Ambivalence Chapters 1-3

My first novel attempt ever. A story about quiet rebellion.

Ambivalence

Chapter 1

         Adam Miller stared at the swarm of young people flooding his morning classroom. To be more apt, he was really staring at the wall behind them, although to say he was staring at anything in particular at all was to rather simplify things.
         Really, Adam was staring into thought itself, into the vast luxury and privacy of his own mind, far removed from the claustrophobic nature of his physical surroundings. He was, as he often did, thinking about a great deal of different things at once, none of which he was focusing particularly hard on, but rather jumping from thought to thought as new ideas that warranted further rumination came to him.
         Adam hated the people who constantly surrounded him. He despised his coworkers nearly as much as he despised his job, his duty to produce more "bright young minds" who would go on to be exactly like the people he was already working with, and then teach the next generation, in a never-ending cycle of the Elders that retired being replaced with new, equally terrible recruits, in a greater number than those that left.
         They always told him just how great an honour it was to be an established Elder. Or rather, they always told everyone that. The teenagers, the Elders, the EIT's and their Trainers, all of the members of Zone A had to listen to the constant barrage of "congratulations!" and "you should be proud of yourselves!" and various other attempts at gaslighting their clientele into believing they were extraordinarily lucky to be a part of Zone A1, America's most prestigious and exclusive city.
         He looked again at the mass of students still chattering away, on what they read on the news last night or saw in the Parallel or the latest statistics regarding Zone A1's absolute dominance over every other Life Zone. He resented them already, even though he had been giving his Teachings as an Elder to this class for less than a week at this point and barely knew a single one of them, not that he wanted to get to know any of them any better. They all reminded him of himself when he was their age, oblivious, brainwashed, and unbearably content with their lives. He made himself sick just thinking about the unbelievably naive idiot he used to be.
         Just then, the deafening clang of the gigantic metal bell directly above them signified that it was almost time for the Passing of Teachings. Adam winced at the sheer volume of the monstrous clanging, before gesturing to the teenagers who were now all seated in front of him to stand for The National Anthem. Adam led the teenagers with what he hoped sounded like a loud, confident singing voice as The Anthem erupted into the usual repetitive rhythm with harsh, violent brass accents layered seemingly randomly on top. Of course, it only seemed random. Quite possibly the most irritating thing about The National Anthem was how unbelievably complex it was. If you listened closely enough, you would realize that the bizarre syncopated rhythm of the brass actually did go along with the circular beat underneath. Then, just as you noticed the pattern, it would infuriatingly vanish and be replaced with a new pattern that took hold of your attention. Thus, it was impossible to understand the whole at once, because seemingly contradictory offshoots would spring off the main melody constantly. There was no actual set place where you were supposed to sing, really, or if there was, you couldn't hear it. Instead, you had to sing based on whatever pattern was at the moment assaulting your eardrums, and when the pattern changed, you had to quickly react and switch keys, or time signatures, or rhythms, or whatever the new pattern was. You were certainly motivated to. "Disrupting the harmony of the singing" was a 2RL penalty, which stood for 2 Rantion of Luxury days. The Ration of Luxury was an assortment of premium foods and trinkets that, if not making life a little more pleasurable, at least created a distraction from its less ideal features.
         One of the main appeals of Zone A1 presented to its potential customers was the largest and most frequent daily Ration of Luxury packages in America. That was one of the primary factors that had spurred Adam on to work hard enough to qualify to live there, back when he was young and full of energy. There, of course, were many other advertised benefits, such as the complete impossibility of unemployment in the city if you made it in, the higher quality medical care, the lower Due rates, and many others. It wasn't until Adam became much older that he realized just how similar all the different Life Zones in The Big Three were. Oh, sure, one zone might house slightly more people, or be situated near slightly more historic monuments, or have a slightly larger Zone Center. But to find any difference that truly made life in one Big Three Life Zone different than life in another was astonishingly difficult.
         Really, to see a noticeable drop in the quality of life in America, you had to drive far south, past the borders of the provinces of Canada, where Zone A was located, of Greater America, and then finally of Mexico, venturing into the Lesser Provinces. The further south you went, the worse the living conditions got, until you reached Zone Z6666, located at the very bottom of the province of Panama, widely known to be the smallest, dingiest, most crime-filled, violent, ugly Life Zone in America. Zone Z6666 was supposedly where the worst criminals and most evil members of society were forcibly located. Even if your Passing of Teachings scores were miserably low, you wouldn't manage to get sent to Zone Z6666. You might make it to Zone U2000, located somewhere in the island region, if you both had low scores and happened to be born in a lower zone to begin with, but to be sent to Zone Z6666, you needed to be a truly rare combination of foolish and evil, a combination that virtually never occurred. Adam doubted Zone Z6666 housed any more than 100 people at any given time, most of whom were most likely the poor chaps from the Agency of Protection sent to ensure no one escaped from there.
         Adam's thoughts were cut off by the ending of the National Anthem and start of the awkward Moment of Reverence, where you were expected to stand perfectly straight, with a completely blank expression, silent, in order to honour the Builders of Zone A1. The penalty for showing so much as a smile that might be suggested to be insolence towards the Builders was the harshest of all. Not because there was an actual law against it, in fact, there wasn't even a law requiring all Life Zones to have a Moment of Reverence for the Builders. No, the punishment for showing insolence towards the Builders came from the people around you. No one was exempt, your own friends, your families, people you had known for years. No. If you showed insolence towards the builders, everyone you knew would cease all communication with you permanently. Even in the relative anonymity of the Parallel, no one would talk to you for long. Word would get out. People would tell other people, who would tell other people, until the whole world, at least the slice of it you interacted with, knew. You would be dead before any physical heart attack or suicide. Adam knew someone who had suffered that fate. At one time, he was his closest friend.
         Adam cut off his train of thought. Thinking about him right now was not propitious to maintaining a blank face. After the endless silence was finally broken by the overly polite voice on the loudspeaker stating "Please be seated", Adam remained standing for a brief moment, as did everyone else. Due to the rule of respect during the Moment of Reverence not existing as a written law, it was unclear to everyone exactly how eager you could afford to appear to be when sitting down, and so no one dared to risk sitting down right away. After a moment had passed, Adam slowly began to sit down, and the students followed shortly after. Adam smiled at them in what he hoped was a natural, calm expression.


