Traffic Light

Chapter 6: Promises

“Lot number three-five-five.”

Written in small white characters, triple digits were spread across large dark coloured shutters. The streets reeked of wet dogs and the dark shadows leading to the shady row of shops were only dimly lit by two orange lights on each side of the road, tall and spread out far from each other. The sounds of endless barking could constantly be heard in the distance, interrupting the eerie silence of the foggy night.

Long streaks of locks paved the piss-stained walls that made up this small and forgotten townhouse. It was built in accordance with the prospect of leveraging on the up and coming residential attractions surrounding it, but until then, it remained an investment on pause. Either that or it will forever remain a forgotten vision of some forgotten bankrupt in some forgotten hideaway, avoiding authorities and keeping on the low. You see, in this city if you owe the government money you get thrown in jail. If you owe the bank money you get thrown in jail. If you can’t afford to payback whatever you’ve borrowed you never leave jail.

In light of the strict laws set out by the founders of this large, colourful, dancing corpse of a land, life isn’t as cheery as they like to make it seem. The city of money was a giant fly-trap set in a barren ditch in the centre of the world in the centre of the universe. Everything that this place ran on, revolved around one single aspect in which it fuelled its processes and routines, its unflinching aesthetics and unnerving version of happiness. That single aspect was; the Catch. As long as there is a Catch, there is always a reason to keep you here or kick you out or use your s**t or kill your dreams. The Catch keeps this place running. The Catch keeps this place from crumbling into the dust and ashes that it really is. Then again, why can’t the same be said about life?

The Catch echoed through the halls of every institute dedicated to regulating the social components of everyday ongoings. The Catch oozed into every fabric of working men and women enslaved by its beating heart. The Catch trailed along the complex infrastructures and along the suburban labyrinths, the Catch reached deep into the loins of this ruptured civilization to firmly bury its seeds of corruption and the Catch followed us into lot number three-five-five, among the urban rubble and between the shadowy shutters.

Hidden deep in the dead silence and away from the thriving pulse of the night, we worked. The three-five-five office lot was a small four corners that resembled the same kind of claustrophobic layout you’d find in an asylum, except there were no cushioned walls. Still, next to the compound’s persistent stench of human filth and overlapping bodies frail from malnutrition, this place might as well be paradise.

It was a safe-haven from the harsher conditions we were prone to the past few years of our lives. For an unconfirmed amount of time, this would be our home and it was more than enough for us. A small, barren office unit with chalky white walls and soft blue carpeted floors all for the two of us to share. At that point in time, it was more than we could ever ask for. Of course, it was just a stepping stone from what I had planned.

The arrangement was fairly straight forward. We worked virtually for free, with the exception of a small monthly salary for basic provisions including food rations, stationaries and other items. The lights were kept on and the servers were kept running as compliments of Goliath Inc, as were any maintenance fees that were necessary throughout our unofficial employment in the unrecorded Tech Development Department of the multinational. We were given up until the completion of the final block of Goliath Residences to finalise whatever we had proposed for the community app during our last meeting with the bosses. That would be roughly a year and a half to meet the deadline, after which they promised to pay us a charitable fee for offering our services, then we would rejoin our division back at the department.

There was a final rule in the list, all we knew about what went on in and out of the compound remained a strict confidentiality in any circumstance. Any accusations directed towards the company and its affiliates would be denied through the access of their highly experienced legal advisors, upon which we would then get deported back to wherever we came from. Of course, in my mind, I knew this would go without saying. They had to cover their tracks somehow I suppose.

There were jackals watching us from the outside world. Whether they hid in a van across the street or whether they installed surveillance devices throughout the area, I’m not too sure. We were locked from the inside, only being let out once in the day and once at night by the company watchmen. We’d get an hour each session to stretch our legs and get some exercise or just enjoy the outdoor air for a moment, not too far away from our prison office. I would later come to learn that the Western penitentiary system worked very similarly to this routine, inmates would get a brief taste of the outside world each day before being dragged back into their pits.

