Talons that Go Unnamed Update

Chapter 1 (Roj)

Here is where the other main character is introduced. . .these snippets make some attempt to give an idea of what the chapter is about, though quite a bit is missing. Comments are appreciated.

Roger Campbell, Roj, was at his proverbial wit’s end. The once quite bearable cross of working at Global had unexpectedly grown in weight and awkwardness. There were new demands. He sat at the dinner table eating his wife’s processed salad; she used a salad shooter or similar device that chopped up the lettuce, spinach etcetera into unnatural, bite-sized pieces. Roj had not had time to take off his work clothes before dinner, and as he’d pulled up his chair he had untucked his dress shirt and rolled up his sleeves. It was only Monday.

Little Drew and Bethany sat around the table as well, although dinner wouldn’t be ready for another ten minutes. Their early attendance meant they were sacrificing precious TV time simply to be near their father. This affection roused a contentious sense of pride; Roj had been searching for a few short minutes of peace and thought he’d found it with Hilary barbequing on the back porch and the children fixated by the babysitter. His head swam with figures, involuntarily assembling loose reports based on Drew’s account of the day.

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“Well, you know. New kid Cced me instead of BCCing me in a potentially sensitive e-mail, so now my supervisor is auditing my e-mail. Its not really a concern, its just one of those things. The specs from the lab were in engineering units instead of metric so I spent most of the day trying to round–off radical numbers while still remaining within tolerances. The FTP server went down, so I lost about a gig of data . . . kind of sucked today.”

This bewildered Hilary, she hadn’t the foggiest concept of what much of this meant. Roj purposely answered her questions in this manner, leaving her feeling a little stupid and dissuading her from asking further questions. It normally worked.

Roj brought pieces of meat loaf to his mouth and took in the burgeoning pointlessness of local news coverage. His relationship with the slowly devolving medium recalled the sort of celebrated villainy of pro wrestling’s bad guys. He absolutely hated it and yet could not resist its gleam. The news crew was hard at work busting soft corruption amongst municipal workers. In one grainy shot a Mexican in coveralls was smoking what appeared to be a joint. Roj resented the fact that the news network believed it should “work for you”, i.e. the vapid couch potato with a penchant for righteousness. Something drew him to every broadcast.

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A hyper woman of muddled descent was speaking live at the courthouse, for whatever reason, holding up a small white card. Roj’s interest perked.

A plan initially studied for use in those considered a flight risk, this technology is now being used to keep tabs on everyone from drunk drivers to pumpkin smashers. This is Alaina Umbave (this she said with a strained accent), for Channel 6 News.

“Unbelievable.” Roj said and looked to his wife for commiseration. “How can they do this?”

“I think it’s a good idea . . .”

“How could it possibly be a good idea?” Roj was frustrated, both by her willingness to accept such an outrage and his own lack of surprise at her position.

“Well, it will help keep track of the bad guys.”

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He shoved a wad of dry meatloaf in his mouth. He preferred the taste with ketchup, of course, but felt it was disingenuous to smother the dish in ketchup and claim that it was enjoyable. Roj was more inclined to understand just how base and unexciting Hilary’s meal really was. He made a conscious effort to think about the issue of RFID tags, to make a cohesive stance on it; he wanted to be able to talk about it intelligently should the issue come up at work.

The reason you can’t do this is because . . . . well, why exactly. I know I wouldn’t want an RFID tag. But many people would say that I don’t have to worry because I’m not a criminal.

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The previous day’s paper, unread, was already on the bathroom counter and Roj settled in to read at least several pages of it. Muffled sounds of children’s laughter outside and the electronic hiss of the television.

The newspaper was the last bastion of genuine, informative news. Roj disdained the local TV news (as aforementioned), and also believed that the national news networks tried too hard to appease their audience. The radio had devolved into simple partisan bickering. The newspaper on the other hand was bound to the news; it was the genesis of the journalism discipline that was later bastardized by the mass media. Roj envied real, investigative reporters.

On the front page was the unsettling headline “Cohost suicides on Good Day USA”.

The next few minutes were dreamlike, fuzzy around the edges. He didn’t read the article right away, but rather tried to calm the ripple of anxiety that filled him. His spine was ice. The headline blew on a hot coal at the bottom of some unused repository, something from his childhood.

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The picture was tastefully clipped from the brief moment after she had murdered the Secretary of State and before she shot herself. She was standing over him claiming that justice had been served and that “Now the people w[ould] hear the truth!”. Her screaming visage, in grainy black and white, dragged Roj’s warming memory out of the ash.