"Welcome to your final year of the Reception of Teachings. I am your Elder, Mr. Miller, or Mr. M if you wish. I assume by now, most of you understand the drill, seeing as if you are sitting here, you have completed 19 years previous to this one, but nonetheless, I will briefly explain the Rules. As I am sure you are all aware, you are part of the largest and most prestigious Zone Center in America. It is also the most exclusive. You should be incredibly proud to be where you are."


         Adam paused for a moment to let his words sink in. It was all a load of rubbish, of course. Adam was saying what he had been told to say since the year he started as an Elder. The truth was that the vast majority of the students sitting in front of him had done nothing to sit where they now did. They were simply fortunate enough to have been born to parents who were born to parents who were born to however many great-grandfathers and grandmothers who were alive before the True Unity and its rules regarding where you could live. Not like him. Sure, they worked "hard", but only as hard as you needed to, being born in Zone A1. Apart from their Passing of Teachings scores, these students had very little to worry about. Even if their Passing of Teachings scores weren't quite high enough for them to be permitted to remain in Zone A1 after finishing their final year, simply being born in Zone A1 gave them value. At most, they might fall to Zone C1500 or so, but they would be able to make it back with some hard work once the reality of leaving Zone A1 was in front of them. None of them would ever see the harsh reality of a Life Zone outside of The Big Three. Most of them wouldn't even know the reality of any other Life Zone than Zone A1, if they were lucky. Adam continued:


"Let's begin with a review. As we all know, the True Unity, which occurred just under 15 years ago in the year 2030, saw the complete abolishment of cultural discrimination. Who here knows how and why this was achieved?"


         A blonde-haired young woman raised her hand. Adam gestured for her to answer, and she stood up.


"Well, sir, the individual countries of Canada, the United States, and Mexico all agreed at a summit meeting that the true cause of cultural injustice and discrimination was the separation of cultures across the world, creating factions that were only tolerant to their similarly cultured neighbours. The Big Three agreed that it should be sought after that the entirety of the borders and boundaries should be removed, creating one superstate of America. To set an example for the smaller states of what was at that time called North America, all three removed all of their interstate borders before joining together as "Greater North America. They then encouraged the other countries to join them, until the entire continent had joined, at which point they renamed themselves to simply 'America'." She then sat back down again.


