Chapter 26

“He found it on a construction site. Said it’s something about the Circuit.”

Marc sat at his desk with his headset on.

“So, they’re expanding there next, you think?” replied Nari.

Her voice made him feel relaxed, confident. He felt ready to crack into the files on the drive Theo took and finally expose the truth about CaliaCorp. With Nari’s help.

“I hope not. I don’t want to move.”

“Then we’d better get to work. Plug it in and share the screen.”

Marc took the little black drive and inserted it into his computer. He clicked on the folder labelled ‘Circuit District’ and a password prompt appeared.

“See there’s your problem Marc,” said Nari.

“What?”

“It’s encrypted,” she laughed.

Marc laughed too. “I tried to warn you.”

“Ok, you got this. Let me send you something, one second.”

A ping sounded and a file arrived to Marc’s email. He didn’t remember giving that to Nari, but it was hardly surprising she could find it on her own. There was an attachment.

“This won’t do anything dangerous will it? An unknown attachment, always risky,” Marc said with a chuckle.

“Just install a virus on your computer that will allow me to access all your porn and find out what dirty secrets you have,” Nari replied.

“Oh no,” Marc said, “you’ll know I like cute girls who can code.”

“No flirting now, we have a job to do.”

Marc opened the attachment and a command prompt popped up. It started installing something and a moment later a video with a spinning spiral appeared on the screen.

“Is this normal?” Marc asked.

“Yeah, just wait, it’s loading. It’s just a dumb screen some dork added. You know these kinds of things.”

Marc nodded as he stared at the screen. The loading wasn’t too bad. Just a spiral, going around and around. He could almost imagine words flashing over it now and then, but he couldn’t make them out, he wasn’t even sure they were actually there. As he focused, he found they were, and they became clearer so he focused harder, trying to figure it out. It was probably nothing interesting or important, but something made him want to know. That intense curiosity was the same as he felt for what he had been working on, which now seemed distant and unimportant. Now, he just needed to know what the words were. What was the program trying to say in this strange, swirling loading screen? Marc could barely look away, but it didn’t matter if he kept staring, he had nowhere else to be. Nothing else mattered until the screen was finished doing whatever it was doing.

“So what juicy secrets are in there?”

Nari’s voice merged with the spiral now, spinning around his mind and making his spirit soar and his heart flutter. Her pretty, sweet voice. So innocent and caring and gentle and kind.

“Marc?”

“Um, I don’t know,” he said.

“What do you think is on there?”

“Just some gentle femdom, nothing weird.”

“That’s nice, Marc, but I meant on the drive you just put in.”

The spiral stopped, the program started, and Marc felt his chest tighten and his heart race. What had he just said?

“I was… I was kidding.”

“They should put a warning label on these programs with spirals, right?” Nari giggled.

“I was just playing around I swear,” Marc said.

“Oh, don’t worry Marc,” Nari replied, “Mommy understands.”

His cock twitched and he felt himself take a sharp, involuntary breath.

“Let’s get this drive cracked, ok?” she continued.

Marc nodded, “yeah, yeah let’s do it. What does the program do?”

“Ok so you need to drag and drop the folder into it. It’s going to try a ton of password combinations. Simple.”

Marc followed her instruction and dropped the folder. The program showed a progress bar that slowly ticked up, slowly.

“What can we do while we wait?” Marc asked.

“I don’t know, maybe tell me more about that mommy porn.”

“Shut up, I told you I was joking.”

“Right, and I’m Calia herself, obey me my mindless drone.”

Marc laughed. Nari was adorable. Even feeling so embarrassed, it was hard not to feel good listening to her. Something about her voice just felt like honey, like a first date, like falling in love.

“So um, what do you do… when you’re not being a hacker? Do you have a job or something?”

“Nothing interesting, just some tech support stuff.”

“Oh yeah? I was hoping to do something like that. Where? I thought basically everything was CaliaCorp now.”

“Nah, you just need to speak Korean and find a gig on Seoul time. I mean yeah CaliaCorp is there, but I’m totally remote.”

“Pretty sweet gig. Hope they pay you well.”

“Not enough for a CaliaCorp apartment, but I get by. Still wouldn’t mind a place in the sky though, looking out over the neon lights, you know?”

Marc felt surprised, he expected her to be against CaliaCorp, but it made sense. You couldn’t really deny, the view would be good from a CaliaCorp apartment.

“Yeah, I get you. I just want to be able to move somewhere they won’t demolish. Speaking of, 88 percent.”

“Almost there. So where exactly are you Marc? You know I could find out but… seems polite to ask.”

“You really think you could find out? I’m bouncing all over the world.”

“Come on, it’s me.”

