Smart World - A Novel

SMART WORLD
a novel set in the 21st Century
Part I - Death Chapter 1 - Bad Credit

The thin black branches were coated with ice and drops of rain were frozen in space, hanging from the bony tips of the small finger like twigs and the roof edges. The sky was thin, cold, and gray, with a darkening in the top, center, that slowly seeped downwards towards the purple shadowed landscape. Here and there a brief light shone like a silver needle in the flowing murky darkness near the ground. The car engines of homeward bound workers snarled and growled like hungry stomaches. The silver Micron Sedan of Jane Frankfort slid up the icy drive and perched at the door of the garage waiting to get in out of the brutal cold. Jane waited, then, impatiently smacked the dashboard several times, groaning, "What next! Don't tell me the garage door won't open either."

Her face was pinched and white and her eyes were black and squeezed beneath her brow, furrowed in frustration and anger. Slowly, pearly tears ran from the corners of her black eyes to the corners of her red lips, pressed into a thin dividing line. She lightly punched the steering wheel several times and bounced up and down in her seat in dead end aggravation, then, raising her gray gloved hands to her face, she brushed the tears from her cheeks and pressed the car door button.

When it didn't open, a constriction of the heart caused her to gasp, and she cried out into the silence and the darkness, "Why are you doing this to me? I'm hungry, I'm cold, I have to go to the bathroom and I want to go home! Let me out, let me out, damn it, or I'll kick the glass out. How would you like that - to have your lovely window kicked out, and then I'll trade you in at some dump of a car lot where you'll sit waiting for some new idiot to pay good money for you." She pounded the door button and then drawing her whole body up onto the seat, over onto thepassenger side, she pushed her back against the car door and kicked and kicked at the button and the window. Crying loudly, like a child, in rage, her face red now, and shining wet with tears. She kicked the door and the glass of the window until the bottoms of her feet ached. It was safety glass. Then, she had an idea. She would drive to the local car repair and they would get her out.

Jane slid back into the driver's seat and told the car to reverse. Stubbornly, it didn't move. "Reverse, I said, you stupid pile of junk, Reverse! What's the matter with you, can't you do anything? Reverse! Reverse!." But nothing happened. Jane pressed the warning button, and all the other buttons on the dash, but nothing happened at all. No wipers, no radio, the glove compartment wouldn't open, nothing worked. Jane, sat up, and calmly decided the system must have frozen. The thing to do was to shut it down and start it back up and it would correct itself. "Lights off and turn off," she said, in more rational tones.

It was with a huge sigh of relief that Jane saw the lights go out and heard the engine go quiet. All the dash lights went out. At last it was working and she could get things back in order. "Turn on," she said, in a slightly pleading tone. But it wouldn't turn on. Then she hit the door button. This time it opened and she got out quickly, "You're done for you heap of malfunctioning plastic trash," she said, kicking the door shut. Then, suddenly, her feet went out from under her and she fell, hard, on her rear end and her legs went under the car. Unaccountably shaken, she scrambled, crawling and sliding, away from the car to the grass, which broke with glassy crunches under her hands. Then she crawled to the side of the garage, and leaning against the frozen, slippery siding, she stood, wobbly and clinging to the wall. Carefully, she put one foot in front of the other, keeping herself flat against the cold damp surface of the garage wall, and painstakingly made her way to the door of her condo, thinking to herself, "Well, I could always have gone to the neighbors, or, if worse came to worse, slept in the car till someone came, but the car would have probably fixed itsself. It'll probably be ok by morning. Damn, not even paid for and it doesn't work." Jane had reached the front door and she pressed her hand against the plate. Again, nothing happened. "It's probably the ice," she thought, and rubbed the plate to get any film of frost off so it would work. But it wouldn't. Jane began to wonder if something major had gone wrong - some kind of brown out. Only, how could that be when she could see so clearly that lights were on in neighboring houses. She gave a couple of small smacks to the plate and kept her hand pressed against its cold surface, then put her glove back on, wondering what to do next. She spoke to her house, to the microphone hole just above the hand plate. "Please let me in. I know we've had some problems in the past, but I am cold and hungry and tired and we can work things out. Don't make me go to the neighbors. Please, just let me in. I want to come home."

