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The U.A. Vice President’s motorcade swooped above Manhattan in tight formation like a gigantic mechanical snake. I was in the middle of it all, riding in a limo with Ralph Zinder and his wife, Emma.
“Are you ready for this?” Ralph asked.
“Frankly, I’m still stunned.” The party we were about to attend was my debut as the newly minted president and CEO of Nuhope. I had once thought of it as a monstrous, audience-sucking octopus that needed to be beaten by Victory Star in every possible way. Now I was about to take control of the beast. The announcement of my new position had just gone out that morning.
The Vice President smiled, not the big grin he threw at crowds, but the glinting, fun one that I’d come to know years ago when we’d hung out at parties thrown by my bestie, Sosha. At the time, he was a rising esports star with spiked-out green hair. Sosha was just gaining some fame as a pop star. And I was the scrawny little scout at Victory that had identified her as a tremendous talent.
I’d drunk Ralph under the table so many times in those early years. Our friends called him Zin Zin then, and I still couldn’t break the habit, although I had the presence of mind not to say it out loud.
“I still can’t believe you came after me,” I said.
“One of his more inspired moves,” Emma said, in that richly cultured voice of hers. The Second Lady had the grace of a heron and a cap of red hair precisely cut at chin level. Zinder looked pleased as he absorbed her compliment.
I couldn’t respond with anything more than a toss-away remark. How pleased would he be a few months from now, after we’d actually worked together? And would my present state of satisfied thrill stay even remotely the same? This new appointment could be a crapshoot—or turn into a piece of crap.
# # #
TWO WEEKS BEFORE, I’D been strolling down a beach in the U.A. state of El Salvador, wearing a faded sarong and an old T-shirt featuring a logo for Head Riot, my Dab’s defunct techno band. It was my standard-issue wardrobe there. That is, when I wasn’t surfing in a bikini or checking out the local guys from the veranda of the little hotel where I was staying.
I’d rolled around in bed with one sexy hunk for the sheer joy of it. To hell with winning the old love “jackpot”—or worrying about social status or gene pools, for that matter. Those thoughts were behind me.
Nothing happened. My doctor’s prediction about the timing of my reproductive system’s shutdown was apparently spot-on.
There were enough Americos in my e-wallet for me to live the life of a surfing slacker for the rest of my life. It was pretty appealing, given the humiliating end of my career at Victory Star. I’d gone into early retirement after the whole Luceel catastrophe—resigned my post before my boss Whit Whitman could fire me for my bizarre behavior. I’d cut off contact with almost all my colleagues and friends. But Zin Zin chatted up one of the rare people who did know my whereabouts, Sosha.
Somebody could have knocked me over a speck of sand when I spotted the Vice President walking up the beach toward me with a small army of security guards in his wake. They looked like a flock of crows, black coattails flapping in the wind behind them.
I tried to smooth down my tangled hair as he drew near. “Bedraggled hag” pretty much summed up the way I looked. But that just seemed to amuse Ralph. We grabbed some stools at the hotel’s outdoor bar shack. And after some brew, he explained that he’d been tracking my career over the years, and he knew how valuable I was. Would I ever consider being president and CEO of Nuhope?
“I must be barking mad. You wouldn’t believe what I just heard you say,” I said.
“I’m quite serious.”
“Ralph, let me save you some research. I left Victory Star because I was a wreck.”
“That news reached me. Care to tell me why?”
“What have you heard?”
“No one seems to know. At least nobody who’s talking.”
I looked closely at his face for any “tells” he was lying. Nothing there. So Rico had kept his mouth shut? Probably figured the truth would backfire on him.
“The ‘why I left’ is kind of beside the point,” I said. “You don’t want the CEO of the most powerful media company on Earth to have mental issues.”
“Do you have them now?”
“No.”
“Do you think you’ll ever have them again?”
Could I be gullible enough to try something like Luceel again? Just the idea of it sent a spasm of determination through me. “No,” I said. “That won’t happen. But you shouldn’t take my word for it.”
“Everybody loses their grip at one point or another, Pet. I’ve studied your career trajectory more closely than you might guess. Whit Whitman sang your praises many times, back in the day when we went golfing. You know, when Victory ran my e-games. He said your business acumen is impeccable. And your nose for new talent is second to none. I got the sense he thought you were going to succeed him when the time came.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think he’d tell you that today.”
