Profits of Conflict
By Thomas X Veil
Dino sees profit in repression, monetising faction checkpoints alongside the calculating Louisa. In a town shaped by coercion and fear, commerce becomes another weapon, and every transaction tightens the grip of control.
Genre: Satirical Speculative Fiction
Home > Thomas Veil > Rosecommerce
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Dino
I got up, went over, and looked in the mirror. Time for a pep talk. “No more Dick Clapper, you’re now Dino Delfino entrepreneur extraordinaire! Now get your ass into gear and make it work!”
It had been an incredible couple of months; the difference Louisa had made was amazing. She had been determined from the start. She had pushed, cajoled and harried everyone from me to the Heritage Front.
We met when she and her kids, Jake and Arabella, had taken part in the focus group for my ‘Privatised Repression’ products: Express Strip Searches, Checkpoint Cafes and Loyalty Cards for the oppressed with no time. She had pulled me out of the depression caused by my previous partner running off with all my money. I couldn’t afford for this to collapse; financially, professionally, or mentally.
The opening day at our trial checkpoint finally arrived.
After helping our new staff set up, we watched a line of bleary-eyed workers approach the checkpoint.
“Look at the state of them,” said Louisa. “Give me a hand. I need to take notes. We need real data to work from.”
Louisa and I looked on proudly as things started well. Free coffee was handed out; the express search line was busy with the more relaxed chatting in the slower queue.
Overall, it was a tremendous success for both the Heritage Front and me. We should be on a winner here.
“How are the notes doing?” I asked Louisa.
“Fine. But who’s this when he’s at home?” she said, peering over my shoulder at a large straight-backed middle-aged man in uniform.
The man wandered up and down the line, listening to what people were saying and watching what was happening. He even chatted with a few of the better off looking people in the queues.
I was trying hard not to stare. “What’s he doing?”
Louisa said what I was thinking. “We’d better be careful he doesn’t steal our ideas, I think, Dino. It’s actually their checkpoint.”
“He’s coming over.”
*****
Louisa
By Monday, the Heritage Front had cloned Dino’s idea. Checkpoint cafés, express strip searches, even loyalty schemes, all more impressive than ours and rolled out across Rosehaven overnight.
Our reviews were terrible in comparison, and to make matters worse, the Monday after, New Tomorrow stopped lurking like a pimp up a dark alley and enter the market too.
Jake was headhunted by HF, and Arabella was seduced into a job by an NT manager who she knew fancied her.
“But Mum!” she said. “They’ve got muffins, mascots that you can strip, and drone deliveries and everything.”
“What, they deliver drones?”
“No, when they’re quiet, they’re going to use their surveillance drones to deliver food from restaurants. You just phone in your order, and the drone picks up the food and delivers it hot. That’s brilliant, isn’t it?”
I didn’t know whether to worry about my daughter’s workmates, what she could get up to stripping dolls, or whether I’d like a Chicken Chow Mein from the Chinese restaurant down by the harbour.
“How the hell are we going to keep going now?” said Dino, who had nearly had a heart attack when I told him what Arabella had said.
“Think! We make HF and NT compete with each other. They’ll waste time and money while we keep improving. You’re the ideas man. Come up with ideas, come on.”
Jake at HF and Arabella at NT reported back regularly. Recently, most of it was about the drone pilots, who had to push their skills to the limit when they added deliveries to their duties…
Rumour had it that a pilot mixed up the drones and delivered dinner to a suspect being followed and watched a house where they were waiting for a delivery.
Someone also worked out that phoning in the same order to both factions meant two drones arrived at the same time, and CRASH!
The news spread like wildfire. Everyone wanted to try.
I even persuaded Dino to hold a drone-smash picnic. It was a perfect evening, but the drones only glanced each other; it wasn’t a full-on crash. The top pilots must’ve been on that shift.
After the picnic, the kids got together.
Enjoying these stories? Try the book.
Arabella
“We’ve got to do something,” Jake said to me. “Everyone but us is damaging the factions’ businesses.”
“OK, OK, listen to this. Mum probably won’t like it, though,” I said. “There’s a lot of the guys at work who fancy me and my friend Victoria. Well, that’s what the women say, anyway.”
“And?”
“Well, they say the drone pilots are kind of competing for our attention.”
“Mmm-hmm,” murmured Jake, not liking what he was hearing.
“Well, just to be clear, I don’t want to do anything myself. I’m too scared of getting caught. I could be put into that programme where you have to marry really young and have as many kids as you can, or something. It sounds brutal.”
“You’d never get on that programme; Mum would kill you first.”
“But anyway, I reckon I could get Vicky to distract these pilots while they’re working. What do you think?”
“I think it’s a great idea, but you need to get it right. No point in wasting a chance and someone becoming suspicious, is there? Oh wait, that’s it.”
We went into a huddle and threw around ideas until I was sure of what I had to do. It was so simple.
Vicky loved my plan (I hadn’t told her it was Jake’s) but said we had to be careful. She needed the money. I never mentioned having tons of kids or getting tortured. The stakes were high.
Vicky strolled into the drone pilots’ office while I stood at the door. She wasn’t risking anything happening to ’someone as young as me,’ she’d said.
“Hi guys, what can we get you? Coffee, coke, anything?”
I swallowed and felt the back of my throat tighten.
