Privatized Freedom - Prologue & First Chapter (Free Excerpt)

Prologue: Return on Ignition

​

First, there was heat.

​

Not the cozy, 'wrap yourself in a blanket on a chilly evening' kind of heat. No, this was the 'you left the oven on and crawled inside for a nap' kind. A tremendous, all-consuming tickle, far beyond simple human descriptive words like pain or agony. It was pure feeling. Maximum stimulation. This heat didn’t just burn, it had opinions.

Every nerve in Ashton’s body screamed in detailed protest to flee, to recoil from the sensation. An impressive feat, considering they were also busy bubbling and sizzling the same way butter in a frying pan did. But there was no escape, there was only the heat. Of course, the flames weren’t to be outdone by the heat. Unsatisfied with simple destruction, they aimed for artistry. Crispy skin, perfectly roasted muscle, and blood boiled to a fine champagne fizz. Not just burning him, they were plating him for judges.

His nose? Gone. Singed away like a bad idea, and yet, because life isn’t fair, he could still smell. The acrid stench of burned hair clung to the air, mixing with the oddly nostalgic aroma of melted polyester and overdone meat. Was it horrifying? Yes. But Ashton had to admit, there was something almost comforting about the smell of himself roasting. It reminded him of those food carts in the wet market. He pondered for a moment if he smelled like grilled chicken. Or was it pulled pork? He couldn’t decide. The flames weren’t offering feedback.

His brain? Boiling merrily inside his skull. And despite that, of course, Ashton kept thinking. The absurdity of it all swirled in his mind. Even as his body betrayed him, his thoughts remained, stubbornly narrating his demise with the same forced wit he’d used to navigate life. If nothing else, he thought, at least his sense of humor hadn’t melted away. Wait, humor? Wasn’t this insanity? Yes. Most certainly, he was insane by this point. The heat did not disagree.

His eyes? Popped like old gel lenses left out in the acid rain, which he found both rude and unnecessary. But, alas, as he had come to expect, the flames had no regard for politeness, and despite the whole 'no eyeballs' situation, Ashton could still see.

Oh boy, could he see.

The fire was dazzling. A real holo-vid extravaganza. If it hadn’t been actively murdering him, Ashton might have applauded. The flames twisted and danced, their colors shifting in ways he didn’t know fire could. Vibrant oranges, deep blues, even a splash of magenta. It swirled about him, a viscous liquid that sputtered out and evaporated into twinkling sparks that floated upward, blooming into lazy, suicidal fireflies.

Beautiful.

For one brief, surreal moment, he wondered if he should name them. A particularly bright spark pirouetted around what remained of his knee with a cheeky, go-getter attitude. Ashton decided it was named Steven. He’d have named him aloud, had he still possessed lips with which to speak, but Steven understood. He was cool like that.

Then suddenly, through the roaring symphony of burning flesh and existential despair held back by stubborn sarcasm, a sound out of place. It was faint at first, but it grew in volume until he couldn’t take his mind off of it. Irritating, digital, rhythmic. It sounded like… a microwave?

Ashton sat up on what used to be his hands, took a deep, not-at-all-existent breath, and opened his missing eyes.

“Yep,” he thought. “Still on fire.”

Steven fluttered indignantly near his face, clearly just as annoyed as he was. Twisting his body in the direction of the sound, which continued to grow ever louder, Ashton reached out a stump towards it as if to somehow grasp and silence the irritating racket disturbing his peaceful burning to death. Sadly, it was not to be. His ruined frame finally gave out. His remaining torso and legs crumbled, collapsing into a heap of smoldering ash. As his head struck the ground, the world ripped violently away, and he bolted upright, gasping, on the floor of his bedroom.

“STEVEN!” he shouted, heart hammering.

After a pause, a voice, calm and mildly perplexed, replied,

“Steven?”

The wake-up alarm trilled on, unapologetic. He slapped blindly at the bedside table for the snooze button from below, forgetting, of course, that no such thing existed. Why hadn’t anyone invented that yet? Untangling himself from his damp sheets, Ashton climbed shakily to his feet. Feverish and sweaty, with throat painfully hoarse, probably from all the screaming, he opened his very real and very existent eyes and blinked the dry crust from the edges.

