiting for the others to exit first.  Outside on the pavement, he waves politely to a few in the group who look his way; he then makes sure he heads in the opposite direction to his thirsty colleagues, quickly getting absorbed into the crowded street.

Chapter 4

Nineteen days later: Wednesday evening

In a kitchen somewhere in an inner suburb, Ikaros puts several teaspoons of chocolate flavouring into three glasses of warm milk and stirs it in until it's thoroughly mixed.  He's wearing a plastic mask of an alien-looking creature with a pasty skin colour and a pointy, bald head.  He places the glasses on a tray and walks out of the kitchen into the living room, where Peter and Julie are sitting on the couch watching an anime film on the wall-screen TV.  Ikaros places the glasses on the table and the children quickly lean across to pick them up and surprisingly say together, "Thanks."  Ikaros sits down on the armchair next to the couch and starts watching with them; he glances regularly at the children wondering why it is that they've accepted this peculiar situation so readily, and that, apart from some initial kicking and screaming, rudeness and spite, they've turned out to be, of all things, quite polite.

• • •

After a Wednesday afternoon meeting, Ikaros followed Big F home, since there was no way for him to get his address.  He proceeded to monitor the house with the aid of recently-purchased, unobtrusive surveillance equipment over the following four days, and attempted to find out as much extra information about them as he could: where the children go to school; who their friends are; where their mother lives, etc.  During this time, on some inspiring website, he found a tool called the Wealth and Liquid Assets Estimator, which provided degrees of confidence with its range of output values; once he'd analysed the results, he felt secure in the belief that Big F would be able to come up with Ikaros's modest 'start-up funding' in a feasible amount of time.

What he didn't expect in all of this was the apathetic and at times despicable way in which the children of this 'media mogul' reacted.  They didn't seem to have any regard for their parents' feelings or financial situation; instead, they were happy that they had the opportunity to become famous once released — this wasn't even encouraged by Ikaros initially, but was something that he later helped to develop.  They began planning their media speeches almost as soon as Ikaros filled them in on the details of their situation, after which they smiled at each other and expressed that they didn't care because they hated their exclusive private school and the rules and restrictions that their over-protective and controlling parents imposed on them, anyway.  Essentially, they considered this event to be an opportunity for their parents to be punished and to gain some status and fame for themselves in the process.

As for their mother, they held the view that she had abandoned them, even though she still visited them regularly and it was in fact their father who had thrown her out — they'd also referred to her as 'the whore' on more than one occasion for unspecified reasons and all too virulently.  They loathed their imperious father, who they routinely referred to as 'that man' and claimed with confidence that he was 'slutty' because he spent so much time away from home, a fact that their imaginations explained by leaning towards the licentious end of the spectrum — Ikaros accepted that they may well have had good cause to assume it, even if they had no real direct evidence.  Further, in a flagrant display of disloyalty, Peter even went so far as to suggest that he could help Ikaros to get more money as long as he received a cut for himself; a disturbing proposition, Ikaros thought, particularly from a ten-year-old.

• • •

Ikaros looks at the Children.  "Okay, now, I just wanna go over tomorrow's schedule."

"Don't bother.  We already know it," says Julie.

"I know you know it, but I just want to make sure.  I leave at nine and …"

"We wait here until they come and get us," completes Peter.

"Well, yeah.  The transfer is at 10 a.m., and I'll give th—"

"You'll message them the keys and the address.  They'll come and get us after that," continues Julie impatiently.

"It might take fifteen to thirty minutes, depending, so …"

"It doesn't matter," assures Peter.

"Then what?" Ikaros probes further.

Julie answers reluctantly, "We watch the house burn from the other side of the street."

Peter takes over.  "Then, when they arrive, we tell them we never saw your face, you treated us well, and we were all just squatting here."

"Whose house is it?"

Julie answers quickly, "We only know that they're on holiday, and you neutralised all the surveillance and security equipment before entering."

"It was done remotely.  You just paid for the service," says Peter.

"What about the street surveillance systems around the suburb?"

Peter glances at Ikaros.  "They can always try, but it's not like you didn't think of that."

Ikaros nods.  "Yeah, good.  I think we're on the same page."  He watches the film for a moment, quietly confident in the research he did, which provided him with the holes in the system that he was able to exploit during their entry and now hopes will still be adequate when he makes his exit.  Despite all his preparations, he's aware that what he did was still intrinsically risky: if it weren't for the hyper-isolated living conditions of the inner suburbs, he would never have been able to enter the house unobserved by any neighbours, particularly with two children in tow, even if it was late at night.  Prior to arriving, he had driven around the streets and had hidden in surveillance 'dark spots' for several hours after initially picking the children up in the late afternoon in a brazen, old-fashioned, mask-wearing moment of opportunistic foisting and throwing into the back seat of his newly commandeered car, which later received a different set of plates; after the initial shock, this period proved to be an invaluable opportunity to get acquainted and form their initial bonds.  Then, once he approached the 'safe house,' all he could do was hope that chance was on his side and that the Brazil-based security hacker that he'd hired was able to sever the house's connection with the public security system and substitute its surveillance data feed with the previous days' where appropriate, effectively hiding activities that go on in and around the house and providing no cause for concern regarding the out-of-place car with duplicate plates to those found in another suburb, and that entered the quiet street and turned into the driveway, ultimately hiding neatly behind the auto-roller door in the space that the owner's car would normally be in if it weren't safely in long-term parking at the airport.  This exploited a fortunate weakness in the system that Ikaros knows is unlikely ever to be addressed because of the lack of funding required to check manually all randomness and curious events that occur in the massive system each day, least of all respond to them all.