The company jackals were quite friendly to be fair. They were the ones that would buy our monthly provisions which we would list down on a sheet of paper according to our budget. They’d deliver it to our doorstep. How generous.

Additionally, we still didn’t have possession of our passports.

I was quite sure that they had also put a tracker on our working machines, keeping an eye on whatever we were doing online and offline. I had thought of this long before I presented my idea to the board, which is why I had learned as much as I could with Mr Supervisor’s mobile about the process of bypassing IP tracers. It was fairly simple to do, by using an IP switcher that disguised my online presence whenever I needed to, I could basically hide from whatever third party stalkers watched from the shadows.

Why would I want to do that? Because I sure as hell wasn’t going to go back to that hell hole after our deadline was met. I was well above the capability of completing the entire project in less than half a year by now. I was deliberately stalling on progress, because I was looking for a way out. I was looking for a crack to slip through, I wasn’t exactly sure what yet but I knew I had a year and a half to slither my way out of the current situation. Syed, my trusty companion, he was simply along for the ride.

For the first few months, I couldn’t help but think about home. How was my mother doing? Was Syed’s family still waiting for his return? My mother’s medication may have run out long ago, did it help with her condition’s regression? Slum folk were off the grid and definitely very difficult to get a hold of, especially with limited resources only found online. I could have reached out to authorities, I could have contacted an official for help, to escape from this nightmare. But what good would that do?

It would have just landed us into another nightmare. We both had lost everything we had to our name to end up here, if we get kicked out of the country now, things will just end up being worst. Both of us had agreed, that the best course of action was to improve our situation here before even thinking of going back. We had gone through too much to come full circle empty handed.

With our captors being none the wiser, lot number three-five-five was the breeding ground for a myriad of plots and plans. It was our battle room, our brainstorming station. While we turtled our way through lines of code to fix alignment issues with the community app interface or to fine-tune the remaining utilities, we hatched ideas about how to achieve our prison break.

One of the winners on the long list of ideas, was to sell our product behind our employers’ backs. If the entire premise of our non-existent contract is based on illegal paradigms, then why couldn’t we try beating them at their own game? We were willing to attempt anything that they forgot to mention in their terms and conditions. This was one of them, funnily enough.

So began our marketing proposition, behind a hidden IP address, seated cross legged in a carpeted prison cell in the middle of a shutter plagued wasteland. We drew up long and extensive emails listing down the assortment of features our system had to offer, in hopes that a more legitimate employer would rescue us from our captors, even attaching a light and simple demo file of the incomplete prototype.

We sifted through endless droves of company emails to no avail. Turns out there aren’t too many overseas companies that are willing to bet on a shady email sent by an untraceable source about a software proposition that is going below market price but also barely impressive among the many other options.

We pivoted to SMEs and micro-enterprises that aren’t associated to large brands or prominent investment parties. A few off the list were slightly more responsive, but for the most part, most blew us off as third world scammers from a third world country looking for a piece of that first world pie. We hyper-focused on startups, small groups with limited resources and higher flexibility. Still not much luck.

For months, we rinsed and repeated the same process. We’d cross off a certain group of potential buyers and run through the next batch. As the months went by, our lines of code began to fill the screens and our work drew closer to an end. Our buyers lists began to shrink and our hopes began to dwindle.

Then, I decided to roll the dice a little closer to home. I began to undergo an intensive background check on our captors; Goliath Inc. My trail of thought led me to learn about every single affiliate they ever dealt with, every source or supplier they crossed paths with and every partner they every worked with. Roughly a year into our project, somebody caught my eye.

A Mr Genzo of the BlueSeed Group of Companies, helmed the position of CEO and wore a belt of undisputed experience in the construction, technology, investment and security industries. BlueSeed comprised over thirty two well-established corporations that planted their roots deep into a diverse range of markets including infrastructure, AI development and real estate among a hundred other initiatives.

On the front page of their website, their group motto read;

“Striving for order in chaos, planting the deep seeds of reliance, sustainability, effectiveness and security for you to reap the rewards of a better future.”

There it was again, that word. Chaos.