"Correct, except you forgot to mention how the new state of America planned on and eventually found a way of completing its goal of removing all cultural separation. Anyone else who remembers what happened?"


         This time, a brown-haired woman raised her hand.


"America immediately encouraged its original, predominantly White/Latino population to leave the new country and find their destiny in a different part of the world, while encouraging people coming from other cultures, such as Asia and Africa, to migrate to America. The goal was to completely balance out the percentage of the population of every culture imaginable, a perfectly even distribution of every type of person. The plan was wildly successful, and the people who left America began to spread the news and excitement for the idea of creating True Unity, not just in America, but everywhere. Another summit occurred in which virtually all the countries in the world unanimously agreed to begin the same process, removing interprovincial or interstate boundaries and joining with all the countries located on the same continent. The few countries that did not agree initially soon changed their minds and joined on shortly after. Eventually, within about 5 years of when the process began, in 2035, True Unity had been accomplished, and effectively, the entire world was one united group with the only distinction between regions being where water cut off vast bodies of land. Most importantly, culture itself had been abolished, because all cultures were everywhere and mixed with all other cultures, until it was impossible to recognize a person based on their culture. Everyone was at last completely equal, in advantage and in treatment." The mechanical, rehearsed tone of her speech abruptly ended as she asked, "Is that correct, sir?"


         Adam carefully masked the distaste he had for how this unbearably cheerful woman chose to describe the history of the True Unity. He had heard the same explanation hundreds of times over the years spent as an Elder, down to the last word. He himself had recited it many times in his days as an EIT. Everyone said it exactly like that. There was no formal rule against stating it another way, but you could rest assured that to do so would bring great suspicion and monitoring of your behaviour from everyone around you. Aloud, he said, "Correct. Thank you, Eve. I think that was an excellent summary." He looked at his watch, silently praying that he could leave this madhouse soon. The advantage of being the Senior Years Elder was that he only had to teach one class per day. He was surprised by how much time was left before the end of class. Subconsciously, he should've realized that a few lengthy summaries from two students probably weren't going to take up a whole hour, but somehow it felt as though more time had passed than merely 15 minutes. "Now that you have had a quick refresher, I have a few notes with slightly more detail for those of you who might not remember the specific years live on your NetClass. As I'm sure you know, if you have had me before, this can be accessed from any device you wish, but I strongly recommend using The Parallel and creating a private group with you and your classmates. There is also a practise quiz there for when you are ready. I will leave you with that for the remainder of this class, as it is still early on in this section of the Teachings. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. You are free to leave early if you really wish." Adam secretly hoped that over 75% of the class would leave, so he could return home early. Fortunately, almost all of the students immediately began packing their bags to study at home, so he began to do the same. He quickly asked the few remaining students, "Are there any other things you would like quick clarification on?" to which he merely received a series of grunts and head shakes. Satisfied, he began to walk through the winding, endless hallways of Zone Center, making his way to his home, located fairly near his classroom. As he walked, he reflected, as he often did, on the bizarre, tiring boredom of his job as an Elder.
         It was truly merciful that, at least at home, there was an outlet for his frustrations. A secret hobby, a fascination, and above all else, a form of power in his otherwise powerless life.