"Ikaros?" asks Peter.

"Yeah, what?"

"Do you think they'll care?"

Under his mask, Ikaros looks confused.  "Who?"

"The media.  I mean, there're so many kidnappings going on all the time.  Maybe they won't even interview us."

"Ah, that's unlikely 'cause you're the son and daughter of, you know, your father, and particularly if you're articulate — I mean, confident in the way you answer the reporters' questions.  They'll definitely put you on the news and you should get a few interviews out of it.  You'll get
some
media coverage.  I wouldn't worry about that."

"Our father will make sure we get
a lot
of coverage," Julie modifies confidently.

"Well, yeah, but still,” continues Ikaros, ”you'll just have to wait and see.  There're so many intense things happening in the world, stories come and go quickly; the media moves on to the next big thing really fast, you know?  It's always been like that, but now more than ever."  Not wanting to discourage them too much, he quickly changes the focus.  "I think you'll get enough exposure in the state at least to get a good reputation at school, though.  That's gotta be something, huh?"

"Screw school!" reacts Peter vehemently.

"Do you think we'll have to go to a new school, Pinhead?" asks Julie, hoping the answer will be ‘yes.’

"Mm, well, your dad has paid a lot for your education there.  It's quite exclusive, and I don't quite see why you'd need to change.  It's not like his economic position is going to change substantially once I'm done with him."

"Why not?" asks Peter, unable to work it out.

"I'm not greedy, I suppose."

"Oh, I wish you were greedy.  I'd prefer to go to a normal school," Julie explains.

Ikaros looks at her and considers his response.  "Yeah, that would be cool; I mean, you'd have instant status there being wealthier than most and famous as well.  But you can capitalise on this at your own school in a similar way.  Who else there could say they've had such an experience?  I mean, most of them haven't done anything with their lives and nothing's happened to them either.  If you're careful you can improve your social standing among your peers."

"I suppose so, but I … we just hate it there," states Julie.

"Yeah, I don't blame you,” says Ikaros almost sympathetically, “but … you can turn that around.  All you need to do is be focused and strategic.  Do you know what I mean? "

"You mean like chess?" enquires Peter.

"Yeah, kind of," confirms Ikaros, trying not to encourage the conversation any further than he already has as he’s starting to feel a bit uncomfortable about helping them to see how they can exploit their situation to its full, yet this is probably much better than allowing them to think that their prospects are just about hopeless.

They all resume watching the end of the film, and Ikaros mulls on the strange perspectives these particular children have, not to mention the lack of trauma resulting from the recent events he's responsible for.  He can't quite decide whether their contempt for their parents and lack of interest in having wealth is due to a lack of knowledge about their privileged place in the world or whether it's more a reaction to the way their parents have communicated their desperate desire to maintain their social standing in an increasingly unpredictable and unstable economic, social, and climatic situation, which has caused the kids to have an aversion to the accumulation of wealth, harbouring instead a fantastic view of poverty as providing a refuge from the stresses and tenuousness of possessing more than many could or will ever have to lose in this world. 
Weird thinking if it's true.  Even if the paper goes bust at some stage, they're still unlikely ever to be poor; people like their dad aren't that vulnerable; they’re just greedy.  Anyway, we're probably doing your dad a favour more than hurting him.  Let's just wait and see how Daddy shamelessly uses you to promote himself and the paper.  See what you think of reality then, kids.

Tired and a bit bored, Ikaros closes his eyes and waits it out, allowing the noise from the film and the kids' obliviously ignorant and carefree giggling and chatting to fall into the background unable to compete with his own thoughts and continuing need for further planning.

Chapter 5

Two weeks before Ikaros kidnapped the kids from outside their home when they were returning from school while their father was out — presumably on a date rather than working if the kids were to be believed — Ikaros gave four weeks' notice of his resignation, citing, as the core reasons, dissatisfaction with his journalistic freedom and a need to find outlets that will allow him to develop his skills and interests, both of which were believable to his editors and raised no eyebrows since it was beginning to be expected of him sooner or later.  Being quiet but diplomatic, he continued diligently with his work and only gave small hints about his future plans — just enough to keep them satisfied that he could be satisfactorily pegged — while changing the subject or being slightly evasive when they got too close, but nothing so obvious that it would draw unusual attention.  Never really expecting to get close to him, anyway, his colleagues generally respected his privacy, and with any that he suspected wouldn't, and there were a few, he made sure he kept a distance from them wherever possible — a skill that he had developed quite well over the years.

Ikaros walked out of the office inconspicuously on his last day, just carrying a bag of personal effects, which contained a small box of chocolates he'd just been given at the office leaving party that afternoon; such events only occurred under these safe circumstances — sackings and retrenchments took place without social formalities, albeit uncomfortably and noticed by all, of course.  Finding it difficult to be honest for a variety of reasons, his leaving speech was predictably shorter than the usual, but nothing more was expected of him, given what everyone knew and believed about his style.