Ralph eyed me as he took another sip. “You slam yourself a lot more than anybody else. I dare you to take this job and do something spectacular. Don’t you want to climb back on your horse and kick the shit out of the world?”
Goddamnit. He was giving me that thrill again.
“Ride behind me, Pet. It won’t be fun, necessarily. I can give people a hard time. But it will sure beat living in this dive.” He gave the primitive hotel surroundings a deprecative stare.
“Ah-hem. Some of us think it’s paradise.”
“Yeah, well, paradise gets boring after a while.”
Have to admit he was right. In the days that followed, Zinder would contend that it was his dare that turned me around. But he ignited something else in me that he probably would have found alarming. It was my old dream of transforming a media company like Nuhope so that it was more focused on the best interests of ordinary people—not Nuhope’s advertisers or politicians.
It was a long shot that I could actually change things like that. But becoming CEO of Nuhope was the big kahuna for any media executive, and certainly for me and my secret agenda.
Not that I’d ever admit my goal to anyone but my father. It would seem so naïve, ridiculously idealistic. Dab still felt that way. I called him just after Zinder left to tell him about the Nuhope proposition.
“That would be one hell of a career recovery,” Dab had said.
“It’s the kind of move I lost all hope of ever seeing.”
His holo gave me a worried frown. “If you get this, be careful. I know you learned a hard lesson at Victory, but don’t forget: the higher you get, the more you have to lose.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dab.”
“Oh, I’m more than confident. It’s a wonder my chest doesn’t split open in amazed pride. But I also know you’re not made of titanium. Just—don’t set yourself up for more hurt.”
“There’s always going to be more hurt. That’s just how these gigs go. But I take your point. Caution will be my watchword. No fast moves.” Not that I had any concrete ideas on how to change things, cautious or not.
“That’s my cowgirl,” Dab said as we blew each other an air kiss and signed off.
Don’t relax. Don’t trust. Just find a way to make the changes, if you even get the gig, I told myself. To that end, I did an enormous amount of research to learn everything I possibly could about Nuhope that I didn’t already know. Then there was a flurry of meetings with Zinder, Stew Silverman, and Nuhope’s board members. The more sessions I had, the more determined I was to get the appointment. There were some tough motherfuckers on the board to contend with. They weren’t willing to brush off my sudden exit from Victory and probed me hard. I answered them as honestly as possible without giving away my secret embarrassments. And somehow, I managed to win them over.
# # #
AS ZIN ZIN’S MOTORCADE started to land outside Nuhope, I put my air screen in mirror mode to make sure my new silver and gold haircut still had a wind-blown spiraling effect. It had taken my hairdresser a solid two hours to perfect it. Any glam girl worth her high-priced air heels would immediately intuit that. My gown was made from two micro-layers of transparent material that sandwiched a middle layer of tiny rose-gold flowers floating in water. As the petals swirled around, they revealed glimpses of my skin here and there from my neck down to the gown’s train, which shimmered in my wake whenever I walked.
A cluster of bodyguards kept a small crowd of newschasers at bay as the Vice President, Second Lady, and I emerged from the limo. We floated down the red carpet on our air slippers. Snatches of the live reports came and went as we passed by. “The Vice President of United America is walking into the party with Petra Cardinale...”
“Zinder shocked the media world this morning when he announced Ms. Cardinale’s new position as ...”
“She’s wearing a gown from the designer Zeeka. Her team must have worked very quickly as Cardinale’s appointment came at the last ...”
We entered Nuhope’s grand circular atrium, filled with some of the media world’s most high-ranking celebrities and executives—to say nothing of all the politicos. The towering pillars along the room’s sides were festooned with garlands of flowers. Their scent combined with a heady crush of perfumes emanating from the glamorous party-goers.
Ralph and Emma introduced me to one preeminent guest after another. I replied as gracefully as I could to their congratulations and witticisms, blowing an occasional air kiss to someone in the distance that I recognized. The bodyguards guided us slowly toward the event’s stage on the other end of the hall.