Chapter 2

         At the doorstep to his home, Adam noticed his daily Ration of Luxury package lying on the doorstep. Picking it up, he turned the key and opened the door to his flat. It was certainly nice looking, with a large, quality space for a single person, enough that probably even three people could have lived comfortably there, and decorative plants and soft furniture found in every room. Adam lived alone, and had lived alone for nearly his entire life. It wasn't that he didn't care for relationships, or even that he was incapable of talking to women, but he simply never felt comfortable inviting them to the privacy of his own home. Seemingly, everyone had the same ideas and opinions and followed the same set of unofficial rules, and there was no way of knowing whether a person shared his secret discomfort with the world around him or not. To ask could be suicide if the answer turned out to be no.
         Inside the Ration of Luxury parcel was a small amount of milk chocolate, an even smaller amount of coffee, 1L of Parallel Persistence and 1 Parallel Experience, which appeared to be some sort of racecar-themed thing. Adam was initially confused. This was significantly smaller than what he was supposed to receive daily as a Zone A1 citizen. Then he saw the note at the bottom: "3/4RL Penalty: Failed to perform overtime requirement". It came back to him in a flash of memory. He had been supposed to serve as a Trainer for a total of 10 hours by the second last day of the month, as his monthly Due to Zone A1. But in week 4 of the month, he had skipped performing a session. Serving as a trainer, even temporarily, was miserable, miserable work, effectively torture for both yourself and the poor EIT who walked in. You had to sit there with the young adult and ask them to recite various Answers to hundreds of different queries. They were not supposed to think. They were supposed to memorize the correct responses, down to the last word, and only when they had said them all correctly in order, or when the time of the Trainer fully ran out, could the Trainer leave, at which point another Trainer would replace them if they still hadn't got it. Since all of his sessions had taken the usual time of around 2 hours this month, skipping one resulted in him missing 2 hours of his Trainer requirement leave. Since he lived in Zone A1, at least this penalty would only continue for one more day before being reset next month. Apparently, in the D and below Life Zones, the penalty would continue for between 1 week and a whole second month, during which, of course, you still had to fulfill that month's quota as well.
         Adam discarded the Experience. It didn't seem particularly unique, and besides, he rarely used the Experience cartridges anyway. He checked his phone to see how long it had been since his previous meal: 2 hours. Perfect, he would have enough of the Persistence between the package and the leftovers from yesterday to be perfectly fine for nutrition for the rest of the day. Carrying the litre bag of Persistence, he walked into the Parallel room. Inside was a gigantic, circular treadmill that covered the entire floor. No matter how far you walked, it would always pull you back towards the center, thus preventing any accidents from occurring while inside the Parallel. Of course, under normal circumstances, you wouldn't move much while inside the Parallel at all. He flicked the switch to turn it on to Equipment Retrieval, enjoying the pleasant hum of the moving floor and slow brightening of the lights surrounding the equipment located at the back of the room. Adam walked over to the set of Parallel Vision, Sensory, and Audio modules. The Vision module was the center of it all, a thin, lightweight helmet with various tiny boxes of equipment and a mouthpiece attached to the front that controlled the other senses. As he filed the Persistence box with the litre bag, Adam noticed that the alcohol box, connected to the mouthpiece via a thin, clear tube, was running low, but that didn't matter. He wasn't planning on drinking today. You could have drinks in the Parallel without the physical dispensing of alcohol anyway; it just didn't feel quite as real.
         Putting on the module, Adam enjoyed the blissful darkness of the Vision Module for a moment before powering on the system. He remotely activated the regular mode for the moving floor, feeling for a brief moment its pull towards the center of the room, before activating the system fully, and bracing himself for what always followed.
         It always took a moment to fully lose touch with your physical body while inside the Parallel. At first, there might still be a faint part of you that could faintly, by some strange phenomena, feel the microscopic, invisible needles, millions upon millions of them, moving from the walls and ceiling and even floor of the room towards you, eventually puncturing and entering every little part of your body, and there was always an incredibly brief jolt, not of pain exactly, for the needles were far too small to cause any kind of pain, but of intense discomfort and disorientation. But then a moment later, your senses were completely overloaded by the new information and sensory environment of whichever location you had appeared in inside the Parallel, and all was calm. Normally, you entered wherever you had last left from, but Adam had an advantage over the vast majority of those in the Parallel, maybe even over everyone there: a highly advanced knowledge of the technology that it used. He knew how the Vision Module determined what everything should look like, and he knew how the millions of needles injected into the user mixed numerous safe yet powerful chemicals provided by the chemical warehouse area of the Zone Center to simulate any conceivable feeling imaginable. But what he truly had advanced knowledge of was the programming of the Parallel itself, and how it determined useful little things such as what facial expressions to display to everyone else, how it verified what things you owned and whether or not your means of obtaining those things was natural, and most applicable in this case, how it determined your initial location of entering. Adam had extensively modified both the software running on his Vision Module and the hardware of the modules themselves, with many useful features, one of which was the ability to choose where he wished to appear at any time. Effectively, this gave him the ability to teleport anywhere he wished, although he rarely risked using this after first entering. You could never be sure as to just how hidden you were from everyone else, and completely vanishing from everyone's sight was not an option: the whole point of the Parallel was to interact with other users, and if you modified it so extensively that this core part of the experience was missing, it would not be an easily toggleable choice to switch back at any time.
