Retreating to the safety of Facebook, Jackie looked for Max, but he wasn’t online. It was twelve hours later in Saint Petersburg, so she didn’t really expect to see him.
Jackie needed to tell someone about what was happening with her father, and Max seemed like the safest bet. Maybe it was because he was so far away, almost like he wasn’t real, like he couldn’t hurt her. Whatever the reason, she decided to send him a message:
Jackie
I know it’s the wrong time for you to be online, but I just wanted to say hi. So, hi. Okay, really, there’s more than that. Maybe I’ll look for you tomorrow.
She read her note over and smiled at the thought of how her father would send her Facebook messages addressed to “Dear Jackie,” with a closing of “Love, Dad,” never really understanding that you didn’t need to identify yourself in a world where your identity traveled with you.
Thoughts of her dad brought Jackie back to Earth. She tried to put those thoughts aside until she could figure out how to process them. She went back to mindlessly scrolling through her news feed, letting the dopamine wash over her frontal lobe. After a while, she crawled back into bed with Megan and drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep.
***
Jared opened his eyes, but the room was trapped in darkness. There wasn’t even light seeping in from under the door. He knew he’d been having a dream, but he couldn’t remember any of the details. (The glioblastoma had eaten it.)
The total absence of light made Jared realize that he’d slept for hours. Our shelf sport, he thought, making another anagram. At least he seemed to have his faculties.
He knew his first order of business was to find his wife and daughters, explain everything, and try to set things right. But he wasn’t quite ready. He reached for Trebuchet and felt the fur on the dog’s abdomen, once black, now mostly gray, rising and lowering in time with his own rhythmic snoring. Trey grunted, acknowledging his master without fully waking up.
Pushing himself up on his elbows, Jared made it to his desk and brought his computer back to life. Time to see if there are any new bids, he thought.
There were none. But he did have a new message in his eBay in-box.
Dear Sir—I’m interested in placing a bid on your auction titled “Human Life for Sale.” I’m a serious bidder with sufficient resources to meet your reserve and more. My question is this: Are you physically and mentally fit? Are you able to run, jump, crawl, climb, and react to new circumstances? Have you ever used a gun, knife, or bow and arrow? I’m interested to know what kind of life I’m bidding on. Thanks in advance for your answer, and sorry about your predicament. I hope I can help. You can respond to me via eBay, or you can send an e-mail to [email protected].
Jared had to read the note five times before he was convinced he had read it correctly. “Ever used a gun, knife, or bow and arrow?” he asked the still-sleeping dog. “What the heck am I getting myself into here?”
Frightened, he lay back down and closed his eyes.
***
Ethan Overbee was the first to place a real bid.
Technically, he didn’t have the authority to spend $100,000 of the studio’s money, but in the world of television networks, a hundred grand was how much meeting planners spent, not programming executives. No one would question it. No one except Thad St. Claire, and that was exactly the point. In Ethan’s mind, this was the beginning of the end for his mentor.
Thaddeus St. Claire was an old-school network executive who had clawed his way to the top. His first job for ATN had been forty years earlier, in the ad traffic department. He worked long and thankless hours to make sure advertisements for Tide and All laundry detergent didn’t run in the same commercial break. From ad traffic, he moved to a junior position in network operations, to a junior position in programming, to a senior position in programming, to the deputy executive in charge of programming.
The executive in charge at that time was a septuagenarian with a penchant for Soupy Sales–variety hour specials and gin and tonics. Thad did the network and the world a favor when he ended the career of his predecessor. It’s true he did it by exposing his boss’s weaknesses to the network president and board of directors, but it was long overdue.
The move gave Thad, somewhat unfairly, a reputation for being ruthless. (Thad’s assault on the character and behavior of his boss was more an act of mercy than of aggression.) But reputations become reality, and Thad’s reputation was all the justification Ethan needed; ascension by assassination, he convinced himself, was morally acceptable.
Never mind that Ethan had been out of Wharton for only three years. And never mind that Thad had handpicked, trained, and groomed Ethan for the top job if Ethan would only wait.