Sosha came towards me, looking like a swan-like magical being in a dress that resembled a cloud. Her black-edged eyes were more Cleopatra-like than ever. “You okay, kid?” she whispered.
“Yeah.” I had confessed everything to Sosha about Rico and Dove one drunken night when she came to visit me at the beach. She even knew about the startle-eyed girl. Now she was in her protective girlfriend mode.
“Hello, Sosh,” Zin Zin said.
She pointed a long fingernail at him, voice all honey on the surface with ground glass beneath as she said: “You treat her right, or you’ll have me to answer to.” Nobody else could talk to the Vice President that way, but she was pop star royalty, and they had a long history.
Ralph grinned. “Let me find you a new show at Nuhope when that Victory show of yours goes south.”
“Only in your dreamisodes, hot stuff.” She sashayed away amidst a beehive of publicists and various hangers-on.
The room went hush for a split second as if everyone’s thoughts were thrilled together. Then I saw him: Dove Brown had entered the hall. It was the moment I’d been dreading. Bloody hell. Calm down, I told my heart. How could I feel giddy, after all that had happened? And yet I did.
Dove was closely flanked by twin Amazon bombshells. A circle of other women orbited around them. When he spotted Zinder and me, Dove made some excuses and walked toward us with that fluid, syncopated grace of his.
It was hard to maintain a calm gaze. His sensuous green-blue eyes enveloped me as if there was no one else he’d rather see. It seemed as if he was remembering every little tantalizing moment in the Black Candy Bar but had erased the awful ending.
There wasn’t even a hint of irritation in his expression, which seemed so curious. After all, my CEO coup must be devastating to Rico—Dove’s great buddy and my one-time confidant turned ... what? What was Rico to me? Nemesis? I was on the cusp of figuring that out.
It was the downside of taking this awesome gig: dealing with the two of them. I was still sorting out feelings about them that had sent me clear to El Salvador. High on the list was the humiliation I’d felt when I begged Dove to stay with me. It was quickly followed by that insanely embarrassing showdown with Rico when he quit Victory. The chip he’d planted in my arm nearly destroyed my mental well-being. Now, with one little stroke of my mobile, I could make life very uncomfortable for the two of them—firings, unpleasant reassignments, all sorts of queasy hells.
Stop it! I told myself. Don’t turn this new job into a revenge play against those creeps. Nuhope is a career move that you’ve always dreamed of. Plain and simple.
Be that as it may, the possibility that I might wreak revenge would be an incentive for the two of them to keep their mouths shut about the humiliating moments in my past.
The thought of that was in my smile as Dove reached me. “You put the rrrrr in ravishing,” he said, doing that gravelly low-voice thing of his. “What a smashing idea to make you the top cat.”
For a millisecond, Zinder gazed at Dove like he wanted to bed him down that very instant. Now, wasn’t that interesting. It came and went so quickly, and yet Emma was smelling the smoke too; I could tell.
Best keep things moving along. “Why, thank you, Dove. Ralph, have you met Dove Brown?”
“Yes, we certainly have,” Zin Zin replied. “Emma and I are hosting a little party at our penthouse later on. Care to join?”
“I’d love to,” Dove said.
Emma tried to erase her stiff expression as she looked at me. “Petra, you’re coming, aren’t you?”
“Of course.” Oh, balls. That’s the last thing I wanted, to be near Dove any longer than necessary.
Dove was reading my reluctance. I started to move on, but he grabbed my hand and kissed it. The shocky thrill left me speechless. To touch someone like me, in a setting like this, was so inappropriate. I could feel the harpy eyes of every woman in the room on us.
“You sure know how to pack a punch,” Dove’s eyes lingered over my dress.
I steeled myself. “Really? This little punch is nothing compared to the weaponry I’ll unpack if you ever touch me again.”
Dove’s mouth twitched like he was barely holding back a grin.
“Well, look who has arrived. Hello, Cardinale,” said a smoky voice, the one that used to delight me. I turned to face Rico.
A carefree tone returned to my voice. “Why, hello. This party just gets more and more enchanting.”
Dove gave us a rakish salute and walked away as if avoiding a catastrophe in the making—which was wise.