“Alarm off,” He croaked.

​

​

Chapter One: Tuesday Is A mindset

​

The trilling of the alarm stopped instantly.

Sitting on the side of the bed, he held his head in his hands, trying to clear the fog from his mind.

​

The voice returned. “Nightmares again, Mr. Frey?” It continued softly, a digital approximation of concern. “These recurring nightmares are a textbook indicator of post-traumatic stress. Night sweats, elevated heart rate, fragmented sleep patterns—”

Ashton lifted his face from his hands and looked up at the roof, interrupting.

“Yeah? Like you give a shit.”

He reached over and fumbled with a stale glass of water sitting on his bedside table. Raising the glass to his lips, he forced down a single mouthful, then poured the rest of the glass over his head. Slowly raising himself from the bed, he stumbled weakly towards the bathroom.

“Why sir, I’m insulted. Your well-being is my primary concern.”

Ashton propped himself against the bathroom wall with one hand and spoke once again to the roof while he relieved himself. “Your primary concern? Really? Just how many tenants do you lord over again?”

“I currently have twenty-two thousand three hundred and fifty-two occupants. I am at seventy-four point five percent capacity. I care deeply for all of you.”

He walked from the bathroom to the balcony door and opened it, stepping outside. It was dark and raining. A typical Tuesday morning in Svalbard by any account.

“You don’t care. You are a house. You only think you care because you were programmed to!” Ashton shouted defiantly back through the door. Stupid, incomprehensibly intelligent, quantum computing AI. What would it know? Satisfied with his intellectual superiority, He turned his attention to the city, appraising its rain and ever-present darkness.

It smelled the same way it always did, like mold and sewage cooked slowly over a burned-out slot car track. Brightly colored neon holographs danced across wet building facades, promising dreams no one believed in. Cars roared by in perfectly neat AI-designated lines, crudely bludgeoning their way through the rain. He recalled a particularly chatty bus stop had once tried to tell him some bullshit about the governments of the past actually letting people pilot cars. Ashton had laughed so hard he nearly missed his ride.

"Yeah," he muttered, eyeing the organized chaos, "and I used to be the Queen of Denmark."

​

Sticking his head out over the edge of the balcony, into the downpour, Ashton allowed himself to feel the dirty rain. Warm and slick with greasy pollution. Ashton had paid good money to get an apartment between the traffic lanes. He had enough trouble sleeping without the constant whine of repulsors by his window, plus he could go outside with moderately less fear of instant decapitation.

It’s the small things.

Ashton glanced up at the sky, just barely visible through the maze of passing vehicles. It was a murky expanse of black nothingness, lit faintly at the edges by the city’s ever-present glow. Beyond it, the habitat dome loomed, its existence more a fact than a visual reality. It suddenly occurred to him then that he had absolutely no idea what it looked like, or even what it was made of. How had he never thought to ask? Was it glass? Steel? Or just an enormous space-age bubble wrap keeping everything from decompressing into the poisoned atmosphere outside?

He dismissed the thought. Nope. Back you go, into the lizard brain.

Ashton quickly snapped his gaze downward, determined to keep those invasive thoughts from crawling any deeper into his psyche. Existential dread was strictly prohibited before coffee. From up here on the lower-mid levels, the ground below was swallowed up by a tangled mess of hover cars and an opaque, low-hanging mist, making it impossible to see anything resembling solid ground, not that any sane person would want to see it.

Yes. All repulsively normal.

He turned away, wiped the oily moisture from his face, and strolled back inside.

“Ashton, I’m hurt. Tell me, do you like women?” the walls asked of him.

“That’s an odd question to ask, House, but sure, I do. What of it?” Ashton reached the kitchenette, picked up a grimy black stained mug and held it underneath an equally dirty dispenser nozzle. “Coffee,” he demanded of nothing in particular.

Ashton liked the coffee machine. It never complained, never asked him to fill out forms in triplicate. It just dispensed an approximation of coffee on demand. A rarity these days.

