Chapter 4
I started making a list of things I needed to do in order to achieve my goal.
Operation: No More Meredith
1. Find out where she lives
2. Find someone to take her away
3. Decide where to send her
4. Celebrate when she’s gone
The first item on my to-do list should have been the easiest of them all. Since we were partners on the blasted project, I decided to suggest that we meet at her place to work. Thus enabling me to get her address and check task number one off the list.
“Why don’t we meet up somewhere?” I suggested over the videophone a week after I’d kindly warned her away.
“Why?” Meredith asked, looking bored and completely uninterested in our project. Or was that how her face always looked? Sometimes, it was hard to tell if her facial expressions ever changed.
“Because it’ll be easier to work on our presentation. I’ll come over to your place and we’ll be done in no time.” That wasn’t exactly true. It would be hours before our presentation was done, if we worked diligently and without interruptions. But a little lie never hurt anyone.
“You can’t come here,” she said. “Why don’t we meet at the library?”
“Fine. The library in an hour?” Damn! Why wouldn’t she let me come over?
“Yeah, an hour.” The videophone screen went dark.
I got up and paced around my apartment, trying to figure out what to do now. She obviously didn’t want me at her dorm. Why? What was she hiding? Was she filthy rich and paranoid I’d steal something of value? More likely she was the messiest, dirtiest person at school and was too ashamed to have anyone over and see how she lived.
If she didn’t want to tell me where she lived, I could live with that. It just meant I’d have to find out where she lived some other way.
And maybe dig deeper into who exactly Meredith Oblinger was.
I looked at the clock and saw I still had fifty minutes before I had to be at the library and since I knew she’d be at least half an hour late I had plenty of time to start looking into Meredith’s past.
Who knows, maybe if I find something good I could use to blackmail her into dropping out of school.
With that cheerful thought, I grabbed my two year old tablet, booted it up and sat down on my ergonomic, body hugging couch. From experience, I knew it would take a few minutes for it to be ready for my use. Since I was a student, I was given old technology nobody else wanted and was expected to use it for at least two years. If I timed things just right, I might get a “new” tablet before graduation.
I would have bought the latest and greatest piece of technology, but then the system might think I didn’t need its assistance and that would never do. The key to living well was milking the system. Every thought I had, every action I took, was geared toward getting the most I could for nothing.
When the tablet finally came online, I started my information hunt by searching for her by name, knowing that if anything damaging was readily available it would show up first.
To my chagrin, nothing came up except her Conmis page. “That might help.” I clicked on her name and up came her profile. Since Conmis was the one and only social networking website online, I should have known she’d have a profile. Everyone had a profile from the very young to grandparents who only get around on hoverchairs.
Hell, even I, the person who scoffs at social media, has a profile. Now that I think about it, I think there’s a law requiring everyone to have an up-to-date profile on Conmis. Not that I actually keep my profile up-to-date. I liked everyone believing I was forever twenty two and innocent.
Scanning Meredith’s profile, a few things stood out at me. One, she only had twenty friends. Anyone with fewer than two hundred friends was considered a loner. Even I, miss personality, had five hundred “friends.” Her lack of connections to the outside world told me nobody would miss her if she disappeared. This made things easier. Family and friends always got in the way of a good plan.
Next, according to her “About Me!” page, she didn’t have a roommate and was single. Again, a detail about this girl which was conducive to bagging her up and shipping her off.
I continued to dig into Meredith’s life, learning more about her than I ever wanted and nothing I read changed my mind about what I was going to do.
On the contrary, everything indicated my course of action was justified on all levels. According to her chat logs, which she’d stupidly left exposed to public scrutiny, she’d been arguing with a guy named Draven about some money she owed him and wouldn’t pay back. Why had such a decent looking guy given her money?
I went back in the logs and found that she’d pleaded for the money, saying she was going to lose her precious car. Draven had been reluctant for quite awhile, making excuse after excuse, each wilder than the last, desperately trying to hold her off. He lasted two weeks before finally giving in and lending her the money.
And quite a substantial amount too, I saw with surprise. He’d lent her about what I get each semester for my stipend. Much more than a couple car payments would add up to. That should have raised the red flags for him, but alas it hadn’t.