“Rico, that was such a generous note of congratulation you sent me,” I continued. “But really, I would never let you clear out of your corner office for me. I’d much rather be on a higher floor.” The better to stomp on you if you even try to hurt me.
An expression swept over his face, the one I’d been expecting: absolute fury that I’d stolen the CEO job from under his nose. His eyes dropped to my arm knowingly. There was just a tiny scar there, where he’d implanted the Luceel chip. He was warning me that if I pushed him hard, he would release a salacious story about me, warping the truth in just the right way. (Psychotic visions of children, perchance?)
I smiled dangerously, silently telling him to go ahead; I’d make sure we both went down in flames. Then I’d bail out of Nuhope and go back to El Salvador, no looking back.
He turned soft as butter after that. “I just want to let bygones be bygones.”
“Really?”
“Really. If even the smallest thing comes up that I can help you with, please let me know.”
Said the spider to the butterfly.
Then something happened. It was almost as if some invisible force field came into the room, diverting everyone’s attention. Rico moved away from me so swiftly it caught me by surprise. Dove was on the move to.
It took me a few moments of peering through the crowd to realize that Dove was now at the side of a young thing with honey-copper hair and flashing eyes. She was in a gob-smacking vintage Christian Dior ball gown—a confection of silvery blue, pearls and tulle. They were standing at the atrium’s entrance.
As the beauty and Dove advanced into the room, several men followed in their wake with a kind of obsessive fervor, a little too close, a little too demanding of her attention. It looked like Dove was telling them to mind their manners. A wicked little streak of jealousy welled up. Was he bedding her down now?
“She’s really something, isn’t she?” Zinder asked, startling me out of my concentration.
“Why do I know her?” I tried to place the face.
“Luscious Melada.”
“Of course!” The girl in the Riggles gum commercial that garnered such extraordinary numbers. Nuhope had made a massive windfall from the advertising revenue that followed. Everyone was talking about her. No one knew why she’d disappeared from Nuhope almost immediately after cutting the commercial. Until now. It was so unheard of, for an actress in a 30-second spot to cause such a stir.
“Luscious Melada. Sounds like dessert,” I said.
Zinder let out a quiet laugh. “She’s kind of like a kid sister to Dove. He discovered her, out in some hick town. She’ll do her first tumble in space next month, and then I think we’ll see much greater things from her.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said. Kid sister, eh?
Luscious stared off into the crowd so fixedly. What was she looking at?
And why the hell did I care? I gave myself a little mental shake and moved with Zin Zin toward Nuhope’s newly retired CEO, Stewart Silverman, standing near the stage.
# # #
I’D GROWN QUITE FOND of Silverman during our series of chats that led up to my appointment as his replacement. At first, his enflamed, red skin was hard to ignore. And I was a tad overwhelmed when he grilled me about Nuhope’s various weaknesses and best strategic moves going forward. All the while, he dumped a tremendous amount of intelligence about the company on me. But our conversations were also extremely stimulating.
One day he had confided, “When my disease became noticeable, people thought it made me weak. They tried to take advantage of me during negotiations. I’d lead them along for a while, then swoop in and attack with just the right arguments. Everything would go my way.”
He smashed his red hands together with glee. “Of course, it didn’t work after a while when they knew what I was up to. But let it be a lesson: appearing soft is a great advantage. You’re such a skinny little thing if you don’t mind me saying so. Make it work for you.”
“Oh, I have already. Believe me,” I replied.
Silverman chuckled, clearly pleased. The more I got to know him, the more I understood his particular brand of cunning. Years of corporate battles over Nuhope’s profits and losses had apparently bent his sense of ethics. Seeding dreamisodes with commercial messages and patriotic storylines was a prime example of that. I wanted to bet it hadn’t kept Silverman up at night when the possibility first surfaced some five years ago. In fact, it might have helped him sleep better.
Seeding dreams always had been an issue for Whit, back at Victory Star. That was a business line that Victory never got into.
I put that on the list of the things I wanted to change at Nuhope—the rules around when, how, and if we should even offer seeded dreamisodes. But that would take time and delicate diplomacy. It was not something I ever discussed with Silverman.
