Freelancer Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2015

  A Kindle Scout selection

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, Kindle Scout, and Kindle Press are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  For my sweet wife.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter One

  Kari lay flat on her bed, her head pointed up at the dull domed ceiling of her bedroom while her mind tried to take in the beauty of the expansive red rocks. The sun in her simulation was so bright it made her eyes water and her skin sweat. It was hard to keep her body from reacting to conditions when the simulation was so lifelike and she was overriding her senses to be immersed in a digital environment of her own creation.

  Jagged rock formations protruded from the earth in seemingly unnatural ways in front of Kari. It was bizarre, but she knew this place was real. At least, it was real somewhere on the planet—her simulation was designed to pick beautiful and exotic locations for her to explore. It fueled her creativity—something she craved after having to deal with her last client. Some people just don’t have a grasp on reality. It’s sad I’m saying that, when I’m the one who can’t even legally own a credit card yet. Kari let the thought go. She spent time in simulations to escape from the real world for a little while, not to spend more time complaining about life.

  As Kari continued to take an accounting of her simulated surroundings, she realized, with a small jump, that she was standing on the edge of a terrifyingly tall red cliff. Beneath her, an expansive desert, unlike any she’d seen before, stretched off into the early morning distance. Not great. She stepped away from the cliff nervously, knowing she was about to become well acquainted with it. She had spent a lot of time programming her simulations to force her to think creatively by instinct. She had tried a number of different theories but had found that her current strategy of aggressive problem solving was far and away the most successful in helping her think outside the box.

  The roar of a sudden explosion shook Kari’s body and made her ears ring sharply. She covered her face as dusty pieces of red-rock shrapnel rained down on her digital projection. If this were happening in real life, she would be covered in cuts and terrified for her life. But here in her simulation, she felt little more than a slight mental itch as the burning pieces of rock collided with her digital body.

  On cue, as always.

  A ball of dust, fire, and smoke floated slowly into the air from within one of the nearby rock formations. As the cloud dissipated, an aged, military-grade mech came into focus behind the ancient rock it had blasted out of the way. The mech was at least twenty feet tall, but it was dwarfed by the massive rock formations surrounding it. The debris from the explosion it had just caused further dirtied the mech’s previously shiny, metal exterior. The mech slowly turned its long arm cannon on Kari’s position. Smoke was still billowing from the dark opening at its end, where the last energy blast had escaped.

  The vertical drop off the edge of the cliff was just as intimidating than it had been a moment ago, but Kari had no time to consider it now. With nothing more than a thought, she put her hands in the air and ordered a hang glider to drop into the simulation. A split second later, a large, green glider appeared above her, materializing out of thin air. The frame looked to be made of graphium, the featherweight supermetal that was almost as smooth as it was perfectly black. Between the graphium bars of the glider’s frame was a bright-green fabric, which, although pretty, was sure to stand out in the desert sky. Just like a freshman on their first day of high school, Kari thought.

  I could just start a different simulation . . .

  The mech behind her started to make a low humming noise, which meant Kari was only seconds away from being burned to a simulated crisp by an energy blast that was capable of leveling an entire building. Kari took a deep breath and jumped off the cliff, clinging to the handlebar beneath the glider.

  Kari screamed in the simulation—and nearly in real life—as she fell off the face of the cliff. The glider caught the wind a second later, and Kari’s descent quickly took a much-preferred angle. The heat of an energy blast briefly warmed her skin before it soared past her glider harmlessly. That wasn’t so bad. Kari started to look down before deciding she’d much rather think about what she could do to modify the glider instead. She sent orders to the simulation to change the color of the cloth to match that of the desert below her. With another thought, she made the glider bigger, causing its wings to double in size. A third command reshaped the glider to have a seat she could sit on so she wouldn’t have to hang on for dear life from the handlebar, which was becoming an inconvenience.

  She relaxed her arms and let her weight rest on her new seat the instant it appeared. Now, slightly more comfortable, she let herself appreciate the fact that hacking was such a smooth experience. Once, she had spent a few days writing code manually like developers used to do before the invention of mind chips and truly integrated development environments. There had been something fulfilling about the experience, but it had also been among the least productive days of her life. Now all she had to do was think about how she wanted things to look or behave, and most of the work was done for her. It wasn’t that easy for the complicated projects that her clients paid her to make; however, for these simple simulations, coding was as careless and natural as breathing.

  Now if only I could change things in real life so easily, I wouldn’t have to go to that horrible institution tomorrow.

