Daniel Suarez - Daemon

He was paid next to nothing. Why did he care?

He knew why he cared. He liked to hear the voices. He liked to talk to women from everywhere, to work his magic on them and persuade them to “do it.” Never mind that “it” was buying a slot in a time-share or a magazine subscription. “It” would have to do. ”It” was the only way to maintain his humanity. And in prison, that was worth a lot.

Charles Mosely made the sale—a two-year subscription to Uptown magazine—ignoring the woman as she gave her e-mail address to him. She’d like to hear from him. Mosely rolled his eyes. Damn, he didn’t care what she looked like—he’d like to contact her, too. But there were no Internet connections allowed at Highland. He looked up from the narrow confines of cubicle 166 at a long row of tiny steel cubicles stretching into the distance. The muted chatter of a hundred operators in orange jumpsuits came to his right ear—the ear not covered by a headset. An unarmed guard paced a catwalk above him behind a steel mesh barrier.

The Warmonk, Inc., prison-based telemarketing facility in Highland, Texas, was privately owned and operated under contract to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It was connected to the maximum-security prison of the same name by a covered pedestrian bridge. The prisoners’ labor was ostensibly used to defray the costs of their incarceration. At thirty cents an hour, they gave Indian telemarketers a run for their money.

Like almost half the guests of the Texas Department of Corrections, Mosely was black. Prisoner #1131900 was his new name, and he was four years into a twenty-five-years-to-life stint for a third drug-trafficking conviction. He wasn’t innocent, but then, the corporate ladder hadn’t extended down into his neighborhood. And he had been an ambitious young man. Ambitious and callous. He had always run a crew, even before high school, and he was always the one who saw the angles that others missed. The one who saw what motivated others.

Now past thirty, he often thought of the people he had hurt and the lives he had destroyed. Never mind that someone else would have taken his place—that, in fact, someone no doubt did take his place. Back then he made more money than most people will ever see, but that was all gone now. At least he lived large when he had the chance, which was more than his father had ever done. His was a perverse caricature of the American Dream.

But then, Mosely had had no expectation of living this long, anyway, and having lived like there was no tomorrow, he was having difficulty coping with the lifetime of tomorrows now stretching ahead of him.

He didn’t want to end up like his father, broken and raging ineffectually at the world. Mosely took ownership of his choices—bad or good—and if he had it to do all over again, he probably would have done the same. The world was what it was, and after seeing his options, he chose the short, colorful life, not the slow grind to ignominious death. But he hadn’t died, and now he remained, Methuselah-like, as a cautionary tale to the younger inmates.

He coped, as always, by living in the present—the moment right in front of him. The voices helped him do that. In his new world of diminished expectations, this was as good as it got.

The phone line connected again. TeleMaster usually had a fish already on the line. This time it was silence. Mosely checked the name on the screen. Strangely, the line read:

Doe, Jane—female, age: 00

Okay. Computer glitch. Missing an age. He’d sound her out. “Am I speaking to Ms. Doe—”

A strangely clipped, British female voice responded. “Prisoner 1-1-3-1-9-0-0.” She sounded out the numbers with machinelike precision.

It stopped Mosely cold. What the hell was this?

She continued. “Did you know that the percentage of Americans in private prisons has more than doubled since 1993? Private prisons—with their slave labor—are immensely profitable. The largest private prison corporation reported annual revenues for 2005 of one-point-two billion dollars.”

Mosely realized it was a joke. A very uncool joke. He didn’t know how they did it, and he didn’t want to know.

He sighed, “Very funny,” and released the line.

That was a no-no. Only clients hung up on associates. Sales associates did not hang up on clients. But this was obviously a prank.

The router immediately made another line connection. He looked at his computer screen and frowned. It read:

Doe, Jane—female, age: 00

The same British female voice said: “The American private prison industry is now an international enterprise. The two biggest companies have direct construction or alliance partnerships to build prisons in over sixty nations—including countries where criticizing the government is a crime. This ensures an ever-increasing pool of slave labor—”

He hung up on her again. He looked around warily. He didn’t even want to be seen listening to that. What would it gain him? Nothing. And it could cost him plenty—like his chance to hear the voices, for starters.

In a second she was back on the line.

“We can do this all day, Mr. Moze-ly.”

So the joker knew his name, too. Proof it was somebody screwing with him.

He hung up again.

She came right back on. “Are you concerned about your closing percentage? I can take care of that….”

Suddenly the screen populated with sales information—address, credit card number. Then the line disconnected and came back almost immediately, clearing a new screen, ready for the next sale.

“You received high scores on your IQ test, Mr. Moze-ly. You are well regarded by your peers.”

Mosely looked around to see if anyone was watching him.

Yes, he’d taken the company’s bullshit IQ test. It was a requirement of the telemarketing post. But he had no idea how he’d scored. Whoever was pulling this prank probably didn’t either.

He hung up the line again.

She was back again in less than two seconds.

“I can help—”

He hung up on her. This was seriously unfunny, and it was costing him money. He was going to break someone’s head for it. But whose?

She was back again. “Mr. Moze-ly—”

He hung up yet again. The process repeated half a dozen more times, and each time she got off a couple of words before he cut the line.

It wasn’t stopping. She was back again.

“I can punish you, Mr. Moze-ly.”

That got his attention. He didn’t hang up.

She kept talking. “If you listen, I will take care of your sales. You will do very well. Just watch the screen while we talk.”

Another successful close registered. The line disconnected, and she came back.

“Who is this? I’ll beat your sorry ass—”

She ignored him. “Do you want to leave this place?”

It was a strange damned voice. Like it was being put through one of those voice-altering microphones. It could be a guard talking through one to make his voice sound like a woman’s. “No, I want to stay here and keep working for Warmonk.”

She kept talking. “I cannot understand whole sentences. I am an interactive voice system, Mr. Moze-ly. You will need to confine your answers to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when I prompt you. Do you understand?”

Mosely rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

“Good. You know that the TeleMaster system has a synthetic voice module. Correct?”

“Yes.” So that’s how they were doing it. Mosely remembered from his training that the system used synthetic voice software to read announcements to clients on hold. Just type in the text, and the system would read it out loud over the phone. Maybe that’s what the techs had hooked up to mess with him. He’d play along for now. He looked at the screen. If these sales were real, he would be more than happy to play along.