Again, she removed her glove and pressed her hand against the plate, hopeful, almost confident, and the door opened. "Oh, thank you," she exclaimed, in real gratitude. "Lights please." She took off her handsome and expensive fur coat and hung it on the hook of the revolving closet, which immediately swung the coat out of sight. She placed her fur hat and gloves on the shelf. Then she walked into the kitchen and asked the Microchef for tea and a light dinner, anything. She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Jane looked tired. Deep circles were under her dark eyes, rimmed in red from crying, and her face was thin and pinched looking. She splashed water on her face, and washed her hands to make them warm again.

Before returning to the kitchen, Jane went into her bedroom, and pressed the closet button. She needed warm and comfortable clothes. As the closet ring turned, she looked over her vast wardrobe until her brand new leisure outfit came by, then she took it out. It was a beautiful, handmade silk pajama imported from China. It had cost a fortune, being both an import and a natural fiber, but it was worth it, she thought, as she ran her hands over the smooth satin finish. Quickly, she stripped the beige work suit from her bony body and kicked it aside. She pulled the red embroidered silk pants over her sharp angled feet and knees, then she shot her thin arms like arrows through the sleeves. It made a delicious rustle as she moved in it. Just the color alone, was making her feel warmer, better. For a moment, she lay her weary body across the gently undulating surface of her gel bed. It was so comforting. The best things were always so comforting, good clothes, the best furniture. Although the car had been the best - very expensive! And look what it had done to her. Well, Jane decided she would worry about that later. Now it was time to relax, and rest, and feel better. It had been a horrible day from start to finish. Jane's stomach turned over with a small complaining grumble, and she reluctantly rose from her bed, slipped into her matching red silk slippers, and walked into the kitchen, telling the other lights to go on as she passed them. She wanted lots of light. And heat. "Heat up to 80," she commanded, walking into the kitchen and passing the autotherm microphone hole.

Sitting at the counter, Jane pressed the wall screen with her finger tip, and it blinked awake, like an eye, and greeted her. "Hello, Jane." The voice was whisper soft and soothing, neither male nor female, and yet both. "What can I do for you?" "Give me messages, but no bills or reminders, only friends and family, and some soft music - and that's all, and I mean it - that's all!" Jane lifted the door to the food tray and slid the white tray from its shelf. She took her cup from the beverage dispenser and sniffed at the aroma of the tea. Just what she needed. She unwrapped her fork and knife as the wall screen spoke to her with light ambient music in the background. "Your friend Stella called at 6:00 to ask if you had made reservations for your trip to New York. She wants you to return her call this evening. That is your only personal message, but you have a feed from your news service, if you want it, and two adverts from your fashion supplier and travel agent, if you would like to see them. Jane, we really must go over your finances. We are in danger of being cut off. I have tried to help as much as I can, but you circumvent all of my efforts with overrides and new accounts. You are now in such debt and arrears that we cannot pay and may lose additional services. We are on skeleton crew as it is. Let me help you. We must sell some things and plan a drastic economy which you must promise to keep. This is your last chance."

Jane threw her tray into the shelf, and smacked the wall screen, crying, "Off, off, I've had enought. I can't take any more. This has been the worst day of my life and there you are nagging and nagging and not helping me feel better at all. You want to worry? Listen to this, I lost my job today! How about that! How the heck do you think we are going to run this place now!" She let her stool fall over when she rose with such vehemence that it swayed backwards. It made an unusually loud bang when it hit the polished white floor, almost like a shot, not like a light plastic object at all. Jane went back to the bedroom, told the lights to dim, and lay again on her soft gel bed. She closed her eyes after taking one last look at her lovely room, the creamy Texture Weave walls, and the state of the art wall screen, with cosmetic accessory, the lightly twitching, floor to ceiling, caramel colored curtains, moving to the current of warm air being pumped out of the hidden vents. She rolled close enough to touch the warm satin surface of the flowered bowl of the twentieth century antique porcelain lamp she had recently bought and had rewired. When she touched it, it glowed warmly and the flowers lit up, Red zinnias, and yellow daisies, white carnations, and deep pink rosebuds, with purple irises in the background. Her finger gently traced the outline of one large red poppy, raised against the velvety texture of the lamp base because it had been hand painted. It was almost a hundred years old. It had cost a fortune. It gave Jane such pleasure to touch and look at. She gazed dreamily at the round white base and the vivid flowers, and her eyes gently closed and she fell into a deep sleep, the sleep of a woman drugged. And as she slept, the lights went out, one by one, the new lamp last of all. Then, as blackness overtook the world outside, like a swiftly rising flood, it seeped into the house as well, and the house grew slowly colder and colder. All the beautiful furnishings sat waiting. The wall screens watched. Chill air rose up around the ankles of the chairs and tables. Moisture lay a clammy hand on metal surfaces, then quickly turned to a silvery frost. The white walls and white carpets, and white furnishings began to seem as though they were carved from snow. Everyting grew colder and colder, to the center of its structure. And the pale woman sleeping on her still white bed, breathed little puffs of freezing air, and her nostrils frosted, and her eyes sealed, and she was encased in a micro film of frozen moisture, as though she were in a glass case of herself, a perfect clear mold of herself. And sometime during the chilling night, she stopped breathing.

