mother gave it to me when it was just this long,” he insisted, holding his fingers apart by about three centimeters.
“That plant consumed light and water from Nanogate. By inference, it must belong to the corporation—Portland Statute eleven-fourteen-baker.”
Tony thought seriously about raising a fit about the plant, the only link to his parents, dead nearly a year now. But his mind still functioned. He remembered the derision heaped on him by Anson for being a good and trustworthy employee. His shoulders, set strongly up to this point, drooped in defeat. His eyes dimmed as his head slumped forward just the tiniest amount. He carefully set down the plant after visions of Anson playing the part of a vengeful and self-righteous god darkened his mood even further.
Tony knew that fighting anything Nanogate or Anson decided to do to him was a useless waste of time and resources. If Anson gave him the truth about the charges, no court in the world would entertain any case he put forward. Even if he did get it before a judge, the corporate lawyers would crush any representation he could possibly afford.
He was finished in this world. The best he could hope for now was menial labor or migration, if any of the colonies would consider him. His past employment didn’t exactly push him into any critical need category.
The briefcase seemed very empty compared to the number of hours he had labored here. He took nothing from the office except memories of an already extinct corporate career. With a sigh he closed the lid.
“I guess that’s all. Go ahead and do it.” As an act of finality, Tony lifted his wrist. The scanner sniffed the DNA from the loose cells at his wrist and crosslinked with the Nanogate mainframe. In picoseconds, every door, every machine, and every positive record within the corporation would now deny Tony’s very existence, irrevocably.
Silence filled the cubicle farm. The word passed quickly as the people with whom Tony had laughed, cried, supported, torpedoed, drunk beer, played softball, and competed against for the golden nuggets of corporate politics lined the hall. There stretched a human gauntlet of his life. A variety of reactions played on the faces of his former peers, subordinates, and everyone else who somehow had learned of his demise. Some wore faces that did little to hide their joy, sadness, or outright fear. Above everything else, the silence stung Tony. He half expected to hear the muffled sobs of a grieving widow. The analogy seemed fitting. Instead, he got nothing.
Tony maintained his composure through the procession, saying not a single word. He would go out as a man wronged with his head held high, not catching the eye of any of the silent witnesses. It was the longest two minutes of his life, putting one foot in front of the other, staring at a faded, four-year-old dental seminar poster on the far wall.
As he reached the exit, someone in the gathered crowd actually mustered the audacity to cheer, but only for a brief second and without great enthusiasm. Tony stiffened and stopped in the portal. He wanted to shout that they were next, to scream and plead for respite. Instead he looked to the group, now clustered in the entry under the monstrosity they called a sculpture. With as much sarcasm as he could muster, he quietly said, “Good luck to you all.”
Turning at once, he stepped out under the awning of the building. He bitterly rejected the protection of the corporation’s roof and he took several more steps. His dignity held until the light Portland rain chilled his cheeks. Finally he afforded a weakness that wouldn’t show. Tears rolled down his cheeks, invisibly mingled in the wet, hiding his shame.
Very briefly he considered just jumping off the ledge and plunging countless meters to an ignoble demise, but he needed to prove they hadn’t beaten him. Instead, he stood with a ramrod-straight back, mixing salt from his tears with the drizzle’s pollution as he waited for the lift-bus and a new, if unknown, life.
“I’ll make this right.”
* * *
Night herself held too obvious a danger. It caused decent and semi-decent people to guard themselves carefully. It gave hunters a place to lurk. It also gave camouflage and life to the hunters of the hunters.
The night gave rise to a backward kind of danger. With the predators that stalked the night dropping off to sleep and the daylight denizens not yet stirring, the afternoon provided, as it had for