         Today, Adam decided to start in Zone #2 of Europe, also known by its nickname, Paris. After selecting it, the automatic border information requirements appeared in front of him in an otherwise blank, white room. He quickly filled out his information, including his false continent of origin (Asia) and false name of Kyoga Shingen. Fortunately, there was no such thing as a passport in the Parallel, as it was merely a simulation of real life. For it to feel real, laws were still enforced, and police, most of whom were not real human beings, roamed and watched all countries. But since the Parallel normally tracked everything that every person carried and sent it to the servers, and every region had near-constant backups and saved values for every person on the globe, it was assumed that there was little danger of any serious harm coming to any server. Adam had disabled this tracking ability long ago by both utterly destroying the chip that collected this data and also deleting the part of the software that handled the collection, just to be on the safe side. But not for the purpose of attempting to cause damage to any of the countries in the Parallel, both because doing so would not accomplish anything and a backup would simply be loaded, and also because Adam had zero motivation to draw attention to himself for any reason. Everything about his online presence was designed to draw as little attention to him as possible, from his slim, average height, hooded avatar to his choice of speech sound: deep but quiet, difficult to overhear if you were nearby, and even more difficult to understand what was being said.
         The only people who would know what he said at all were the higher-ups at Parallel Experiences Inc. Adam had little to fear from them. After all, they would have to care enough about the strange, nonsensical code phrases he used when working in the Parallel to spend hours breaking the code, uncovering what it meant, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were correct, and then notifying the authorities at Zone A1, who would then have to bother sending their incredibly weak and lacklustre police force (no crime occurred in Zone A1) to barge into his apartment and seize all his Parallel-related possesions. They were too lazy to do all that, and frankly, didn't have the capability of even beginning to start on such an endeavour, even if they wanted to. After all, while what Adam was doing was technically against the rules of the Parallel and, in rare cases, illegal, it didn't affect the integrity of the Parallel for the most part. Adam's clientele was a tiny, in fact virtually nonexistent, minority of the total Parallel users, the richest of the rich, mostly from the highest A Zones (apart from Zone A1, which Adam did not take business from for obvious reasons). The vast majority still had to follow the rules of the Parallel and had no capability or understanding of how to do even the most basic modifications on their Vision modules. He doubted there were more than maybe 20 people in the Parallel total who had any modifications on their Vision module at all, let alone in the number Adam did, and he himself had only seen maybe 6 in his entire time on the Parallel throughout his life that he would now suspect had such modifications. It was very much plausible to him that he was, effectively, the most powerful person to walk the Parallel.
         He no longer used this power for his own enjoyment, however. As a reckless teen, he had his fun, abusing every loophole he discovered to its fullest, purely for his own amusement. As an adult, he realized the sheer recklessness of this behaviour and began to erase the evidence of his past expeditions. Not because he was afraid of Parallel Experiences Inc or even Zone A1's law force. No, the only thing Adam feared was, in fact, everyone else. The people who had no tolerance for the disobedience towards authority, for the cheating, and most of all, and most secretly, for the idea that it was not they who were given that privilege. Deep down, nearly every human being on the earth had some form of resistance to the culture of modern times, but that resistance almost never expressed itself as rebellion, but rather jealousy of the very few who did express it as rebellion. Sure, they would never admit such a motivation. But Adam saw it in their eyes when his best friend was caught all those years ago. He could feel it above all else, constantly, whenever someone looked at them in the two brief weeks that followed afterward, before his friend's death. With words, they would accuse him of heinous acts, but words no longer betrayed the heart's intention.
         Adam was directly in the heart of Paris, the popular name for Europe's Zone #2. Europe used a system of numbers with no letters to name its Life Zones. As per usual, he walked until he was close enough to the Zone Center of the city that he could be heard by passersby, but not so close that there was a sea of people blocking his vision in all directions. From here, he spoke in the quietest, softest voice he could: "Would anyone wish to make clothing trades?", which, as far as he was aware, could only be heard by those with an Audio Module that was at least Gold tier. Sure enough, everyone walked right by, oblivious to his speech. He repeated himself in the same voice until, eventually, a tall, well-dressed man, while walking by, flashed him the sign: pointing downwards with his thumb towards the ground. Aloud, he said to Adam, "Sure, what time?" Adam held out his hands and flashed 4, then 9, before pausing for a moment and then flashing 2, then 4. Only he and the man knew that these were not actually related to the time, but rather latitude and longitude coordinates, 49N and 2.4E. The man nodded and said, "Great, see you then!" discreetly flashing the thumbs up symbol below to acknowledge that he understood the directions. Immediately, both men began walking in opposite directions by going to different side streets, and then once separated, began walking in the same direction, hidden by the buildings between them. They kept walking past the gateway to the Zone Center, further towards the edge of the town, until eventually reaching the area Adam had chosen: a nondescript alleyway with no one nearby and nothing but closed-down shops in all directions. Adam hid behind a wooden box nearby and, locating where he had marked the coordinates visually, began to look for a weakpoint in the system that determined the hitboxes of the entire city. In no time at all, he was in. Quickly, he removed the hitbox of the floor in a circular radius around the coordinates chosen. Perfectly on time, the man appeared, checking behind him quickly before rushing over to the coordinates. Bracing himself, the man jumped in and fell inside. Adam checked one last time behind and in front of himself before joining him.