“Ok, maybe eventually you’d pin me down, but I’ve done pretty well at avoiding being tagged so far. CaliaCorp are good, but that’s the one thing I can do well. Hide.”

Marc laughed. Nari didn’t.

“They still probably know where you are, so you might as well just tell me. Imagine we were neighbours.”

Marc did imagine it. He pictured Nari walking in his door, letting down her hair and taking off her glasses. He still didn’t know what she looked like but he could guess. Soft, pale skin and long straight hair to her cleavage.

“Would be fun to… hang out.”

“So tell me then!” Nari said with a chirp in her voice.

“Oh, here we go, 99 percent.”

The program let out a triumphant jingle and the folder opened, revealing a set of documents and plans. Marc clicked on blueprints and saw a luxury tower overlaid on what he recognised as the entire Circuit District. The whole thing was swallowed by one enormous CaliaCorp high-rise with a pool on the roof, gardens every five floors and vines dangling down the side of its 48-floor mass. It was wide, almost a city in itself. The dimensions, the scale, were unfathomable, almost impossible to comprehend if there weren’t at least ten identical blocks in the city, but this seemed even larger. More ambitious.

“What the hell is this?” Marc said.

“Looks… big. Like, really big,” Nari replied.

Marc opened another document, this one a simple form. A demolition order, sent to one part of CaliaCorp from another part of CaliaCorp. A time and date to begin the scheduled destruction of the entire Circuit District. The apartments, the shops, the old warehouses filled with the people displaced by corporate expansion. It was all going to be crushed under the heel of so-called progress.

“No,” Marc muttered.

Another document detailed the plans. All residents removed by a specific date. No details on where they would go, other than a vague reference to assimilation into the new surroundings. Whatever that meant. The plans ended within a year. A year, to build a structure so large it would cover multiple blocks and involve removing thousands of people. How could they do it? How could it be so fast, so brutally efficient. And where on Earth could he go?

“It’s over. They’re really doing it,” he said.

Nari remained silent for a moment. Marc could hear her quiet breathing.

“It’s ok, Marc.”

“Is it? How could it possibly be ok?”

“Because you know. You have time.”

“Time for what? To go where?” he shouted. “There’s nowhere else. This place is the end of the line. This is where you go when they push you out of the rest of the fucking city.”

“I know, but maybe there’s another option.”

“No, fuck,” Marc’s anger subsided, turning into resignation. “I don’t know what to do but this can’t be legal.”

“Is there anything else in the folder? Anything that looks, you know, actually illegal?”

Marc dug through the folder. Manifests and plans and documents and invoices. Nothing that actually spelled out what would happen to residents of the Circuit District. Some vague allusions, certainly, but nothing remotely incriminating.

“What do they mean about assimilating current residents?” Marc asked.

“No idea, but it sounds like they have a plan for you.”

“I don’t like the sound of it. At all.”

“Marc it’s ok, it’s going to be ok.”

“No, it isn’t. Fuck there has to be something on here that we can show someone, show the police, show the courts, the media.”

“All of which are owned by CaliaCorp. It has to be iron-clad. It would have to say they were going to forcibly evict people or demolish things without any permits or something that could hold up in court, right?”

“This does say that. It says they’re going to demolish the Circuit.”

“Read it again, Marc, it says proposed development. On everything. That one word, that’s doing a lot of work.”

“What? Nari, I don’t get it. How does this not incriminate them?”

“Proposed, Marc. It’s a proposal. It’s what you show the city to get approval.”

“So, it might not happen?”

“I mean, we both know it will, don’t we?”

“But this doesn’t prove it? None of it? Nothing on this stupid drive?”

“Don’t feel bad Marc, it’s ok. I promise, ok? You’re going to be ok.”

Her voice cracked a little.

Marc put his head in his hands. It was not going to be ok. Nothing was ok. CaliaCorp would take his home, take everyone’s home. Take everything. And… assimilate him. Whatever the fuck that meant.

A ping. Marc pulled his hands from his face and looked at his computer. A new email from Nari appeared in his inbox.

“I wanted to cheer you up,” she said as he moved his cursor toward it.

“What is this?” he said, clicking on it.

It had another attachment. A photo. He opened it. His screen filled with the image of a young woman with long black hair, perfectly straight, a heart-shaped face with thick-rimmed black glasses and soft, shiny lips. She sat in a cushioned chair in a dark room, her tiny body illuminated by a computer monitor. A hoodie concealed her figure, but her legs were bare and wrapped up underneath her and made it clear she was slender and fit.

“Is this you?” Marc asked.

“I thought it might make you feel better Marc, to see me.”

Marc gazed at the picture. She looked gorgeous. A fantasy.

“It does, actually.”

Nari giggled.

“Thanks,” Marc said.

“I just want to take care of you, honey,” she replied.