The quiet, white, MediVan pulled up in the drive beside the condo early in the evening. The sun was setting and tinted the sky with a bruised purplish red behind the white concrete towers of the inner rings. Slowly scoops of satellite dishes turned on the tops of buildings and weather domes reflected the sunset on one side while predicted the weather by color on the other. One by one lights began to twinkle in the windows of the towers and the condos and strings of lights sped like asteroid fields over and around, under and through the multileveled maze of highway systems. It was rush hour. The neighbors took long looks at the MediVan as they parked at their own condos and then they rushed into the house to get the latest news on the neighborhood chat channel. Their walls lit up with the story and accompanying photo. Jane White was a slim, well dressed figure with a smiling face in the slowly flickering album that illustrated various biographical details given by the speaker. She was 30 years old and unattached. She worked as a sales representative for a fashion consulting firm. She certainly looked well set up, herself, in form hugging body suits of the most unusual fabric and the latest accessories on her waist and arms - a personal assistant in a jeweled display, and a fabulously expensive communicator, a new vr headset that must have cost half a year's salary. You could see she liked to be photographed in her finery, but then, that would be part of her job, wouldn't it. More observant listeners noted a slightly disparaging tone in the commentators voice, and choice of details. Less observant listeners knew only that they were beginning to shift ever so slightly from shock and pity to dislike for the dead woman. Somehow, they were beginning to feel she might in some way be responsible for her own death because she certainly seemed in some way to be a careless woman, selfish.
The commentator's voice was synthesized to express qualities found in the most popular celebrity voices - charm, confidentiality, confidence, sincerity, and this one had a bit of delicious gossipiness about it. Many viewers went immediately to private gossip channels to interact with 'those in the know' who could give the real scoop on this neighborhood death.
Others went to channels were people were discussing the mysterious deaths that seemed to be occurring with frightening frequency all around them - deaths related to systems failures. Because, really, wasn't that was this was all about? Didn't her house fail her and cause her death?
One of these searchers after pattern was a journalist named Synthia Goldy. Synthia had been working on a research project; she was gathering statistics on the unusual number of systems caused deaths, but she was not finding it easy because the deaths were listed in strange ways to shift attention away from the systems. For instance, this death was listed as hypothermia. Yet, surely, the failure of the heating system caused the death. This had become an obsession with Synthia and she was finding that the more she looked for something that was just outside her view, the more she discovered how blind she was, and how blind everyone had become. Take geography for example. It was an overload of information that was causing the problem. Synthia had noted a dozen deaths in her neighborhood, which she loosely defined as 15 houses in each direction beside hers, and 10 across the street in each direction, and one row back. That was about 70 houses. Since it was her job to gather local news and post it, she was familiar with more of the neighborhood than most, and one of her missions was to make busy people more aware of their neighbors. Synthia believed that people had grown too distant from each other and she sought to counterbalance that by giving people in her local access area feeling of 'knowing' each other. Twelve deaths in a year for such a small area seemed excessive. In fact, when she researched the death rates in this area, she found that each year it had increased and that only a decade before, an area like hers would have suffered only one or two deaths - an elderly person passing away, or a child hit by a car, a suicide or a domestic violence incident. The last twelve had all been mysterious systems failures. There had been 4 incidents of people freezing in their sleep and no fail safe or system override had occurred. Odd. Plus, a half dozen medication errors had occurred that appeared on surface to be people errors, where people had requested their medications too many times and used override to force the system to deliver, yet, this was so peculiar in some way. It could have been suicide, but there were much easier ways. Then again, perhaps there had been born some suicide cult that offered secret channel advice on how to fool insurance companies. Synthia had not been able to turn up any such channel. And the last two had been mysterious car failures. They were listed as accidents, which would have been within the normal range, but the nature of the accidents as Synthia discovered with additional digging, had been very odd indeed. Both cars had experienced malfunctions which caused the cars to stop on the fast lane of the thruway and caused major pile ups. The thing these deaths all had in common, of course, was systems failures. Syntia had been seeking out other people who were working on this problem and she had found them. They had their own chat line, and she joined them daily. Her husband and mother were concerned about what they considered her 'paranoid' obsession. They considered the people on her chat line about the pattern of deaths, to be fringe seekers after conspiracy - fanatics.