Skimming through the logs, I saw that not only hadn’t she used the money for her car, which I wasn’t even sure she had to begin with, she’d spent it on a new Sagexphone, the newest and greatest in a long line of intelligent phones.
I myself had looked into the specs for the DXCIV (594) model and had found it lacking any real intelligence. It looked exactly like the previous models, and had only minimal upgrades and even worse security. In fact, I don’t know why people keep buying the latest Sagexphone when nothing gets changed. Do they like wasting money?
Now, if you wanted a good intelligent and secure phone, I myself preferred the Protusphone. While not as flashy, or as expensive, as its Sagexphone counterpart, it is very reliable, always on the cutting edge of technology, and allows me to easily enhance its already superior abilities.
For example, I was able to remotely connect my Augeo jewelry to my phone. With one swipe of my bracelet or ring over another phone, tablet, or any other electronic device with average security, I gained access to everything within the device. Passwords, photos, messages, bank accounts, you name it; I’ve got access to it. I could also track the owner’s whereabouts, overhear phone conversations, and generally get to any and all information they transmitted using the device.
From my phone, I could then download the information, and even take control of the other person’s electronics, on any device I chose. Didn’t want to use my phone to surf a tablet? No problem, I’d just tell my phone that my computer wanted control of said tablet and I could use my computer to search at my leisure.
I didn’t use my capabilities often, only when I was really bored or someone particularly nasty annoyed me to the point I couldn’t take it anymore.
But I would today. Today I would use my two semester’s worth of stipend hack of a phone from the back alleys and my custom made technologically superior jewelry to get the information I needed to finally thrust Meredith out of my life.
Draven, I saw still reading the chat logs even as I imagined Meredith miserable on some godforsaken planet, hadn’t been happy when he’d found out what she’d used the money for and had begun demanding the money back. This demand began a series of loan-gift arguments with Meredith somehow always ending up as the victim, even when people pointed out she was the wrong one.
I read as her dimwitted nineteen other friends slowly turned on Draven, wrongly convinced he was the one trying to rip off their friend.
All and all, it was very artfully done. I’d seen better con-women, but she had some skills. If things had been different and she hadn’t been so repugnant, untrustworthy, and a complete rat, I might have even teamed up with her on some jobs I’d always wanted to pull off. Oh well. C’est la vie.
Coming out of my own thoughts, I glanced at the clock and realized that
if I didn’t hurry I’d be super late to our little get together. Knowing Meredith, she wouldn’t stick around and wait for me.
Grabbing my tablet and a bag full of project materials, I ran out the door and hopped on the high-speed trolley a block away. It would get me to the library in about three minutes. Pulling out my phone, I activated my Augeo bracelet and ring, indicating that I wanted all the control routed to both my tablet and phone.
With a few taps of my fingers, everything was up and running, ready for me to turn on the jewelry and hone in on my target.
The trolley stopped in front of the library. I got off a second before the trolley began to move, having to shove my way through the resistance I encountered all around me. A few glares at those who didn’t want to move also helped make my exodus possible.
Shoving my hair out of my face, I walked up the walkway to the eighty-six story, round skyscraper dedicated to quiet study.
Pushing through the front doors, I stopped at the check-in kiosk. Everyone who entered the Paget Library had to check-in, state their reason for entering, and declare how long they intended to stay. Once the computer inputted your information into the system, you’d be assigned a private study room or directed to the room your group was in.
If you needed to extend the time in your room, there were handy consoles which allowed you to tell the system how much longer you needed.
This system, while at times cumbersome and inconvenient, allowed every student the opportunity to have uninterrupted study time. It also allowed professors to easily check student’s excuses as to why they didn’t finish homework projects, as thousands of student have found out.
After saying my name, I said, “Meredith Oblinger, group study.”
“Class?”
“Legends of the Universe.”
“You have allocated two hours. Would you like to extend your time?”
“No.”
“You are in room 69-487.” Which meant we were on the sixty-ninth floor. Anything below floor seventy was usually quiet. The sixteen floors above were known for being loud and unruly. Think frat parties, but worse.
I turned toward the elevator when a thought crossed my mind. “How long has Meredith Oblinger been here?”
“Three minutes.”
I nodded my head and turned away.
