Logging Off Read online

  “Logging Off grabbed me from the first page and hasn’t let go yet. It is a delicious read.”

  ~Anne Lockhart, Lt. Sheba in Battlestar Galactica, Jennifer/Leila Marteson in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and Eva Stoddard in Quantum Leap.

  “An engrossing read...written with great authority.”

  ~Luisa Leschin, Co-Executive Producer of George Lopez.

  “Her story, character development, and suspense all add up to one heck of a ride. This is right up there with Blade Runner and Logan’s Run. A must read.”

  ~Paul Tuerpé, Director of The View from the Swing.

  “Caitlin McKenna has written a fast-paced, action-packed, science-fiction thriller. This book is a real page turner. I loved it!

  ~Pepper Sweeney, Guest Star on Grey’s Anatomy, NCIS, Numb3rs, Cold Case, C.S.I., The Pretender, Sleep Walkers.

  Copyright © 2006, 2012 by Caitlin McKenna

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission of the author. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Visit the author's website:

  http://www.caitlinmckenna.com

  Upcoming Books by Caitlin McKenna:

  My Big Fake Irish Life

  Manifesting Mr. Right

  For My Sister

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to Jackie Jones, Carla Saulle and Cliff Carle for their editorial expertise. A special thank you to my amazing sister, Lynn Ferrin, who has not only read every word I’ve written, but has helped me every step of the way. I am grateful to my loving husband, Jay, for his understanding when I asked him to pick up dinner yet again. Hugs and kisses to my mom, Ann Robison, and my dad, Jerry Symcox, for all their love and support. Thank you to my wonderful extended family: Phyllis and Spencer Wilkinson, Aunt Cutes, Aunt Joan, Carole, Todd and Amy, and thank you to all my avid-reading friends who’ve encouraged me along the way—especially Paul Tuerpé, Luisa Leschin, Max Civon, Lynnanne Zager, Wendy Cutler, Lucy Lin, Steve Alterman, Steve Apostolina, and Anna MacKenzie.

  Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Copyright & Permissions

  Books by Caitlin McKenna

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About the Author

  “Technology...the knack of so arranging the world that we need not experience it.”

  ~Max Frisch

  Prologue

  November 15, 1971

  Emmanuel Lexer breathed a sigh of relief as the wheels of his 747 touched down on the runway at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Thank God we didn’t crash, he thought. He’d cut short his spiritual retreat in the Amazon due to an overwhelming sense of dread. Even though Emmanuel was a world-renowned psychic, his abilities never seemed to help when looking into his own future. Now thoroughly exhausted from worry, he couldn’t wait to get back to his little studio apartment and fall into bed.

  The passengers poured off the plane, and as Emmanuel made his way toward baggage claim, a snippet of the evening news caught his ear, triggering that all-too-familiar sense of unease that hit him like a two-by-four in the back of his neck.

  Moving closer to the television, he heard, “...unveiled the Intel 4004 today, the world’s first single chip microprocessor.”

  “Exciting, isn’t it?”

  Emmanuel gave a sideways glance at a short man riveted to the TV screen. “What is?” he asked.

  “The chip,” the man said, pointing to the TV. “That little thing has made it all possible.”

  Emmanuel’s brow creased. “Made what possible?”

  “For machines to possess intelligence.” The man’s eyes danced with wild anticipation. “Think of all the possibilities.”

  The psychic stared at the chip, and in one stinging instant, his head filled with thousands of images—images of the future too unspeakable to comprehend. He staggered back, pinching his nose as blood came gushing out.

  “Hey, are you okay?” the short man asked.

  “Destroy the chip,” Emmanuel cried out as he began hyperventilating. He reached for the man but fell to the ground, shaking with a violent seizure.

  “Help! Someone, help!” the man yelled.

  A Pan Am representative rushed over. “Call an ambulance!” she shouted to her co-worker as she bent down next to the psychic. “Sir, can you hear me?”

  Emmanuel’s eyes fluttered open. Disoriented and confused, he was only slightly aware of the crowd of people gathering around him. Emmanuel couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel his body. Fighting to stay conscious, he grabbed hold of the woman hovering above him, and in a strained voice he whispered, “April 18, 2095.” Emmanuel’s eyes shot wide as he gasped for air. Two seconds later, he was dead.

  The official cause of death, determined by a New York medical examiner, was a massive coronary brought on by cardiogenic shock. Emmanuel Lexer was twenty-three.

  1

  April 6, 2095

  There was a deadness to the silence. An unresounding stillness permeated Britannia Stone’s domicile. Not just hers in particular, but all domiciles across the world were hermetically sealed to keep out dust, pollen, and insects, and soundproofed to eliminate any unforeseen interference. With the temperature controlled at an even seventy-two, it was certain every world citizen would receive a good night’s sleep.

  Britannia slept as she always did—on her back, with her hands by her sides. And the thin sheet covering her naked body rhythmically fell with each breath she took. Steady, even, calm.

  At the exact second, five days a week, a melodious, gentle chime rang three times as iridescent, true white light illuminated the sterile, precise, minimalistic bedroom.

