American Omens Read online

  “Good morning, Miss Burne,” his cheery voice with a British accent said.

  Henry wasn’t fully functional. Only half of him stood in place at the counter, swiveling back and forth with metal arms that extended, poured, and mixed. He knew people from ten feet away, and they could even utter what coffee they wanted into their SYNAPSYSes an hour before leaving their apartments. Cheyenne no longer had to do that. She always got the same order, so Henry knew not to ask.

  “Did you have a good weekend?” he inquired.

  “I worked.”

  “That means you loved your weekend since you love your work.”

  Cheyenne grinned. He’s always trying to be ironic. “Certain aspects, yes,” she said and then tried to be ironic back. “Just climbing the corporate ladder.”

  He picked up the sarcasm and made his smile bigger. There had been no attempt to make Henry or the other baristas look lifelike. Instead, Henry resembled a puppet, with only eyes and a grin that changed sizes. His personality, however, was what gave him character. Each encounter helped develop Henry’s knowledge of and relationship with her. Even the most minor and insignificant detail from an interaction was recorded and could be recalled at a later date.

  If only guys had even half of those abilities.

  Henry handed her the coffee. “Remember, Miss Burne, that ‘the higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it’s considered to be your style.’ ”

  “That’s a great insight, Henry.”

  “That’s a quote from the legendary dancer Fred Astaire.”

  She laughed and said goodbye to the robot. His wit always reminded her of why she loved her work and why it was never ending.

  The genius isn’t the machinery. It’s the programming.

  Enough human beings looked like plastic-and-celluloid creations, so there was no reason for robots to keep up with the Joneses. The great leap was the intelligence that was being built and modified and advanced, an intelligence she specialized in and refused to call artificial. In her mind it was a new form of art. Trying to replicate in algorithms the way neurons in the brain used their synapses wasn’t merely complex; some days—most days, in fact—it felt almost absurd.

  Yet that’s what they said twenty years ago about putting technology in people’s heads. Before people ever knew what a SYNAPSYS was.

  The coffee was perfection, tasting like vanilla initially, then morphing into a Columbian Supremo caramel in her mouth. It was never too hot, yet it would retain its temperature in the disposable cup. As she headed across the glass walkway that was playing an old music video, she had to have a few sips before getting on the 7:33 a.m. I Elevator going to the PASK offices.

  The ingenuity of her morning java reminded her that every great invention, no matter how big or small it was, came from someone asking for and wanting more. What will these ingredients taste like if I put them all together? How can I improve something as simple as coffee? Is there a way to make more out of this staple drink humans take for granted?

  That was how she had approached her work in algorithms from the very first days she began to play with them. Could they be expanded and modified? Could something as complex as human emotions be sown into technology? Those questions had been answered over the years with a resounding yes.

  The figure underneath her heels looked like a clown in distorted colors, with a thin white face and red lips, until it panned back to reveal the ruffled collar and the hat of a Pierrot. Normally Cheyenne didn’t pay attention to the background music or even the accompanying retro videos that filled the atrium floor, but this morning she couldn’t avoid it. She knew David Bowie simply by the voice. She couldn’t remember hearing this song, but the lyrics made her feel as if a stranger’s fingernails were scraping against her neck.

  “I never did anything out of the blue.”

  It was just another morning and another short walk to the offices, and yet for some reason everything about this day felt a bit off kilter, like this song and the video. Cheyenne didn’t know why she was feeling this way. Last night and the past weekend hadn’t been unusual. There was no reason for her to feel low, and her body monitor gave her all the usual levels, yet she felt as if she were approaching a barrier and impasse. Not in this building but rather in her life.

  As she passed Bistro #2, she smiled at the familiar stranger who stood there with his coffee in hand, watching the crowd flow by like a river after a rainfall. He looked like any other businessman, always wearing a suit and fashionable tie, always well groomed, always politely acknowledging her with a friendly smile and either a nod or a raise of his cup. Today, however, the dark-haired man began to walk next to her, something he had never done before.

  “Good morning, Cheyenne,” he said.

  She didn’t slow down—she couldn’t afford to do that—but she did turn her head in surprise.

  “You speak English?”

  “Have you ever heard me speak Korean?” he asked without the slightest accent.

  A quarter of the occupants of Incen Tower were foreign, with a majority of them being Koreans who didn’t speak English. She had lumped this man in with that group, though she deeply resented when others did that to her.

  “I’ve never heard you speak.”

  “That’s because you’ve never spoken to me.” His tone was more playful than condescending.

  “You haven’t either.”

  “There’s a pecking order, Cheyenne. I’m not on the upper level. I don’t get to take the I Elevator.” He continued without either of them breaking stride. “I have a note to give you,” he said.

  “You don’t strike me as a secret admirer,” Cheyenne said, smiling.

  “The note is from your father.”

  This made her stop, causing the woman behind her to bump into her and almost sending both of them to the ground. Cheyenne stood there, no longer with a smile but with a desire to know what was going on. The stranger now looked completely different, as if shrouded in a shadow.