I had to watch their drone screens and keep a lookout. We couldn’t afford to get caught or to let them report us.
The two pilots barely glanced at their monitors.
James drooled at Vicky. “You.”
Ken leaned in, grinning, gesturing to me. “Or her.”
A flush crept up my neck.
Their drones drifted as they shifted uncomfortably in their seats, eyes bulging.
It looked like they were tracking suspects, not making deliveries.
“I don’t know how you can work in here. It’s so hot…” Vicky said, sitting down on a vacant chair.
“I’ll get some water,” I said, giving the code phrase, my heart thumping in my chest.
My palm brushed the recorder in my pocket, reassuring myself that it was still there.
“I think I need to loosen my top.”
“Just take it off,” said James.
They couldn’t take their eyes off her.
She undid her top button.
The pilots’ breathing changed; faster, shallower. The monitors blurred at the edges of my vision.
The four male eyes were sticking out on stalks.
Vicky caught my nod. Game on.
“That’s better,” Vicky said, standing up.
She looked calm. I couldn’t believe her confidence.
“I think I’ll get back to…”
She collapsed onto James.
James couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to move because he could see Vicky’s bra.
“I’ll help,” croaked Ken, leaving his seat to get a better view.
After checking to make sure nobody was coming, I tip-toed quickly over to their consoles and violently moved the drone’s controls back and forth, then went back, peeking round the door frame to make sure the plan was still working.
“Sit down for a minute,” said James, unable to resist keeping his hands off Vicky as he gave her his seat.
The chair creaked; my stomach dropped at how close he was to looking at the monitors.
“James! Stop that! You know what happened last time!” said Ken. “It won’t just be probation if you do it again.”
“Here’s some water,” I said, walking in with a couple of bottles. The cue for things to calm down.
Neither James nor Ken noticed that all their drones had crashed. They would get in so much shit for that; these drones were expensive.
As Vicky ‘recovered’, we spelled it out that she could make a formal complaint if she wanted to take things further. We also made a mental note to check James’s employee record to see what he’d done before.
I casually turned off my voice recorder as we left.
Evidence!
That me and Jake had just won a minor victory in fighting the factions and helping Mum and Dino gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. Jake should make more plans.
I told Jake that night what had happened.
“You’re braver than me,” he said, frowning, “but don’t ever do that again. These guys could easily overpower you and your friend. God knows what could’ve happened.”
At least when I was doing something risky, I felt alive. Visible.
*****
Later that night, Jake got in touch with someone from The Return. After The Return aired the stories, the pilots began to be distracted: windows opened by women in various stages of undress, people complained, and more of the town found ways to interfere with the drones. Lines were blocked, loyalty cards were gamed, and the whole delivery project wobbled.
*****
Jake
I was listening to a conversation between my manager and an HF faction major and realised I had the voice recorder Dino’d given me in my pocket. I turned it on.
“It’s just not working anymore, sir,” complained the manager. “Business was brisk at first, but now profits are in free-fall.”
I followed them. The manager was describing how insurance claims, and other scams were ruining the bottom line.
“Round up the ringleaders. Whip them. Tie them to the racks by the queue. That’ll stop the claims.”
I itched to move, but I stayed perfectly still, recording everything. I couldn’t believe the major had just said that. Sometimes I forgot how ruthless they could be.
My thumb brushed the recorder in my pocket. I almost stopped it. Almost.
He asked, “What would happen if deliveries were stopped altogether?”
“Actually, sir, profits would rise if that happened. They’ve been losing money for the last few weeks.”
The two men stopped at the cafe door, and the major lowered his voice.
Heart hammering, I started tidying up some rubbish near them.
“Stop taking delivery orders immediately. There haven’t been enough drones for surveillance duties for the last few days.”
I froze for a moment, wondering how Dino and Mum could benefit.
“Sir.”
“Dismissed!”
CRASH!
My ears rang; I stumbled back, trying to locate the source. There was a tang of scorched electronics.
“What the fuck was that, son? Look at my uniform!”
The manager bent down and picked up a piece of debris.
“I think a drone just crashed into the cafe, sir.”
The major stormed off, but he didn’t get far.
“Come on, give us our money. We have the cards and the points; give us what you owe us,” said the women crowded around the loyalty card kiosk window.
The crowd surged, bodies pressing around me; I had to brace myself against a wall.
“Sorry, ladies, not today,” shouted Mrs. Winston. “The boss says no payouts till next week.”
Old Miss Gardener, who must have been about 80, was screaming, “Thieves, that’s all you are! Thieves!”
“What the fuck is going on here?” screamed the major, the veins on the side of his forehead throbbing dangerously. “What are you people doing?”
The women totally ignored him, intent on getting something for their points.
I was still following as close as I dared as he pushed his way into the crowd, not using his horsewhip yet.
My pulse hammered in my ears. As the officer got to the centre of the crowd, I stuck out my foot and tripped him up. He fell, elbowed and kneed, on his way down. High heels, work boots, and even Doc Martens trampled him and stamped him down. A few of the shorter women even stood on his back for a better view.
“Help me,” the major whimpered before slipping, bruised and battered, into unconsciousness.
“Serves him right,” I thought.
I let my mum and sister listen to the recording when I got home that night. Mum went pale halfway through, and Arabella just stared at me. None of us spoke for a while, the noise of the crowd still ringing in our heads.
*****
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