  Kari pushed the thought of school from her mind as well—a thought that was even worse than thinking about her last client. This was her sanctuary, where she came to relax and be free, and she refused to ruin that by thinking about unpleasantries such as standardized education or the Middle States’ secession.

  She was jerked loose from her chair as small energy blasts ripped holes in her customized glider. Frantic, she managed to use one hand to grab the bottom of the seat below the glider, leaving her dangling above the desert sands.

  There’s no way that mech hit me from back up there!

  Kari looked back to see a gunship closing in on her glider. It looked like a hawk swooping down on its defenseless prey as it rapidly fired s
mall energy blasts in her direction. Each ball of molten energy melted a glowing hole in the glider, sending shudders throughout the glider’s frame, threatening to knock Kari into the thin air below. Gunships were a particularly nasty military weapon, fully automated and packed to the brim with energy cannons and missiles. Kari wasn’t interested in the military or anything it tried to accomplish, but she was interested in amazing technology, and that gunship was impressive.

  Kari’s glider shook violently in the air as it struggled to hold itself together. It wasn’t going to last much longer under fire from a gunship—not that it mattered much, for Kari knew she couldn’t hold herself up for more than a few seconds with a single hand. She closed her eyes, reluctantly let go of the glider, and plummeted toward the desert floor.

  Maybe my parents are right . . .

  Kari ordered a parachute to wrap around her body, which she immediately deployed when it materialized. The parachute instantly filled with air and immediately halted her deadly free fall.

  If this is how I relax, maybe I should try harder to make friends.

  The gunship made quick work of what was left of her glider, leaving nothing but a burning mass of metal shards and melted fabric to fall to the sandy desert below. When Kari saw that the ground was still several hundred feet beneath her, she started to panic. The gunship had begun to turn around, and she knew right away that she would be a sitting duck waiting to get blown out of the sky if she didn’t do something quickly. She’d have to think of something else, and she’d have to do it fast.

  Thinking rapidly, Kari began to design a giant air-bag device that would deploy right before she hit the ground. Her brain worked furiously to construct her new idea. Kari hoped the device could fill with air in a split second and lock her into place long enough to survive the impact. It was actually pretty close in concept to how she had won the egg-drop competition back in elementary school science class, except now she was the egg and no longer cared to excel at school. The gunship was bearing down on her now and had already unleashed a stream of deadly energy blasts in her direction. Kari deleted her parachute from the simulation.

  She dropped toward the ground, nearly unaware of its impending greeting as the fiery bolts from the gunship rocketed past where she had just been. She tried desperately to finish her device as best as she could, but she was forced to load it into the simulation before she was confident it would work. Her new device materialized around her just before she collided with the ground.

  When Kari opened her eyes, she was standing in front of some rather strange-looking rock formations. Well, I guess that didn’t work. The simulation simply restarted every time she failed to complete it, leaving her exactly where she had started. She hadn’t had enough time to finish her air-bag device, but that’s what she liked about these simulations; they forced her to create without giving her enough time to doubt herself. Unfortunately, the only way she had been successful in producing the environment of forced creation was by running for her life or trying to save someone else’s. She had tried nature walks, romantic balls, exotic times in history, and various other less insane ways of finding her creative groove, but she had inevitably found they lacked a certain sense of urgency.

  Kari quickly reviewed what had happened with her device upon impact and made several significant modifications. The faint sound of her mom arriving home from work distracted her for a brief second. Kari made sure that she could hear anything happening in the real world when she was in her simulations; it was impolite to override all of one’s senses completely, not to mention dangerous. More than a few people had made the mistake of blocking out the real world entirely and had not noticed that their house was on fire until much too late. Kari brought up a small window of reality that showed the ceiling of her room. Not overriding all her vision made the simulation less immersive, but she didn’t want her mom sneaking up on her.

  A rock formation in front of her exploded into pieces as the mech revealed itself once again. Kari sighed and jumped backward off the cliff. I’m glad we don’t have cliffs like this in North Carolina . . . Her stomach sank as she fell toward the ground, but she ignored the feeling, focusing completely on refining the device that would save her digital life.

  She loaded it into the simulation as she dropped toward the ground, noting that the device was now too big and heavy to be used practically, but she liked the concept of it anyway. The air-bag device activated and encompassed Kari in air, preventing her body from moving in the slightest as it held her safely during impact. The sudden deceleration was an unforgiving experience, even while she was locked tightly inside the air-bag device. In real life, a single drop like that would leave her bruised and sore for weeks.

