9

Avril was getting herself ready to ride when the phone rang. She was going to make it finally to Chris' house. She knew she wasn't going to beat the rush, and there might be already scores of reporters, but she wanted to see his house and she had finally ran out of strings to pull by staying home. She picked up the phone and snapped a fast and furious "What?".

The voice on the other side was calmed and soothing. "Mss. Smith?"

"Speaking."

"Hello, Mss. Smith, I'm really happy to speak to you. I've been reading your prompt for the story you want to write and we wanted to hire you."

"Which magazine is this?"

"It's not a magazine, we were hoping to publish this directly as a book," YES, thought Avril, but didn't let her excitement show. "We were hoping you would be interested."

"Well, I'm considering offers at the moment," she lied. "But if you mail me with yours I'll take a look immediately."

"We do not make offers, Mss. Smith, but proposals."

"Sorry?"

"I represent a very influential company, Mss. Smith. We deal in media, software and human interests. We think you've got the best point of view to narrate this story and we want to make sure it gets heard."

"I'm not quite sure I'm following you." She made a mental list of people she had pitched the idea to, but no one fitted with what the man was saying.

"What we are proposing, is a life-long contract with General Dynamics, that would be us, by the way. You would receive a big advance, and a twenty five per cent of that advance as base salary monthly for the next forty years. There would also be royalties and bonuses if the book is good, and a monthly column in matters that interest you."

"General Dynamics?"

"Yes."

"I've never heard about you before."

"That's likely to change soon, Mss. Smith. We have always kept a low profile, as we provide mostly for other companies, but some of our products are going to be released to the public really soon."

"You mean, if Chris Barnett dies and the world doesn't end."

"Oh, no, no, we expect Mr. Barnett to became an extremely important man in the following months. And you shouldn't fear for the end of the world, I'm pretty sure it won't be as bad as it looks."

This rang a few wrong bells for Avril. Her research from last night had run a couple of times into a rather recent cult called the Eschaton Seekers, people who were hailing for a big change. Some called it Rapture, some called it Singularity, but it was clear that most of them were seeing that end as something good and looked forward to it.

"You might want to explain that in more detail," she said to his mysterious voice.

"We will once you accept the job. The contract should be in your mailbox already, and you have a short introduction both to General Dynamics and to our report on Chris Barnett in your email."

She shuddered. She hated not being in control, and that conversation had made her nervous. She knew she wouldn't say no, and she knew it was going to be a great figure.

She opened her mail and saw that she had one with two attachments, as the voice had said. She downloaded and opened the first one, called GD.

She was instantly hit by a corporate presentation, similar to many she had already seen, but there was something about it that made her nervous. She saw smiling people talking about smartphones, Internet, personal robotics and artificial intelligences that would make everyone happy and smarter. She couldn't focus too much on it, so she opened the second attachment, called CB.

There she saw most of the information she had already gathered, but she realized that she was a few steps forward. They still claimed that Chris and Dianne were together, for example. She saw videos with different angles of the event, a few of them taped with cameras she didn't knew were there. She could even see herself in a few of them, dropping her coffee when lightning took the stage. The file included a lot of predictions about what was bound to happen on December the 12th, from a total collapse of electronic equipment to an infection that would spread virally. To Avril, it was a great deal of bullshit, and it did remind her of her parents, which made her angry.

She took a second look at the presentation about the company, and then she realized what had bothered her in the beginning: everyone in the pictures was wearing pitch black clothing.

She closed her laptop. She needed to think, and get some distance between herself and the strange phone connection she had just made.

She took her helmet and jacket and grabbed the bike keys and left the place. Five minutes later, she was riding on the highway, which always made her clear her mind. However, this time she was feeling specially itchy.

She stopped by an advert about a new medical drug, that was being hailed as a miracle anti-cancer cream, and found herself for the first time in ages reading the small print of the advert. There, clear as day, she saw a "subsidiary of General Dynamics ORG" that made her shuddered. A few miles down the road, she saw a new smartphone with the same sign on it, she took her bike papers out in a fit of paranoia, and there it was, hidden in plain sight.

She sighed. She hated having fake options, and not feeling in control of her future, but this time it felt as if she had lost before she even started. he grabbed her phone and pressed redial. The mysterious voice greeted her again and didn't even allow her to speak.

"Have you reached a decision, Mss. Smith?"

"I'm in," she said. "So long as I control everything in the book, as I am sure that the story that gets out is the story I want to tell, and not yours."

"Mss. Smith, the story we want to tell is the same story that you want to tell."

She regretted her decision already.

***

Chris reached for the door handle, but stopped before he reached it. He went to his fridge and took out the orange juice. He swallowed what was left of the bottle and threw it away. He hadn't eaten anything since last night, and was feeling specially famished. He searched the fridge again, but nothing had changed in it.

He paced the room and made for the door a couple of times, but thought better about it always. He wasn't ready to face the crowd, he wasn't ready to speak to those people. What was he supposed to say? He had seen the news after seeing all the reporters around his house, but that simply made him more confused. What was everyone expecting of him?

He wasn't ready to die, not that anyone would care, now that Dianne had broke up with him. However, he didn't want the world to end. He was pretty sure that the reporters were mistaken. It had to be someone else, his namesake somewhere. However, the people outside his door seemed pretty convinced that he was the Harbinger of Doom, and that made it difficult for him to go out and try to convince them that he needed groceries, and they should leave him alone.