Freedom Incorporated

Again it was Monday. And deceptively it felt the same as any other Monday – the hunt was on.

But why? Dan Sutherland wondered restlessly.

Why am I doing this? Again? And he gave the answer he always gave: Because it makes sense. Hunting provided a refuge, somewhere safe for him to hide. It was just a pity he couldn’t also find asylum from the turmoil in his mind.

He paused to scan the surface of the harbor; water churned up by the departing ferries sent eddies dancing from the quay. The pregnant clouds lost their battle with gravity and a curtain of droplets pattered on the paving. Perfect. It matched his mood and elicited a grim twist to one corner of his mouth. The men and women around him scuttled for cover and before long only a dissident child remained with Dan under the growing pelt. She stood wide-eyed, holding out a small hand in a futile effort to clutch the droplets that were disintegrating upon impact. A moment later the child’s mother gripped her arm and tugged her under the overcrowded eaves – to safety.

So Dan stood alone, mesmerized by the spiraling pattern of chaos etched on the water where the acidic rain mixed with the salt of the harbor. With effort he cast his gaze over the jostling crowd, nurturing a seed of envy and loathing it at the same time. Broken men could never rejoin the synthetic world of the living. Or so he told himself.

He watched as they blundered into each other, rushing to return to their cube farms – claustrophobic squares of office space crammed in the middle of a ninety-something-story building. Most were frustrated by the crush that each was, in turn, helping to create. No doubt they’d share comments of ire with colleagues while sipping a latté and shuddering at the nightmarish weather brewing outside their glazed windows. Dan’s smile faded. He couldn’t bring himself to care about his clothes and the rain wasn’t heavy enough to threaten his lungs. He wore a tattered coat, well past its use-by date.