Corporate Drones

Webber hated corporates. Greased up hair, starched white collars, standard neural augmetics to align with corporate interests and maximize compliance. In-house colleges churned them out by the truckload, ready to plug in and get to work.

There were four of the drones around the table, standing straight as razors. The blonde one, he was in charge. You could tell by the way they angled themselves around him.

The chief stooge glanced up, then down at a note on his desk. “Mister… Webber, is it?” he said, as if he didn’t know. “I assume you have the package?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Webber said. He flipped the datastick dexterously between his fingers. “And they were not pleased to part with this little number, let me tell you.”

“Yes, well, all well and good,” said Blondie, without looking up. He gestured vaguely at his desk. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

Webber didn’t move.

Eventually, Blondie looked up. “...do we have a problem?”

“You’ve got a problem,” Webber said. “I have an opportunity.” He reached into his jacket. These corporates, no survival skills whatsoever. Webber could have been going for a gun, but the milquetoasts didn’t even twitch.

He pulled out a holographic puck, tossing it deftly onto the table. It lit up the table with a kaleidoscope of floating figures. “I don’t work for people I don’t know,” he said, “so I did some digging.”

Blondie didn’t blink. “I’m more of a big picture guy, Webber,” he said. “What exactly am I looking at here?”

“It’s data from your R&D department, Corporate,” said Webber. “You’ve been pouring a metric buttload of money into Human Engineering. That’s genetic meddling, Blondie. What corruption you’ve been inflicting on the mortal form, well, the mind absolutely quails.”

He leaned in. “Now, you’re going to triple my fee, or by this time tomorrow the Human Forward Front is getting another puck just like that one. I’m sure they’ll be very upset. And when they get upset, they tend to spread it around with a shovel.”

Blondie studied his pen for a long moment, then slowly rose, stabbing at a button on his desk. “Cassie,” he said, “could you be a doll and send in Unit 45?”

Webber tensed as the door slid open. Human genetic engineering was banned for good reason; what was coming through that door could be armed or even multi armed.

But the figure that emerged was ordinary. Familiar, even. Stocky, but not fat; not ugly, but certainly far from handsome. Webber struggled to place the face; he could have sworn he’d seen it before.

He’d seen it… every day.

Fast as lightning he whipped out his holdout pistol, pointed straight at Blondie’s head. “What the fuck is this, corpo?” he said. His hand was steady, but his voice cracked.

Again, the corporates were just so damn unruffled. With a piece in his face, the man must have ice running through his veins. “This is Unit 45,” he said, patting the docile figure on the shoulder.

“It has my goddamn face!”

“What?” The corporate did a double take in mock shock. “My god, you’re right! Take those tattoos off, and you could be twins! Or triplets. Or quadruplets. Or… hold on…” Blondie stopped to speculate. “Forty...five… uplets. Fuck, I don’t know.”

Now, the gun began to shake. Webber decided to steady it against Blondie’s forehead. “You’re going to tell me what the fuck is going on,” he seethed, “or I’m gonna paint the walls with your corporate-approved brains.”

Blondie smiled. “Go ahead, Webber,” he said, leaning into the weapon. “It could use a fresh coat.”

Webber tried, he really did. He’d popped more than his share of corpos in his time. But somehow, right here in this moment, that one finger utterly refused to flex.

Blondie’s smile grew wider. “Do you have any idea,” he said, “how hard it is to find freelance agents you can trust?” Gently, he pushed the gun barrel away with two fingers, leaving a welt in the middle of his perfect corporate forehead like a bindi.

“What does that-”

“No, no, you shut up now,” said Blondie, and Webber’s lips sealed themselves tight. “I don’t get to really enjoy myself very often, and I don’t need you interrupting.” He pressed his fingertips to his eyes. “Where the fuck was I?”

He snapped his fingers. “Right, trust.”

“There’s this paradox to freelancers,” he said. “They need this independence, this contempt, to do what they do. Which gives them this annoying tendency to stick it to The Man. The Man being us.”

He began to pace. “So what is The Man to do?” he said. He turned, picked up the hologram puck from his desk. “Well, you stumbled across it yourself, Webber. Human modification.”

“We’re not making monsters here,” he said, “we’re just hiring in-house.”

Webber could only stand frozen, straining against his own rebellious limbs.

Blondie stepped closer, peering into Webber’s bulging eyes. “Oh, you’re a real cowboy, Webber,” he said, “the old guard, a professional. Or at least, you believed us when we told you so.

He tapped the hacker on the nose. “All that cockiness, all that rebellion, everything that makes you hate us?” he said. “We gave you that. To make you serve us better. We whipped up your personality in a test tube. Your tattoos were designed by a committee.

“Of course, I added a few touches of my own,” Blondie said. He flipped the puck dexterously between his fingers. “For color.”

He snapped, and the three corpos stepped briskly out of the shadows. “Units 12, 13 and 14,” he said, “take Unit 44 for deprogramming. Get a full diagnostic and see what you can preserve of the personality. That okay with you, Unit 44?”

Webber managed what might have been a snarl.

Blondie clapped his shoulder. “Oh, cheer up, Webber,” he said, “you’ll be back on the streets soon.” He fiddled with the puck. “We’ll have to tone down the independence just a tad, though. Can’t have you poking around again.”

Webber was marched out of the office, fighting his legs at every step.

Blondie sighed. “You just can’t find good help these days,” he said.

Unit 45 did not deign to respond.