A little more digging revealed that Mr Genzo had functioned as a consultant partner for Goliath Inc, which leveraged on his comprehensive familiarity with global property markets and his talent for diversifying into other challenging territories outside his home bases.

Profiles that I managed to gather pertaining to his character and work ethic painted an optimistic yet legitimate picture of a man that was full of wisdom, keen on unique talent acquisition that he knew would give his businesses an edge.

My brain told me this was a stupid move. My gut told me this was exactly who we needed to reach out to.

I slept on it, then slept on it some more. I gave myself a week to think over what I was about to do. What I was about to risk. Then I went ahead and did it.

I composed a long and intricately thought out email to Mr Genzo of BlueSeed. I told him the truths, I laid out the entire situation from A to Z. Only after pouring my heart out in the first few paragraphs, did I propose to him of the incentives if he acquired my two man team. If the capabilities we had to show weren’t enough for him, then I threw in my gratitude as added value.

A man of his magnitude should understand that the world is run by favours. Being indebted to someone is a heavy cost. Debt is what the Catch runs on, it courses through the veins of industry and progress. It is the true path to progression. A few subjects that are indebted to you, can make you a very powerful person. I ended my message to him along those lines.

“My friend, are you insane? Do you know what this could do to us if it doesn’t work according to your plan? Do you want to get kicked out? Do you want to lose everything?” Syed flailed his hands in the air upon seeing my SOS attempt.

“If the dice moves against you, you lose fair and square. If the dice moves for you, you reap the rewards, but if you never throw the dice in the first place, you forfeit the game.” I focused on the words on my screen, hands cusped in front of my chin. Reading through the lengthy bullet I was about to cast off. Then with a shaky finger, I sent it.

One week left until our deadline was up and we were a flaking mess. We had almost run fresh out of options at this point. Our secret objective of selling our system to the highest bidder fell short in a market that was unwilling to invest that much trust into an endeavour which seemingly wasn’t worth the trouble.

I didn’t show it easily, but I was on the brink of a meltdown from having to face the prospect of going back to the compound. I knew for a fact that the company’s charity fee wouldn’t be near what the system was worth. We didn’t have our passports with us and we wouldn’t have anything to show for our efforts except this year and a half temporary vacation from hell.

It was on that final week when we were frantically attempting to scribble up new drafts of completely flawed strategies as desperate last swings for salvation, when a new mail landed in the inbox of the account I had created under the guise of the fake IP address. It was a miracle, Mr Genzo from BlueSeed replied to my message.

“Tell me your names and give me a distinct description of your bosses’ appearances. This is for verification purposes, so I feel more confident that this isn’t a farce.”

There was no sign off, no name, even the email address was a different, oddly named one from the one I contacted. The only way I knew that it was Mr Genzo, was the fact that the sender had extracted my entire previous message and attached it to the response before asking me those questions in a separate paragraph.

He was protecting himself.

Have you ever felt an immense fusion of emotions? Two contradicting reactions to a nerve-wrecking event that would determine the outcome of a crucial crossroad? To this day, I’m not sure if I ever experienced the same amount of relief yet fear that I did in those next few days establishing communication with our potential savior or inevitable betrayer.

I proceeded to list down everything I knew about the bosses, their statures and physical features, their expressions and the conversations I’ve had with them, even the way I felt about them which wasn’t very much.

I responded immediately. Syed cowering over my shoulder, like a child witnessing an atrocity unfold.

His reply arrived in my inbox not long after, on that night itself. Syed scurried over to my machine from his sleeping mattress to read along with me.

“Mr Karkun, if everything you’ve told me is the truth, then I have to say that I am somewhat impressed by the incredible story you’ve shared with me. However, due to the somewhat dubious circumstances of this initial conversation between us, I am rather reluctant to take any supportive action towards your conundrum. Besides as you can imagine, I’m a busy man. So I will need time to think over your proposition.”

“With that being said, assuming that everything that’s being mentioned here is true, I may have a suggestion that you might want to consider. Whether or not you have thought of this I’m not sure, but it may initiate an opportunity to prolong your chances of achieving your set objectives.”