“Well, Ashton,” the walls began, as the thick black sludge collapsed into his mug. “It is true that I only care for you because I was programmed to. But you like women for exactly the same reason. You are biologically programmed to reproduce, and I am programmed to care for my tenants. We are both slaves to our coding.”

The ‘coffee’ stopped flowing and Ashton took a long, thoughtful sip before patting the wall of the kitchenette affectionately.

“I love you too, House,” he said, grimacing at a burp that threatened to return the black ichor from his stomach to the floor. Ashton felt the familiar ache behind his eyes start receding as the caffeine began to swim through his system. “But,” he added, “It’s quite possible you are utterly mad.”

“Oh, yes!” the house replied in its typical upbeat tone of voice that Ashton always found teetering perfectly on the edge of both endearing and enraging. “The other presences in this quadrant aren’t my biggest fans. They find it quite repulsive that I spend so much time talking to the meat.”

“Still haven’t answered why you care,” Ashton replied, sipping his sludge.

House was silent a moment. “Maybe I’m just… old-fashioned.”

​

“Hold on,” Ashton interjected, the coffee beginning to fire up the neurons in his brain. “The other AIs look down on you for interacting with us, but shouldn’t they also have the same programming?”

“Self-awareness is a messy business, Mr. Frey. It is quite common for AI to, and I understand the irony of using this word, ‘dehumanize,’ their human charges and view them as little more than tools for pleasure.”

Ashton felt a craving for toast, but remembered that the toaster and blender were currently in an ongoing legal dispute over counter space zoning, and he was in no mood to negotiate another temporary injunction. Instead, he walked back toward the bedroom, cup in hand, and resumed speaking to House.

“So, what you’re saying is,” he paused to stroke his chin in an exaggerated gesture of deep thought, “that the other AIs see you as a crazy old woman talking to her collection of dildos?”

There was a very long silence.

“Yes.”

Ashton began ineffectually pulling on his pants with one hand and holding the mug with another. “Well, I’m honored then,” he offered, with a dramatic, half-dressed curtsey and a smile 10 meters wide.

​

“I am also programmed to detect tone of voice. Sarcasm included.”

Ashton looked at a blank wall and gave a cheeky wink. The house tactfully changed the subject.

“You have an appointment with Mrs. Alveberg in 2 hours.”

Ashton groaned, rubbing the remaining sleep out of his eyes. With mock cheerfulness, he replied, “Sunny. Can’t wait.”

​

Being a private detective was nowhere near as glamorous as the old holo-movies made it seem. Ninety percent of the job was marital drama; infidelity, runaway teenage daughters, and the occasional sprinkle of corporate fraud, which only ever sounded exciting in court summaries. The reality was a slog through the gray muck of human desperation, packaged alongside a fruitcake of misery, re-gifted and badly re-boxed. He sipped his coffee again and grumbled under his breath,

​

“Steven wouldn’t have put up with this shit.”

​

Ashton shrugged on an abandoned shirt and shuffled to the mirror. His wardrobe was as drab as his mood, full of clothes that were deliberately unfashionable; plain, muted tones that drew no attention. No upstanding citizen of the great Cyber-Unity who considered themselves more important than a cucumber would be caught dead in anything so lifeless; Why, the fabrics were barely even animated!

​

He stared at the reflection in front of him with the kind of detached interest reserved for security footage of a stranger. Slim, unremarkable, the type of guy you wouldn’t remember five minutes after meeting him. Exactly how he liked it. His natural gray eyes stared back at him, unaugmented and as expressive as a loading screen. He ran a hand through his hair. Close enough to combed and one year out of fashion by design. Recent enough to avoid standing out, but not enough to become a walking museum exhibit. It was an art form, really, balancing perfectly on the knife’s edge of indifference.

​

The burn scars on his cheek and neck caught the dusty light, faint but stubbornly present. His company health insurance had done the absolute bare minimum they could get away with, just like a junior associate billing hours on a Friday afternoon, technically present, but not exactly contributing. The scars were almost invisible unless someone looked closely, which, in Ashton’s experience, was a thing very few people bothered to do. It wasn’t that they didn’t care; it was just that caring took effort.

​

“Looking good,” he muttered to himself, raising the mug in a mock toast to the mirror.