  Britannia’s ice-blue eyes popped open as the domicile computer, DC 3000, spoke to her in a warm, soothing, female voice. “Good morning, Britannia Stone. Today is Wednesday, April 6, 2095. The time is 6:55 a.m.”

  Fully awake, Britannia swung her legs over the bed, hopped to her feet, and hit the motion control button on her nightstand. With an electric hum and a quiet whoosh, the bed deflated and disappeared into the wall.

  “Breakfast preference, please.”

  “The usual,” Britannia answered the omniscient voice above her. She paused at the closet keypad and punched in six numbers. As she continued into the bathroom, the closet doors automatically opened behind her.

  Inside the closet, Britannia’s clothes were divided into four color-coded sections. The automatic rack spun past the black section, the dark gray, the brown and forest green, and eventually landed on the navy blue section. A hydraulic servo whine initiated a steel tong arm that unfolded, clamped onto the selected blue blazer, and pulled it off the rack.

  In the bathroom, Britannia stood up from the toilet seat and walked out of the frosted glass-enclosed water closet. The toilet flushed with one efficient surge as a chrome panel at the back snapped open. A cloud of disinfectant dispersed, followed by a beam of ultraviolet light. It flashed twice, drying the seat instantly.

  Britannia studied herself in the mirror.
A smile of approval formed at the corners of her mouth. She was a fine specimen of modern technology. Biologically, Britannia was almost thirty-eight. Physically, she appeared barely twenty. Then again, everyone in her world looked young because they were young. Proper nutrition and exercise, which doctors continually touted as the solution to eternal youth, were only part of the reason everyone appeared so young. This attainable fountain of youth could actually be credited to society itself. Medical advances had slowed the aging process to a crawl. Those between the ages of twenty and fifty looked twenty. Fifty- to eighty-year-olds looked thirty. And no one, not even the one hundred thirty-five-year-olds, ever looked over the age of fifty. People felt young, looked young, and thought young because their lives were run entirely by state-of-the-art computers and advanced technology.

  Life was easy.

  Britannia moved toward the biometric body scan located just outside her shower. “Activate scanning system.”

  With an electric buzz, side panels slid open revealing a thin red laser beam. Britannia routinely waved the inside of her right wrist over the light, enabling the laser to scan her barcode. A hologram of light instantly appeared in front of her, pulsing, awaiting incoming information.

  “Scanning system activated,” her domicile computer announced.

  Britannia knew she lived in a good age. Computer science had advanced tremendously over the last fifty years. Moving far beyond storing information, computers actually created it. They were the only tools in the workplace and like the light bulb, they’d become a necessity in every citizen’s life. From organizing a daily schedule to monitoring a person’s health and environment, computers erased guesswork, human error and of course, stress. All citizens were where they should be, as they should be, twenty-four seven.

  “Initiate sequencing.” Britannia threw her long chestnut hair over her shoulders as she wrapped her graceful fingers around the scan’s sensors. A dozen laser beams activated from the side panels and skimmed over her sleek, perfect body.

  The hologram filled with scrolling numbers—a detailed analysis of her blood, organs, circulatory, skeletal, and nervous systems—ultimately reaching the final results in a flashing message: ANALYSIS COMPLETE.

  “All vitals functioning within optimal range,” DC assured.

  Britannia looked up at the fisheye lens above her and smiled. “Thank you, DC.”

  She stepped inside the shower. Water jets turned on while spinning terrycloth brushes moved into position and frosted glass slid across the doorjamb. With everything as it should be, Britannia raised her arms, closed her eyes, and her uncluttered mind thought of... nothing.

  ***

  The bedroom door inched open with a low, groaning creak. Bright feline eyes peered through the crack onto a rumpled work shirt and a ball of tightly wound, bright red yarn. The housecat, Paws, inched through the door. A moment of indecision, then a streak of black and white pounced on red. The cat entangled herself in her only toy, stopping abruptly as she heard the rustling of covers in the bed above her. A tired, male moan, and then the movement ceased.

  Paws maneuvered her way through piles of old magazines and well-worn books before effortlessly jumping onto the windowsill to get a better view of the mound in the bed. The mound made strange noises to the cat’s ear—erratically changing between heavy breathing and a deep snore. Paws’ short attention drifted onto the blind’s cord. She began tugging on it, swatting the string back and forth until the blinds finally gave her the result she’d intended.

  The once dimly lit room was now much brighter as the morning sun broke through the partially opened shade. Beams of light cascaded over the body buried under two pillows and a bedraggled coverlet.

  Without warning, the old-fashioned alarm clock clanged loudly. The mound moved with a disgruntled groan. A pillow tumbled to the floor as a hand groped for the clock, found it, and switched it off. The hand then disappeared back under the covers.

  Paws jumped from the windowsill onto the bed with a disapproving meow.

  “Go away,” a husky voice growled.

  Ignoring her owner’s bad mood, Paws motored onto his chest and defiantly lay down.