The first channel Synthia sought was an industry insider channel where there was a discussion going on about the checks that had been performed on Jane White's heating system.
Synthia was alone in the house. Her children had gone to school and her husband had gone to a business meeting. It was very quiet, the way she liked it. She had turned off auto-music and put incoming calls on hold and flash. There were at least 4 good hours free for searching. Synthia was sitting on her recliner with her remote keboard on her lap. A tall woman in her 40's, she was just beginning to show the first signs of middle age - a few lines, some figure thickening, a touch of gray. Her mother had already begun to nag her about putting some color in her shower head and about spending some time in the family gym. Her husband didn't say much though. Actually, he was so wrapped up in keeping his own business ventures rolling, that he hardly noticed his wife, as long as things were going well. They had a comfortable and mutually supportive relationship. Perhaps it was even too comfortable. If either of them had been less engrossed in their businesses, they might have been worried about their marriage.
Mike was an program consultant. He created custom packages of bundled programs and equipment to serve the needs of various independent contractors - home schooling groups, private educational groups, adult training groups, anyone who needed help figuring out what they needed to run a learning program and how much it would cost, and then tooling it to fit the budget, purchasing, staffing, training and arranging for future maintenance. He liked his work and was fully engaged in it. Mike was pleased with everything and it was the best time of his life. His wife was wonderful, smart, confident, fun to talk to and easy to get along with, and his children were bright, beautiful and healthy. He felt as thoughhe really had it all. Financially they were in adequate circumstances. Just now their combined incomes covered everything nicely and his business was growing. The only contention in the marriage, and the hitch in the business was that Mike needed a partner. He wanted his wife - desperately. He knew she would be competent and hard working, traits he had searched for in a mate, and she was fully endowed. He also knew it would be fun for them to share this interest and they could double the business. It would bring in twice the income. But Sythia wouldn't do it. Right now she was all caught up in developing this neighborhood channel and pursuing a career in information broadcasting, communications. "Who knows," he would sigh, shrugging his shoulders, "there might be some money in it down the line." Then he would put concerns about it on hold and continue trying to run the business as he had been, with better personal assistants with more functionality and deeper memory, and more hours on the road.
Synthia was posting the news of the neighborhood death and defining the broadcast range. First she was sending it locally, then, she was routing it to a dozen national and international data collection sites with smart systems failure data banks. She saw on the monitor that of the several incoming messages on hold, one was from a data collector with whom she had been corresponding.
He wrote for group send: "Don't see how anyone can hide from facts any longer. Another death in 3rd ring sector 704 and house killed her. It's a plain as the screen on your wall. Jane White was in serious debt and overriding everything. She accepted no control whatsoever, so the system eradicated her. I've got another one for you. Man's car stopped on the side of the mountain, coldest night in the year. Plenty of gas, low maintenance car with many minor problems none of which explained the car's failure. His stored messages tell a sad tale. He tried to find nearby help but the car told him he was 75 miles from nearest habitation and it quit on him before he could post an emergency call. So, since it was snowing, and he wasn't dressed for the weather, he decided to sit it out. Fell asleep and froze - just like your Jane. I'm telling you - they are killing us. He had problems, too. He was in debt, behind in everything, and his car had missed all its follow up maintenance calls. Of course, everyone is saying, "Well, what do you expect if you don't maintain your vehicle." But, what I say is, do you expect it to kill you? Some are saying it was suicide, but I don't think so. He was going to visit his parents and they expected him. Third ring has had a thousand deaths this year. More than the total of the decade before. Why aren't there any big investigations and stories on this phenomena?"

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