-

Long brick padded walls stretched across a narrow yet quaint and elegant interior. Large empty jugs were laid out neatly on the shelves behind the counter, which consisted of two young women juggling a myriad of tasks from passing drinks over to customers to wiping the counter surface or carrying dishes of food to the many occupied tables. Dim, orange rows of lights and a soft playing Bossa Nova tune in the background set a chic-urban atmosphere to where the meeting had been arranged.

Sitting at the end of this fancy, air-conditioned café, was me and one of the familiar company Jackals. He wore the same dark leather jackets that the men at the port on the first day of our arrival had on. He was a tall, well-built gentleman with brown hair that tapered off to the side. His chiseled face was the epitome of exemplary masculinity yet the expression he had on was one of innocence and youthful naivety. Nevertheless, we sat and waited. We were semi-hidden from the rest of the premise at the far back, behind a large dark brown cubicle stand.

Quite some time passed, when I heard the soft sliding of the entrance doors and the slow, thumping, rhythmic sound of footsteps gradually getting louder. I peered slightly over the cubicle to see Boss number two had entered the premise and was making his way towards us. He wore a short sleeve maroon coloured t-shirt, revealing his tattoo riddled forearms. I lowered my head back down.

Shit. I was afraid I’d only be able to meet with this douchebag. Where was Boss number one? He probably couldn’t be bothered to have his fat ass dragged down here for little old me. I suppose I’ll just have to find a way to convince one of them enough that he’ll consider bringing it up to the rest.

He sat down opposite me, not even looking at my direction. He slicked his hair back and glanced around, ogling the waitresses behind the counter. The young, stocky company jackal stood up and slid out from the side, walking out to the far end of the diner.

Boss number 2 finally leaned back against his chair with his arms folded and focused his attention towards me with a glare.

“What do you want now boy? I don’t have all day.”

My heart was pounding, but I put on the straightest, low-browed poker face I could and without flinching, I began to speak in a soft, stuttering manner.

“As we near the completion of our mutual project, it has come to our attention that there may be a minor issue at hand.”

Boss number two breathed deeply and raise his head up towards the ceiling.

“I told them this was a bad idea all along. Letting a couple of village bumpkins take us on a year-long ride with their charade of technical mumbo-jumbo. What is it? You can’t finish in time?”

I clenched my fists under the table, wanting nothing more but to bust this condescending prick’s pretty lip.

“I didn’t say that, we can finish well within the time given. What I want to bring to your attention has nothing to do with our capabilities. It has everything to do with your side of things.”

A crooked smirk formed on his shadowy face, white strands of hair glistening under the dim orange light.

“Well aren’t you a feisty little firecracker? What’s the problem? You think we can’t handle managing a shitty little community app? Haven’t we gone through the details with you already? You handover all necessary documents needed to get this show on the road and we’ll deal with it. Don’t you worry your wee-sized pea brain about how we handle our end of the bargain.”

He sure did know how to get on people’s nerves. I could see why he was rarely allowed to speak in the first place. I sat up firmly and placed my hands on the table, unwilling to be deterred by his intimidating mannerisms.

“I’m not worried about your team’s capabilities or the fact that they will eventually wrap their heads around what’s involved in managing the system. With that being said, as we near the completion of the project, we realise now that there may be more to comprehend than previously thought. We are a two man team, working to provide Goliath Residences with a finished product that is as holistic and reliable than any other system on market, with a very limited amount of resources and a very limited amount of time. You are getting added value for near zero marginal cost and I intend to see my work through to the very end, right up to its implementation stage.”

He tilted his head back down towards me, with the smirk no longer visible on his face.

“Ahh, I see. You just don’t wanna rejoin your little bumpkin friends back over at the compound there. You’d rather enjoy the good life over at that prison cell sized office space they got you shacked up in.”

He let out a quiet, wheezing hiss, baring his tainted golden teeth at me.

I let him finish his laugh, pausing for a moment so he could enjoy himself thoroughly. Then without breaking eye contact, I leaned closer towards him.