Chapter 3

         For a brief moment, he was falling through pure blackness, and then he landed on the soft, red carpeted floor of the hidden room. These rooms were littered everywhere in the Parallel, from the westernmost point of America to the easternmost point of Oceania. They were seemingly never used twice, and so all sat abandoned, hidden under the constant hitbox of the ground. Adam still to this day didn't fully know why they existed, or why he had never actually seen them in use in his entire time in the Parallel. He suspected it was related to the management of the Parallel itself, some kind of private meeting room or testing room. What he did know was that these rooms were completely soundproof and isolated from the rest of the Parallel, and more strikingly, did not track any of the usual metrics that were tracked everywhere else in the Parallel. Nothing you said, did, obtained, or changed was tracked.
         As far as he knew, he was the only one who knew of the existence of these rooms (apart from his customers). He had never seen another person inside one ever, and he had likely been in most of them over the years. At first, they had just been a fascination to him, a mystery worth investigating. Over time, however, he began to see them more as an opportunity than entertainment. In the Parallel, there was one type of commodity that had value over all else: unique experiences. Experiences that could not be pursued in the real world. This was what all the wealthiest people on the Parallel desired most, because it was the one thing that, under normal circumstances, their money could not buy. But thanks to the mysterious red carpeted rooms, Adam could safely modify or add code to the server file without this change being detected. Adam's clientele was mostly all the same: incredibly wealthy and incredibly foolish. Which was how he liked it. They were too foolish to seriously question exactly how difficult it was to perform his services, and too wealthy to care about sending him large percentages of their Ration of Luxury packages. This was the only real, tangible law that Adam broke through his side business. Technically, there wasn't even a rule against artificially creating experiences inside the Parallel, because it was assumed that no one had the capability of doing so. But trading real-life possessions for things inside the Parallel was strictly illegal.
         Even beyond this, however, the real risk was, as always, with society itself. No universal trading value existed, such as the rumoured "money" that supposedly existed prior to The Great Unity. And people liked it that way. The removal of "money" saw the destruction of the "class system" in which a higher-class person with great amounts of money would live a life of luxury, while the lower class struggled to even survive. Of course, that was merely the line he had trained himself to say during his days as an E.I.T. The reality was that no such destruction of the class system had occurred. The only thing that had changed was the specific commodity that gave one value. Supposedly, it had once been money. This now changed to your Recieving of Teachings scores. Everything that came after these scores was determined by them and them only: where you could live, how luxurious your life was, the quality of your entertainment, food, and, for lower-scoring people, the surety of your shelter and basic nutrition. To independently earn extra luxuries for private services, no matter how innocent in nature, was considered taking a stance against equality and encouraging classism.
         Not that all the requests Adam received were innocent in nature. Some were unimaginably graphic. Ultimately, though, Adam didn't care what is customers wanted. He was interested in what they could give him, not in how satisfied they were with his service after the trade was already complete.
         "Is the package on its way?" Adam asked.
         "Yes. I hand-packed it myself, so I can confirm it's worth exactly 3 Zone A1 Ration of Luxury days."
         "Alright. Tell me what you want."
         "I want to see the speech logs between Lee Davidson and Richard Clark over the last two days."
         This caught Adam off guard. He had never, not once, had a client who wanted information from him, especially such sensitive information. It was always "Put me in a room where I can summon anyone I please," or "where I can create anything I wish," or even "Put me in a completely blank void, that only I have the keys to open and close." (as ominous as the implications of such a request were). Never did someone ask for confidential speech logs.
         "Pardon?"
         The man smiled. "I can assure you that you have heard me correctly."
         Adam took a moment to take a better look at the man. Apart from his remarkably tall avatar, he sported a shock of short, blonde hair, as well as a thin, sparse beard. "I've heard of Lee Davidson, he's the Manager of Zone A2, right? Who is Richard Clark?"