  “My father went missing more than a year ago,” she said. “If this is some kind of sales pitch, I will get your license revoked as fast as I can.”

  The steady eyes and chiseled face remained steadfast in their expression. “Can we talk away from the crowd?”

  She nodded and followed him to one of the fountains in the atrium. The water changed colors as it bloomed. Cheyenne recalled walking by one of these fountains ten years ago when she was seventeen and already being recruited by Acatour. Her father had taken her to Chicago, where they had been able to witness the grandeur of the new Incen Tower together. Despite the modern-day wonders of technology, including elevators that soared to the clouds without any semblance of motion, she had most enjoyed watching the rainbow of hues and patterns in the water and had stared at them for a long time. Long enough for her father to put his arm around her and whisper in her ear, “One day you’re going to live here.”

  Perhaps he prophesied it, or perhaps he put the ambition in her heart and soul. Her father used to have that sort of power over her until she realized she was not powerless and needed to break free.

  “Your father gave me very specific instructions,” the man told Cheyenne.

  “Who are you? How do you know him?”

  “My name is Hoon. I met Keith—your father—at a critical moment in my life. He helped me.”

  She couldn’t help looking above Hoon’s head at one of the rows of long escalators slithering up the side of the building like tentacles. The view never looked the same, the tower having been designed to resemble an ever-shifting maze. There were kiosks with Seis to give directions or even escort people to their destination. And all around, everywhere a person looked, security watched and monitored every single soul stepping foot in the building. This included the guards in their uniforms, who carried guns at the
ir sides, and the stationary police monitors—robots that functioned in the same way as the servers in the coffee shops.

  Then there were also the men and women dressed in business attire who carefully guarded the premises undercover. Cheyenne knew about these gun-toting people because she had a higher-level clearance than most around her.

  “He gave me exact instructions in case certain circumstances occurred,” Hoon said.

  “Have you seen him? Where is he?”

  Hoon’s eyes scanned around them in such a way nobody could tell he was looking out. “I haven’t seen him in five months. I’ve only received a few messages, all instant and evaporating upon being read. Nothing via his SYNAPSYS. But he stayed connected. Once a week I would get a notification from him to let me know things were still okay. But it’s been two weeks now since I’ve heard from him.”

  “Are you one of them?” she asked. “Are you one of those followers?”

  You are, aren’t you?

  “Who I am is of no concern to you. My story doesn’t cross paths with yours except for this.” Hoon handed her a square piece of paper, a note that had been tightly folded. “I didn’t read this, as Mr. Burne requested. He said if two weeks passed and I hadn’t heard from him, I was to give this to you.”

  She was almost afraid to hold it, as if it might suddenly burst into flames, or maybe someone would come and grab it out of her hand so she could never read it. Cheyenne was afraid to read the words inside. Were they long or short, loving or hateful, approachable or preaching?

  “Mr. Hoon—”

  “Just Hoon, with two o’s.”

  “Hoon—where do you work? What company?”

  “I work for your father.”

  “You what? For my father? Doing what?”

  “Well, for one, I keep tabs on you.”

  Her palm buzzed, and she looked to see the time. “I’m late.”

  “I know you have to go. That’s why I’m making this short.”

  The light note in her hand felt so foreign, so unreal.

  “What should I do?” she asked.

  “Read that and do whatever it says.”

  He began to walk away, but she clutched his forearm to make him stay. Just for another moment.

  “Your contact info—,” she began.

  “I don’t share it.”

  “Then will I be able to reach you somehow?”

  He shook his head. “No. But I won’t be far away. I’m never far away.”

  She could only laugh, and as she did, the man gave her a questioning glance.

  “Are you trying to be like Clarence?” Cheyenne asked. “The angel from It’s a Wonderful Life?”

  “No,” he stated. “I’ve never seen that film.”

  Her comment was a joke, but his reply didn’t treat it that way.

  “It was my father’s favorite. He would get teary eyed every time he watched it.”

  “If anybody is the angel, it’s your father. Be careful, Cheyenne.”

  With those words the man in the suit stepped into the steady stream of other suits and vanished, as if swallowed up by a sea monster. Cheyenne held the note, her hand quivering. She rushed to the escalator that would take her to the I Elevator.

  2.

  The eyes and ears of Acatour were everywhere, so Cheyenne wouldn’t dare even attempt to read the note after arriving at her office. Soldiers were stationed at the entrance to Incen Tower, and more guarded the elevators leading to the upper floors. She had grown used to seeing them in their bulletproof gear, their machine guns slung over their shoulders. Once she stepped off onto the 248th floor, home to the PASK division in Acatour, she knew eyes were on her just as they were on every other employee entering. Hidden devices scanned for anything unusual on her, while others made sure her data matched her SYNAPSYS. Big Brother was indeed here, but he wasn’t as ominous as George Orwell had made him out to be. The watchful eyes followed her as she reached the front hall, where one of half a dozen women with the title of Advisor would be standing there behind a glass reception desk.