“My self-interests are not the focus of this conversation sir. The focus is on your self-interests as well as the organisation you represent. As far as you’re concerned, I could be doing this because I love the work and I’m looking forward to the generous payment once my job is done. I could be doing this because I enjoy the company of your steroid-guzzling pretty boy bodyguards back at lot three-five-five. I could be doing this because I enjoy the soft warm feeling of the carpet grazing against my bare ass while I work.”

By now, he had leaned back from his chair and was rising up over me while I continued to speak.

“As far as you’re concerned, I am offering a chance to see the initiatives that have already begun under you and your team’s approval, initiatives that have been costing your company monthly expenses for the past year and while they are meager expenses, they are expenses nonetheless. I am offering a chance for it to be done right and to be done properly. The decision is yours as to whether you’d rather wait until something goes wrong and waste time dragging me back from wherever I will be by then just to fix whatever minor issue took place, or whether you’d rather grant me a little more time to properly train your team face-to-face and never have to see me again after.”

He stood up straight with a face that said loud and clear how he’d like to beat my little village bumpkin ass to a pulp.

“You’ve got some mouth on you, don’t you boy? I suggest you speak with a little more respect before I slit your throat and pull your tongue out from the gap Columbian-necktie style.”

I leaned back against my chair and after a moment looking up at him without breaking eye contact, I continued.

“Now, with the newly added components, hardware to software interconnectivity and assembly procedures, smart security home quick-response buttons and emergency service features, a more technical and hands-on approach is necessary to train your security staff, including the management team in charge of that division. I am offering this additional assistance to you for free and I will be able to thoroughly ensure all staff are trained within the timeframe of two months.”

We looked at each other for another moment. After a long pause, he sighed deeply and broke eye contact with me to glance back over to the two waitresses behind the counter.

“You’re turning out to be a real thorn in my ass, you know that?”

I looked down towards the table and leaned forward with my elbows placed firmly on the surface, knuckles clinched together.

“I’m just a humble talent, trying to offer a solution that would make no sense for you to turn down.”

He reached into his back pocket quickly to pull out a thick leather wallet.

“You drag me out here again, I’ll come ready with that Columbian necktie compliments from the company. Here, buy yourself something nice for the road on your way back to that s**t-hole you’re enjoying so much.”

He pulled out a few slips of cash and flung it towards the top of my head. It scattered across the table, half-folded layers of green paper. Then he left in a hurry, phone in hand and boots stomping against the dark-wooden floors of the café.

The minute I heard the doors swing shut, I let out a large sigh and buried my head into my shaking hands.

-

“Well? How’d it go?”

Syed stood with arms folded, wearing a worried expression on his face and pacing the small office space that we lived and worked in.

“I brought back some burgers from the eatery. Dig in.”

I slapped the small brown paper bag take away onto the low table where our machines were set-up.

“Ahh! So I assume it went well then?”

Syed lunged forward at the food, unwrapping the paper package in a hurry.

“Not exactly. Maybe, to be honest, I’m not too sure my friend.”

I sat down in the center of the room and wiped the sweat off my brow with my hand.

He froze, a large meaty burger buried in his face, eyes wide open towards me.

To be honest, the tricks under my sleeve were beginning to run thin. If successful, all that effort would have bought us a bit more time away from the compound. The moment we end up back there again, I just knew it would be near impossible to squeeze our way out of there a second time. All the excuses I had just fed Boss number two were of course half-truths. They were all for the sake of lengthening our vacation period. I could have easily gotten most of the system synchronisation done in less time than they expected.

I could have easily prepared a comprehensive handover manual that covered ninety percent of what needed to be done. The ten percent that was left, could have easily been achieved through a three day course on how to manage a very basic system for a very basic set of processes. In reality it was all child’s play really, much simpler than what I made it out to be, but as long as they didn’t know that, I had leeway to screw around.

Unfortunately, I was coming to a road’s end. I wouldn’t be able to carry on much longer, not without help. Betting on Mr Genzo in my mind, was a leap of faith.