         "Does it concern you?"
         Adam lifted his chin. "With all due respect, I won't consider doing anything for you that I don't fully understand."
         The man smiled again. "Very wise. Richard Clark is the Manager of Zone Z6666."
         Adam was taken aback. "When would they have spoken?"
         Now the man smiled broadly. "As I said previously, over the last two days. Does it really matter? You will see for yourself the date when downloading them, correct?"
         Now, Adam felt rather foolish. "Right, of course." He paused for a moment. "Well, you've told me what you want. Would you care to explain why you need them?"
         "Call it curiosity."
         Adam blinked. "Curiosity?"
         The man smiled again. "Don't expect me to believe that you yourself are not curious as to what the Manager of Zone A2 would have to say to the prison warden of a backwater station like Z6666."
         "You didn't answer my question."
         "In what way?" The man finally sat down on the long, red couch that surrounded the entire room. "Is curiosity not reason enough?"
         Adam wasn't convinced. "What will you do with this information?"
         "That depends on what you find." The man looked Adam directly in the eyes. "I have no quarrel with either of these men, and I highly doubt what you find will change this fact."
         "Then why do you need these logs?"
         "I have told you this already many times." The man seemed to be struggling to hide his laughter. "Look, when you find the speech logs and see them for yourself, you can choose not to share them with me if you think I would use them irresponsibly. I live in Zone A2, so I hope you understand that I would be curious as to why our Manager would be meeting with that of Z6666."
         Adam thought it over. If he refused, he would have to send back the package being delivered to him. He didn't want to do that. 3 days of Ration of Luxury packages were a lot of Parallel Persistence, sweets, and Parallel Experiences. But he didn't want to be responsible for some kind of assassination attempt if this guy turned out to be a threat. In addition, who knew if there really even was anything there. Adam had always suspected that these rooms, hiding underneath the surface of the Parallel, were used by officials and higher-ups of some nature. Why not Zone Managers? Would there even be any speech logs to steal? Finally, he decided.
         "I will do this for you, but understand that I may decide not to give you the logs if I worry you could use them in any way other than to satisfy your curiosity."
         "Of course. I said that myself a moment ago, no?" This time, he actually did laugh.
         Adam set to work, attacking the network that housed the speech logs of the Parallel. Despite the modifications in all of his modules and the safety of the red room, Adam still made sure to manually disguise his location data a second time on the software side before beginning. He decided to take the simple approach and flood the network with bots, raising the alarm of the security system. While the bots were inside, he would enter as well and manually copy down the necessary logs. Since nothing was being edited or destroyed, this would be relatively safe, provided that there was some minor amount of delay between when the real people monitoring the network came to investigate and when the security alarms first went off.
         The plan went perfectly. Adam entered the network just after releasing the mass of bots inside. After going through the maze of text files, he managed to find the index for last names starting with D. A quick search for Lee Davidson yielded hundreds of results, but it was easy to pinpoint which one was the Zone A2 manager by looking for the specialized tag next to his name revealling his status as Zone Manager. After searching through the last two days of speech logs, he found a total of 5 exchanges between Davidson and Richard Clark, who, sure enough, had a Zone Manager tag next to his name proclaiming him to be the Manager of Zone Z6666. Each of these exchanges was rather short in length, and all but one could be traced to the same location: southernmost America, or as it was nicknamed by many, Panama.
         Adam was confused. Why meet in the fictional version of the real-life region where Zone Z6666 was located? Wouldn't it make more sense to meet in the luxury of Zone A2's digital counterpart, rather than Z6666's? Not to mention, if the real-world Z6666 had a small population, the digital version was a literal ghost town. With the amount of bribery in the Parallel, no one would have remained there for long, and even if they did, no one would willingly live their fictional existence there. If there truly was no escape, they would most likely rather quit using the Parallel entirely than be stuck there.
         He began to read the first and only log that, for some reason, could not be traced to any location on the Parallel:


         Davidson, Lee: Thank you for coming.