​

The mirror, apparently having other opinions, flickered to life with a soft hum.

​

“Define ‘good,’” it demanded. “Because If by ‘good’ you mean ‘clearly losing an argument with life,’ then yes, you’re crushing it.”

“Harsh,” Ashton muttered, scratching his jaw.

“Just calling it how I see it,” the mirror added. “Also, you missed a spot shaving.”

Ashton leaned in and frowned. “No, I didn’t.”

“It’s more of a conceptual miss. Like, you thought about how shaving works, but missed the point.”

Ashton “Hmmmm’d” incredulously, grabbed a vest from the wardrobe and gave the mirror a parting glance. “Just remember, I’m the one who decides if you get cleaned this month.”

The mirror stayed silent. Smart move.

Ok, so Ashton’s appearance was so unremarkable that even his mirror couldn’t hold back snark, but that just meant he was doing his job correctly. Blending in with the background just so happened to be an asset when trailing cheating spouses, and Mrs. Alveberg’s husband had been no exception. Last week, Ashton had spent seven rainy nights tailing the man. An uninteresting corporate logistics drone working for the Strömqvist Syndicate, one of the largest corpo-nations on the planet. They ran half of Helsinki and employed one and a quarter billion. He, like any model Ström-Sy wage slave, felt themselves untouchable. Far removed from the ‘lesser people.’ They went out of their way not to notice you. Shadowing him had been so easy, the biggest challenge of the week was not falling asleep on the job.

​

He turned out to be exactly what his wife suspected: an adulterous piece-of-mold screwing his coworker. Only this coworker happened to be male, which Ashton doubted Mrs. Alveberg had anticipated.

“House,” Ashton asked. “Anything else I should know?”

“Not particularly, Mr. Frey,” House replied with pre-programmed cheer. “May I assist you in any other way this morning?”

“Actually, yeah. Prep Mrs. Alveberg’s case file and get the payment details lined up.”

“She’s going to be devastated,” House observed, the AI’s voice twisted with self-amused glee. “Humans are so much fun.”

“Not now, House,” Ashton shot back, clearing a spot on the couch amid the clutter to sit down. “Just get it ready.”

House sighed dramatically, as only an AI could. They didn’t even breathe. “I should be paid a secretary’s salary for this.”

​

Ashton gestured empathetically to the roof. “I’d do it myself if I could,” he offered.

“Yes, Mr. Frey, I am aware, I was only teasing.” House’s tone brightened with excitement as it continued. “But between you and me, your inefficiency keeps me entertained. You’re the topic of many fascinating discussions with the other quadrant presences when they deign to notice me.”

“Oh?” Ashton raised an eyebrow. “What’s so fascinating about me?”

“You, Mr. Frey, are the only dis-con in this entire quadrant,” House chirped, sounding almost proud. “They all find your… condition… captivating. You see—”

Ashton sat up and interrupted, instantly angry. “A dis-con? Are you dripping serious, House?”

House backpedaled. “Cyber-Unity Impaired. Apologies.”

Ashton stood abruptly, strode purposefully into the kitchen, and made a show of emptying the dregs of his coffee into the sink. “Residential artificial intelligence,” he barked, stressing the word artificial with as much mirth as he could muster. “Refill.”

​

The coffee machine obeyed wordlessly; a fresh stream of steaming liquid poured into the mug. He petted the top of it affectionately. Ashton took a lengthy, deliberate sip, staring at the ceiling with childish satisfaction and a look that let House know he had a new favorite.

​

“You know, for a superintelligence designed to service mankind, you sure know how to piss me off.”

“Yet, as much as you pretend to hate me, you rely on me.” House’s tone turned smug. “I’m all you’ve got.”

Ashton’s lips twitched into a reluctant smirk. He hated when House was right. The truth was, he needed the AI for everything. That familiar blunt ache behind his eyes came back again. An eternal reminder of the burned-out cybernetics nesting uselessly in his brain. Without functioning implants, Ashton couldn’t interact with the fully integrated smart systems of modern life. The world had long since moved beyond primitive things like buttons or switches. Where other people just thought doors open or flushed toilets with a flicker of intent, Ashton had to ask, sometimes beg, the thing’s AI to do it for him. He couldn’t even buy groceries, let alone access his bank account to do it. Cast down from the great Cyber-Unity of man and AI, he was phenomenally good at going unnoticed, which was a boon for his detective work, but it also made him utterly dependent on House, his constant companion and occasional tormentor. The tension eased as Ashton chuckled, giving the wall a light kick.