# # #
AS STEW, RALPH, AND I made small talk off to one side of the stage, the event’s producer cued up an orchestral swell. An announcer proclaimed: “And now, the former President and CEO of Nuhope: Stewart Silverman!”
Stew sprang up the short flight of stairs, and the crowd cheered. It was nostalgic for most of them, to see him speaking at a company function for probably the very last time. Silverman acknowledged the crowd’s adoration with a huge grin. “Thank you, thank you for coming to Nuhope’s 20th-anniversary bash. I haven’t seen so many poo-bahs in one place since God knows when.”
Everyone clapped, in his thrall. He pointed out the governors of several United America states sprinkled through the crowd: Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil. They waved festively as he called their names.
His words washed away from my mind as I caught sight of Dove standing a few feet away with that delectable Luscious Melada. While everyone in the room was watching Silverman, they also seemed keenly aware of this striking pair. Yes, Dove’s talkshow was garnering extraordinary attention; he was at the center of Nuhope’s firmament of talent. And Luscious had done wonders with that commercial. But I sensed something else about them that I couldn’t decipher.
It didn’t matter. Best pay attention to Silverman and forget about that.
“Most of you are too young to remember what Nuhope was like before its reincarnation 20 years ago,” Stewart was saying. “A little group of government TV channels called PBS, starved from lack of capital, with a bunch of seriously boring sponsor promos. Then it was rechristened Nuhope and ...”
Oh, Lord. A history lesson. My eyes drifted back to where the girl had been, but she was gone. Looking around, I found her on the periphery of the room, drifting toward the back. Several men were trying to follow her, but it looked like she was brushing them off with one flirty remark or another.
Enough! I turned my attention back to Stew’s speech, which was becoming more impassioned. “Make no mistake about it. Nuhope is the biggest, sexiest government business in the world—with a customized dreamisodes for every consumer on the planet; thousands of gaming sites; celebrity-driven shows up the wah-zoo.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I’ve had the best-damned job an ole spaceman could ever have.”
Cheers swelled up. Stewart looked at me, pausing dramatically until the noise subsided. “And now I want to introduce you to someone that you’re just going to love.”
I beamed as he went on. “She used to be at that other company across the street. Forget what they call it.” Everyone gave the obligatory laugh. “And there’s not a shadow of doubt in my mind that she’s about to make Nuhope even more exciting, even more powerful as it begins a new decade. Put your hands together for Nuhope’s new President and CEO, Petra Cardinale!”
The tidal wave of applause washed a thrill through me. I floated on stage and gave Stew a little air kiss. The cheers died to an expectant hush as he left me alone in front of the mass of faces.
“Thank you! Thank you!” I said. “Don’t you all look swank tonight!” They all laughed, entranced with me. I was in love with them at that moment—all the politicians before me, all the Nuhope department heads that I was just beginning to meet, all the advertising clients who made our revenue stream so robust.
Best keep it short. Zinder was next on the speech agenda, and it wouldn’t be wise to upstage him. But this tiny moment was such a treasure.
A far-off movement caught my attention as I began speaking smoothly, delivering all the words I’d memorized with just the right charm. It was that Luscious Melada, talking to a security guard.
Focus! Focus! I paused my speech for a dramatic moment and then began again. “The world is not the place that any of us knew five years ago. The idea that one rogue group would unleash a virus to destroy frozen sperm in storage all over the world! It was a brutal crisis to live through.”
My voice trembled ever so slightly. It was still so hard to talk about children. Rico was leaning over a second-floor balustrade, watching me intently. I continued on, voice gaining strength. “And now, even though we can kill off the virus, questions still remain about where it originated. Was it really North Korea, as most people believe? Or the group in Antarctica? Here at Nuhope, we aim to give the world the most up-to-date information about that news when it unfolds—as surely it must ...”
My eyes drifted back to Luscious. The guard was smiling like an idiot and let her pass through a door leading into Nuhope’s art gallery. A couple of men tried to follow her inside, but the guard blocked them.
The gallery was closed off for the evening. Why would he let her in? And why did she want to be there? It didn’t make sense.
The crowd was transfixed by my words. This speech was the culmination of all my career aspirations. And yet ... why couldn’t I stop thinking about that girl?