  “I still remember when they were called receptionists,” her father had told her once after visiting her on the floor, the result of a rare invitation he had received from PASK. “They’d be sitting behind a counter or desk, smiling and answering phone calls and making you sign in. Now you have runway models taller than I am who don’t really greet you but simply let you walk by.”

  “And here I thought women had finally progressed enough to no longer be pretty signposts for men to pass,” Cheyenne had replied.

  Her father’s summary had been mostly true, though occasionally, like this morning, a welcoming personality might be standing by the glass doors to the PASK offices. Missy was a friendly soul and as welcoming as the sunrise she seldom saw outside the building. Yet as Cheyenne approached her, the advisor didn’t look like her usual self. No smile, no morning story, no laughter.

  “Kaede wants to see you immediately.”

  Most people, including Missy, pronounced the VP’s name as “Katie,” but Cheyenne knew it was actually pronounced “Kah-eh-deh.” Cheyenne waited to see if there was a punch line for the joke, but none came. As the glass door slid open, she waited, stunned that an executive wanted to meet with her at the start of the day. Especially Vice President Kaede Nakajima. The last time Cheyenne had spoken with Kaede was an awkward exchange in the restroom at a holiday dinner last year.

  “Did she say why?” Cheyenne asked.

  Missy shook her head, showing no emotion. Cheyenne gave her a polite smile, then proceeded to her space, evaluating the short interaction with Missy faster than one of her algorithms might.

  It’s obviously serious. Missy doesn’t know anything, of course. Does she fear what’s about to happen? Or is Missy concerned about what her superiors will think if she shows any sort of emotion?

  It wasn’t as though Cheyenne went out for drinks in the evening with Missy or regularly shared polite conversation with her. She didn’t have much of a relationship with anybody at PASK other than Dina, her tech analyst. There had been Malek, of course, but he had been gone for six months, a very long and frustrating six months. After being fired from PASK, Malek had suddenly disappeared.

  Just like Dad.

  As with Malek, she knew that once Acatour made a decision like that, it was final and foolproof. The decision had come from the upper levels of management in Acatour and had been communicated to PASK, which made PASK look really, really bad. Whatever her dear, beloved Malek had done, it had been serious. But as far as her father was concerned, there was no reason for his disappearance, at least none she could discover.

  Officially, Cheyenne had worked for the PASK division of Acatour for five years, but they had actually started training her when she was still a junior in high school. Many of the people working in this division had no clue what PASK stood for. Founded forty years ago, in 1998, by the legendary Jackson Heyford, the company originally carried the cumbersome name of Programming America’s Systems & Keys, Inc. As it grew more successful, the name was changed to PASK, and with the introduction of SYNAPSYS and digital identities in 2025, PASK triumphed, and devices such as phones and computers suddenly became secondary in the market.

  When she officially joined the company, moving to the Incen building and being given a desk on this floor, another brilliant young university graduate, Sef Malek, also joined the company. She was amazed how quickly he navigated data and how he could manipulate algorithms. It seemed as if his right hand was working on one project while his left hand was working on another, yet somehow his brain could do both. Even so, Malek claimed he had only half of the talent she did.

  “You’re the most gifted programmer here,” Malek once told her, though she believed he was just saying that because he had a crush on her.

  CEO Heyford never used such a crude word
as programmer. He labeled the divisions of the company with amusing names a third-grade boy might have come up with, names such as Astronauts and Spies. Cheyenne and Malek worked in the Architects division, a title she loved to hear.

  So far nothing about this morning had been normal, starting with the stranger handing her a note supposedly from her father, and now this.

  They have to be related.

  Nobody at PASK knew about her father’s disappearance, at least not that she was aware of. That might have changed for some reason.

  Arriving at her desk, Cheyenne set her coffee on the surface and then waved her hand over the right glass eye. Usually the system popped up immediately, showing four virtual-reality screens she had aligned with her SYNAPSYS. Some people preferred to use only a couple of screens, while others, like Malek, enjoyed working off a dozen interfaces. At least Malek used to enjoy this. She couldn’t see any screens, so she tried a few more times but without success.

  “Dina, is your system running?” Cheyenne asked.

  “Yes. No glitches.”

  Cheyenne liked to call Dina her partner instead of assistant, but that’s what Dina regularly did for her—assisted with any needs that the work spawned. There was usually enough work for half a dozen people, so Dina was always busy.

  “My screens are not coming up. Do you know if there’s a problem?”

  “No. Let me check.”

  Dina was no-nonsense and socially awkward, but she was a machine when it came to her work. If such a thing as cyborgs existed, the first person Cheyenne would suspect to be one was forty-year-old Dina. Cheyenne didn’t know anything about Dina’s personal life or if she even had one. All she knew was that Dina sometimes acted before Cheyenne could even speak, and Dina was absolutely trustworthy.