         Clark, Richard: I don't like this. I'm only supposed to house the dirty criminals. What did this guy do?


         Davidson, Lee: This is a personal matter, as I have told you many times. And it has nothing to do with anything he did.


         Clark, Richard: Well, if he's truly just an innocent goody two-shoes with scores like that, you sure have a heck of a way of rewarding him for it.


         Davidson, Lee: None of this concerns you. I am sending him to you in name only. He will not live the life of the rest of your citizens. You are to put him up in one of the private guest rooms, where he will be delivered the same Rations of Luxury that you are receiving. And in return for housing him, I will help you with your food problem. You already agreed to this.


         Clark, Richard: Yeah, sure. So why are we meeting then?


         Davidson, Lee: To arrange the details. You are to have the room prepared by no later than the night of the 30th. He will arrive as one of the food supply shipments the same night, hiding inside a barrel. His barrel will be marked with a small, green star on the top. You are to discreetly take the barrel to the prepared secret room, along with 3 other barrels, each marked with a yellow star, which contain his belongings. Once delivered, you are to leave immediately and never return to the room. You will not be needed to assist in any future deliveries there. You will not see or hear from him. He will no longer exist to you.


         Clark, Richard: Okay, I got it.


         Davidson, Lee: Then there is no further need to communicate other than one last thing. If-


         Suddenly, Adam heard the beeping alert he had set for when new connections to the network had been established. The cavalry was here. Quickly, he copied the remaining files as well as the one he had read, and then immediately disconnected from the network, leaving the bots behind.
         The tall man looked at him expectantly. "Did you read it all?"
         Adam took a moment to fully calm down. That had been too close. He had never taken risks to that degree before. He definitely had earned the package awaiting him when he returned to the real world.
         "No. I read only the vast majority of the first file before I had to leave."
         "What did it say?"
         Adam decided to tell him, but leave out the specific times mentioned. "They were talking about someone who was being moved to Zone Z6666, I think. The way they were talking about him, though, made it sound like he wasn't there for punishment like most of the people there. Lee Davidson kept telling Richard that the reasons didn't concern him and that if he helped move the man in, he would send shipments of food to Zone Z6666. At the end, they were discussing some extra detail or something, but I had to leave to avoid being caught with the bots that I was hiding with."
         The man nodded. "And did you have time to read any of the others now before telling me this? How many were there?"
         Adam shook his head. "There were 5, and no, I couldn't read them all. I didn't even fully finish the first one, but I came close enough that I can't imagine there being much more to it."
         The man nodded again. "You are correct. The final detail at the end is simply Lee Davidson discussing an emergency clause for if any of the citizens of Z6666 ever learn of the presence of the mystery man."
         Adam was struck dumb. "But... you asked me to retrieve them for you. You already read them?"
         "And at that, you were incredibly successful." The man smiled again. "You also had the sense to read the most important discussion first. The others merely involve the two practising this delivery virtually, in order to ensure that the real thing goes smoothly. By the 4th and final time, Lee Davidson is mostly satisfied with Richard Clark's ability to perform the move in, and the two haven't spoken since. However, they may practise again tomorrow. There's no real way of knowing."
         It was at that moment that Adam realized that this man was not one of his typical clientele, the idiotic, wealthy men who typically hired him. He began to get a nervous feeling all over, the kind of nervous excitement that is not fearful exactly, but anticipatory of what might soon come to be. "I... I still don't understand. Why did you ask me to find these files for you if you somehow had already read them?"
         "At this moment, I am afraid I cannot tell you. Your Ration of Luxury package should have been delivered by now. I suggest you leave the Parallel now and do not return until you have looked into it. Goodbye, until we meet again." Then, Adam watched as the man in front of him disappeared into thin air.


         "Be sure to let me know what you think so far! Reviews are very helpful!