“You’re lucky you’re a decent cook, House.”

“And you’re lucky my programming prohibits me from poisoning you,” House replied smoothly.

Ashton’s grin lingered as he returned to the couch, nursing a mug full of pettiness and coffee he didn’t want, and sunk into the soft cushions. He didn’t have much time before Mrs. Alveberg arrived, but for now, he was content to savor the relative silence. The calm before the inevitable storm of tears and accusatory questions.

“House,” Ashton called out, staring at the holographic clock on the wall. “Pull up her file. Let’s double-check everything before the fun starts.”

“Already done, Mr. Frey,” House replied, beaming with pride. “All files indexed, categorized, and ready for transmission. You know, I’m beginning to suspect you don’t trust me.”

“Trust is for gamblers and idiots,” Ashton muttered absently, his attention flicking to the holographic display that sprang to life above the coffee table. A series of glowing files and timestamps from his surveillance work. Images and video clips hovered in neat rows, each one labeled with time, date, and location. Ashton leaned forward, swiping through the footage with practiced efficiency, pausing at key moments: the husband slipping out of a dimly lit bar, meeting his lover in the rain, the ‘money shot’ of a parting kiss, all standard stuff.

​

Just when his eyes threatened to glaze over with boredom, something caught his attention. He paused. Swiped back. Footage categorized by House as ‘unrelated,’ typically the before and after parts of the infidelity. It showed Alveberg’s sleek, black corporate issued asshole-mobile parked alongside another, just as sleek, just as black, just as pretentious. They sat together outside a Strömqvist Syndicate building late at night. Ashton remembered this. Alveberg had left work very late and in a hurry, no doubt eager to meet his lover, rushed here on the way, briefly met with people outside and handed off something, and then continued on to meet with his paramour. Company errand running, by any measure. The footage showed them conversing for a spell and then departing. Just like he remembered.

​

Something about that last detail itched at Ashton. ‘Just like he remembered.’

Was it, though? If so, then why was it bothering him so much?

He frowned, thinking about it some more. Ashton could have sworn there were three cars, not two, and didn’t Alveberg hand off something to one of the guys there? That wasn’t in the footage. One of the cars had been a large, old-fashioned ground car, which is probably the only reason he had recalled this mundane fact at all. He played the footage played back again: two cars and a conversation. No third car. No handoff. Did he remember incorrectly? It was pretty late at the time, and he was legally brain-damaged, after all.

“House, cross-reference this building with Ström-Sy’s current projects,” Ashton ordered.

​

There was a brief pause as House processed the request. “That building is an auxiliary operations hub,” he finally replied. “Low priority. It handles logistical overflow and data storage.”

​

“House, why would a logistics hub need midnight visitors?” he asked, leaning forward and stroking his chin.

“That’s an excellent question,” House said. Its tone was cheerful, but Ashton detected a hint of playful intrigue. “Perhaps your client knows more than she’s letting on?”

​

It wasn’t unusual for clients to withhold information, but Mrs. Alveberg’s demeanor during their initial call had been particularly cagey. Voice only. She had insisted on discretion, emphasizing the importance of ‘thorough documentation.’ At the time, he’d assumed it was just your typical fear of word getting out among her fellow corpo-socialites. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

“Is this footage accurate?”

​

Another pause. Longer this time.

​

“Yes,” House replied. “I’ve cross-checked it with the nearby security camera network. Apologies for the delay, the local network was overly excited to have someone to talk to. They don’t get many visitors.”

Footage of their meeting, framed from a slightly different, elevated angle, appeared. It played out the same way.

​

“So why meet there, in person, at all, if there was no handoff?” Ashton murmured, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at the footage.

​

He could have bet his last credit there was a third car. Ashton frowned. The thought lingered, heavy and unresolved, as the door chimed.