A minute later, I was standing outside the door to our private group room. I saw Meredith muttering to herself, jerking her head from her wrist to her tablet to her phone.
She was obviously angry I was – I checked the clock above the door – twenty minutes late. That’s what she got for always being late when she met up with me.
And in reality, what did she really have to be angry about? She’d only been here for three minutes, four at the most. It’s not like she’d been waiting for twenty minutes, unlike myself all of the other times we’d met up.
Putting a smile on my face, I opened the door.
“Where have you been?” Meredith barked. Her look, accusatory. Her voice, shrill like a banshee. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
“I’m right on time.” I make a show of looking at the clock above her head and barely refrained from rolling my eyes at her dramatics.
“No you’re not. You should have been here twenty minutes ago!”
“How long have you been waiting?”
“Like fifteen minutes.”
“Try four minutes. I am right on time.” I put my bag down. Now that I’d decided to get rid of her, I found I lacked any willpower to be nice to her. I could have relented and accepted her claim of lateness, but why should I? If I was late, so was she.
“Ready to get started?” I asked, sitting across from a stunned Meredith. Why was she so surprised? Had nobody ever called her on her horrible habit of lateness? Or maybe it was that nobody had ever anticipated her being late and arrived after her.
“I guess,” she said, watching as I pulled out all the project materials.
As we began talking about the presentation, who would do what when, and what we’d say, my main focus was on how to get her away from her electronics. Normally nobody ever left their electronics alone, afraid someone would steal them or infect them, (there were a lot of bad and opportunistic people in the world) but I had to make it so she had no option.
I saw my opening near the end of our presentation “discussion.” Meredith, in a fit of anger, had begun roughly packing up her bag, jostling the table with every move she made. Her bottle of Mare was uncapped and a hair’s breadth from tipping over as the table moved. I saw it wouldn’t take much for the bottle to fall over and douse Meredith with its contents.
Inside, I smiled. This would kill two birds with one stone. Timing it just right, I hit the table leg just enough to encourage the bottle to spill. Meredith jumped to her feet, screeching as a cascade of Mare fell off the table, down her pant leg, into her shoe, and onto the floor.
“Oh, no,” I said, trying very, very hard not to laugh. She looked so funny hopping around, trying to get out of the way of the seemingly never-ending flow of Mare.
“Look what you’ve done! You’ve ruined my pants! And shoes!”
“I didn’t do anything,” I countered very innocently. “This is all a product of your temper tantrum. And having an open bottle. Didn’t you learn young not to leave liquids open?”
Meredith glared at me even as she began wiping her pants off with her hands. In that moment, she looked so pitiful and had I any sympathy, I’d have helped her clean up the mess. Instead, I said, “Go to the bathroom and clean yourself off. All you’re doing is making it worse.”
“But my…” She waved her hand at her phone, tablet, and bag.
“I’ll watch them.” Leave! Just leave!
“Fine,” she said, striding out of the room.
“And bring back something to clean up this mess,” I shouted after her.
I waited a full minute after the door shut behind her before I moved. I didn’t want to get caught going through her bag because I’d been impatient. When she didn’t reappear, I turned on my bracelet and ring, and moseyed on over to her side of the table. Her tablet was half in her bag while her phone on the edge of the table, tossed aside like it was nothing.
I passed my hand casually over her phone and tablet, noting the dents, dings, and scratches covering their surfaces. She didn’t take care of her precious electronics any better than a drug whore took care of her body.
If I hadn’t needed to know everything about her, I’d have been tempted to liberate these poor souls and give them to someone more worthy, like me.
Walking back to my side of the table, I pulled out my phone to make sure I was connected to her systems. When I saw the green lights, I was tempted to start my search, but I forced myself to put the phone away and gather my own belongings.
I was sitting there, watching the dripping of the Mare when Meredith came back into the room. She looked flushed and wet. Her efforts to dry off had been very ineffective. Her shoes squeaked like a duck and her white pants were blue spotted. A child could have done a better job cleaning themself up.
She threw a wad of paper towels on the floor and went back to her bag. “You could have helped,” she pouted.
“Not my mess.” Meredith gave me a dirty look, shouldered her bag, and stalked out of the room. She never even paused to pick up the blue soaked paper towels.