  A moment after the crash, the air bags deflated, and Kari was eased slowly to the ground. The only problem with her invention was that now she was trapped under the multitude of deflated air bags. Rather than addressing the issue by redesigning the device and jumping off the cliff again in order to test it, Kari simply deleted the air-bag device from the simulation.

  Jumping off a cliff twice in a single day is enough for me, thank you very much.

  Kari slowly got to her feet and started to dust off her simulated clothes before deciding to load in a new set of clothes instead. Her new clothes were a digital copy of the clothes she had been wearing that day. Although comfortable, they were hardly appropriate for the desert. She replaced those clothes with the only proper desert attire she could think of off the top of her head. She added a mirror to the simulation and laughed out loud at her authentic African safari outfit.

  Remind me to look up what people wear in the desert these days.

  “Kari?” She heard the cautious voice of her mother coming from the door to her bedroom. Kari exited her simulation and returned her full attention to the real world. The chip connected to her brain stopped overriding her senses, and she blinked several times as she traded the bright, digital sun for her poorly lit room.

  “Yeah, Ma?” Kari said.

  “You ready for dinner?”

  “Dinner?” Kari was confused but then remembered it was Thursday. Ever since she had started high school three years ago, her parents had insisted on spending the night before end-of-week class together as a family. “Oh yeah, of course.”

  “I wasn’t interrupting your homework, was I? Because we can eat later if we need to.”

  “Oh no . . . I was just hanging out on the networks.”

  “Well, good . . . I mean, it’s good that I wasn’t interrupting your schoolwork. Your homework is done already, then?”

  “Knocked it out last night, Mom.”

  Kari’s mom smiled wearily but sincerely, which caused Kari to feel a twinge of guilt about the lie.

  Her mom continued. “Sorry I’m so late, but the office has been overloaded since the news broke.”

  “It’s OK, Mom. We don’t have to do anything tonight if you just want to rest.” Kari sat up on her bed. Her mom looked exhausted as she peered through the door at where Kari had been relaxing.

  “No. No, it’ll take more than the promise of a civil war to keep me from having dinner with my daughter on a Thursday night.”

  Kari smiled in response, but truthfully, she’d much rather spend the night in a simulation. In fact, there were many ways Kari would rather put off her homework, but these Thursday-night dinners meant too much to her mother for Kari to say so.

  “I was thinking. After dinner, we could watch one of those retro superhero movies you love so much,” her mom said.

  “That sounds great!” Kari said, trying her best to sound enthusiastic. It wasn’t her first choice, but watching a movie with her mom wasn’t the worst way to spend an evening. Besides, Kari would be moving out in thirty-eight weeks, and then her Thursday nights would be completely her own.

  “I knew you’d like that.”

  “Well, what can I say, Mom? You know me.”

  Except you have no idea who I really am.

  Chap
ter Two

  Kari looked out the window of the auto-auto as it hopelessly rolled down the street toward school. She felt as if the downpour were life, trying to find a way to make her day even worse. It was working. Thirty-seven. Thirty-seven more times I have to leave my house to go to school. The number was much smaller than it had been last year, but it was still too large to make her feel any better about the situation.

  Zulu, a boy a few grades behind Kari, twitched slightly in the seat next to hers—a sign that he was playing a game or in some sort of simulation. Kari had never found a reason not to like Zulu, which meant she liked him more than she liked most people her age.

  The other person in the auto-auto was another story. Her name was Sarah, but Kari liked to refer to her by distinctly more creative names. Sarah was a senior as well, which meant that Kari had been enduring Sarah for well over a decade at end-of-week classes. Kari stared across the auto-auto at her, thankful that Sarah wasn’t paying enough attention to reality to realize that Kari was sitting in the same self-driving car as her. I’ll miss school more than I’ll miss you, and that’s saying something.

  Sarah was wearing some brightly colored, tight-fitting debacle that reminded Kari more of a rodeo clown than anything else. Sarah’s long, blonde hair, which Kari sincerely doubted was natural, only served to accent the obnoxious colors she was wearing. Clothes that hurt the natural eye seemed to be the trend these days—a trend Kari was all too happy not to participate in. The fad would fade in a few days, and everyone would rush to print themselves new clothes in the latest style.

  Kari could afford to print the latest designs every day if she wanted to. She could afford to print just about anything, but that was a fact she didn’t care to flaunt in the form of unwarranted, visually offensive, neon jogger pants. She didn’t want the people at high school to have a hint of who she really was. Thirty-seven days. Rather than following the insane fashion trends, she wore loose-fitting clothes she had designed herself. Her clothes were covered with references and quotes from her favorite movies, most of which were from classic films that had ceased to be popular long before she had even been born.