  With an irritated grunt, John Ettinger threw back the covers from his ruggedly pleasing face. His black hair with emerging streaks of silver stood high on end. An eighth-inch of black stubble lined the edges of his square jaw and his determined cleft chin. Warm, chocolate eyes stared at the obstinate feline cleaning her paws.

  “Okay, Paws, I’m up,” John said, stretching his arms over his head. He dragged his calloused fingers through his scraggly beard and stared at the clock. Five after seven. He hoisted himself out of bed, instantly felt a sharp pain in his ankle, and winced. Being an Inactive meant he felt every day of his thirty-nine years.

  On mornings like this, when his throat scratched like sandpaper and his dry joints screamed from stiffness, he was tempted to give up his archaic ideals, become a citizen, and join society like the rest of the world. But he hadn’t been raised that way. His parents had chosen to stay outside the global system, as had their parents before them. And when he was old enough to decide for himself, John too, walked the same path. He remained outside society—away from those who had tinkered with the genetic code and had managed to eradicate that unexplainable, instinctive feeling of knowing the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, truth and lies.

  John knew the difference, but he was one of only a few. And the incredible responsibility of trying to teach others how to ascertain the difference had driven him further into isolation. The knowledge he had was a double-edged sword. Though he was free, he had to cope with a difficult existence and daily struggle for survival. Ignorance, he’d finally come to realize, truly was bliss.

  In shorts and a worn-out T-shirt, John staggered to the kitchen with a yawn. Stumbling to the counter cluttered with tools, old appliances, and half-finished projects, he noticed that the automatic coffeepot had not turned on. He peered closely at the internal clock, tapping his finger on the glass. The timer had indeed stopped working.

  “That’s just great.” John grudgingly started the coffeepot himself, realizing he’d just added one more manual task to his already labor-intensive life.

  With insistent meows and the touch of a circling soft tail, Paws prodded John to open the refrigerator door.

  “It’s coming,” John said as he pulled out chicken leftovers from the fridge and divvied them between two bowls. “Scraps?” he called out. “Come on, boy.”

  Scraps, a slow-moving, arthritic pit bull, appeared with his tail wagging.

  John set the bowls on the floor, side by side, then reached into the refrigerator again for some farm-fresh eggs. He turned on the stove’s front burner, but the gas didn’t ignite.

  “Terrific,” John grumbled, switching it off before he stuck his head in the oven and noticed that the pilot light was out. He reached for a box of matches.

  If he were a citizen and lived in a fully automatic, self-running, smart domicile, he wouldn’t be having this nightmare of a morning. Of course, he’d be living a different kind of nightmare. Though he’d never been in one of those computer-run houses, he’d heard they felt like tombs—all sealed up with stagnant air. And someone was always watching. The thought made him shudder.

  After several attempts at trying to light the pilot, John discovered the problem. “Perfect,” he said sarcastically as he slammed the oven door and sat back on his heels. Scraps came over and gave John a lick. “It’s the gas valve,” he explained to his dog. Scraps cocked his head. “Well, at least one of us got breakfast.” He rubbed his dog’s ears, got off the floor, and resigned himself to a single cup of strong, black coffee.

  ***

  Sylvia Stone, biologically seventy but physically forty, eyed the digital clock on the cafeteria wall before turning her attention to eight blindfolded children sitting up straight at a long dining room table. A breakfast hologram hovered in the center, displaying a glass of orange juice
, a piece of cantaloupe, three fiber-crisp crackers, and two hard-boiled eggs.

  “Morning, children.” Sylvia’s voice was warm and gentle, despite the severity of her appearance. She was rail-thin, with a pointy chin, narrow lips, and a turned-up nose. Her hair, the color of coal, was typically worn back in a tight ponytail, or an even tighter bun. Her skin was so white it appeared translucent, something Sylvia had never grown accustomed to. She masked her physical flaws and insecurity about her looks by wearing long sleeves and ankle-length skirts. Still, her unusual appearance seemed to mirror what she felt inside. She was not like everyone else. Not perfect. Not indistinguishable.

  This feeling of inadequacy was what brought Sylvia to work at the Nostradamus School for the Gifted. The school taught and boarded others like herself—children who did not quite fit in. Nostradamus assumed Sylvia’s shortfall was the only reason students responded to her more favorably than the other educational designers. But Sylvia knew this wasn’t the reason at all. They adored her because she gave them what most of their parents did not. Unconditional love.

  “Morning, Mrs. Stone,” the children chimed in unison.

  “Can you tell me what you’re having today?” Sylvia walked behind the students as they typed their perceptions into an embedded keyboard. She glanced over their shoulders, checking their progress. Down the line, these bright youngsters were entering: JUICE, FRUIT, CRACKERS, EGG...

  At the far end of the table, ten-year-old Kendall Knowlton typed in a more detailed perception: VITAMIN C, B-6, CALCIUM...

  Sylvia touched the girl on her shoulders. “Well done, Kendall.”

  Kendall took off the blindfold and smiled up at her educational designer.

  “Do you know how exceptional you are?” Sylvia asked her.

  Kendall’s smile grew weak. “My mommy doesn’t think so.”

  Sylvia bent down, eye level with the little girl. “That’s not true.”