The Cookie Caper

By D. Clarence Snyder

In 2013, Nabisco’s Oreo generated over two billion dollars in revenue worldwide. In the decades since, its fortunes have only grown larger. Low carb, gluten free, and pure organic diet trends did nothing to slow the frosting sandwich juggernaut.

That was until a scientist baker, working in a secret lab, developed a recipe that threatens to take Oreo’s crown – a cookie so valuable that when the baker is murdered, nation-status corporations risk war to find and recover the prototype batch. A shape-shifting mercenary races against a corporate police officer forced by internal politics to be more interested in locating the cookies than investigating the murder of a citizen employee.

Free of the legal restrictions once imposed by weakened traditional governments, corporate states redraw maps and enforce their own law to claim the four billion dollar prize in a story of corporate power, personal identity, and moral flexibility.

• Language: English
• Publisher: D. Clarence Snyder
• Release date: Feb 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370696772

D. Clarence Snyder

D. Clarence Snyder is a retired Master Sergeant and unabashed nerd. His previous work includes uncredited technical articles; several issues of the comic book series The Tick; and an infrequently updated blog and web comic.

Book preview

The Cookie Caper

A Story in the Bright Future

by D. Clarence Snyder

Copyright 2015 by D. Snyder

Cover: model Lori Alix, photographer Jamey Lynn

Smashwords Edition

License Notes

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Table of Contents

Prologue: The Butcher Meets the Baker

Chapter 1.0: That Can-Be Attitude

Chapter 1.5: Former Locations

Chapter 2.0: Adjusted Domestic Product

Chapter 3.0: Selective Surgeries

Chapter 4.0: A Quick Fix

Chapter 4.5: Counter Top Chemistry

Chapter 5.0: The Quality of a Waltz

Chapter 5.5: Even More Steak

Chapter 6.0: Breaking and Exiting

Chapter 7.0: The Who's Tommy

Chapter 8.0: Driving Miss Canbe

Chapter 8.5: Vapid Response Unit

Chapter 9.0: A Loaf of Bread, a Container of Milk, and a Stick of Gunshot Wound Care

Chapter 9.5: Juris-dictation

Chapter 10.0: Working in a Cookie Mine

Chapter 11.0: The Sheen of the Crime

Chapter 12.0: Round One, Fight

Chapter 12.5: Expired Experiences

Chapter 13.0: Candy Coated Covers Coated in Candy

Chapter 13.5: The Candlestick Maker

Chapter 14.0: Parcel Service Security

Chapter 15.0: Cred Crumbs

Chapter 15.5: Whack the Mole

Chapter 16.0: When Tommy Met Sarah

Chapter 17.0: Re-Coverings

Chapter 18.0: Cookie Crumbles

Chapter 19.0: Economy of Scales

Chapter 20.0: Viable Options

Chapter 21.0: Reflective Fortunes

Epilogue

About the Author

Also by D. Clarence Snyder

For all the people who thought I was better than I really am: Thanks for the unearned adulation. I hope you find this an equitable return on the investment of your confidence.

Prologue: The Butcher Meets the Baker

He had seen the inside of an oven before. There was one in his shabby apartment. He had never tried to use it, nor even turn it on, but he had opened the door and looked inside, once. This oven looked nothing like that one. It was shiny and silver inside. It reminded him of an ultra-modern German hotel room. Everything was the color of brushed steel. The steel was formed in vaguely decorative shapes with openings, which obviously served purposes, even if he didn’t know what they could be.

He closed the door on the large oven, shutting out the clean grey color of its interior. The smooth, impeccable white of the oven’s molded door replaced the metallic hue. It wasn’t quite white, but he didn’t recognize the nuance of eggshell off-white. What he saw – what he understood – was being surrounded by gleaming white surfaces. Everything was clean and bare. The oven doors, the sinks, the countertops, and the refrigerator were all the same – white.

Oddly, he wasn’t blinded by the kitchen’s decor. It mystified him.

The countertops’ lack of blinding glare under the bright overhead fixtures wasn’t what dumbfounded him. Light absorption was something he understood well. The skin on his arms and under his eyes had been interwoven with a radiation dampening micromesh. He reflected less light than he should, too.

What struck him as strange was how common the building had looked from the outside. Common being the frequency of run-down or bombed-out buildings in that part of the city. The seven-story structure was just like any of the other squatter tenements in the post-industrial district. Mostly, they had been company barracks for a fuel processing plant. When the fuel barons switched to manufacturing renewable hydrogen cells and unceremoniously abandoned the plant, the ensuing layoff riots reduced most of the former workers’ homes to an urban rubble of condemned structures. Local businesses were destroyed, pillaged in the residents’ anger, or collapsed in the poverty that followed.

Government and corporate politicians always promised to rebuild neighborhoods like the one outside the kitchen. Grand plans, presented with models of glimmering ivory towers, vanished with the close of Election Day polls or another stock bonus sell off. What rebuilding had been done outside the kitchen was accomplished with cardboard or piles of loose bricks, covering holes and shoring up rain-deflecting awnings. There were businesses, and some permanent housing. Some people left over from the area’s economic collapse still lived there. They did so in various levels of poverty, and it showed.

It was a bad part of town. That status emphasized the sheer cleanliness of the kitchen. Smooth and white and bright and clean – not just clean, immaculate. Clean smells like clean. Chemicals and designer scents trick the thalamus into reporting absence of potential biohazards and deliver the olfactory sensation of clean. The kitchen didn’t have that smell. It didn’t have any smell, except for a faint tint of copper.

He moved through the space, searching for something other than how unused everything seemed. In fact, he knew that the kitchen had been used, at least once, despite the evidence to the contrary. He opened drawers and cabinets, only to find every item neatly organized. Factory-sealed bags of milk sat next to an array of chilled eggs in the refrigerator. Take-out menus were neatly stacked next to pads of notepaper in a designated drawer. Sugar, flour, salt, and some powders he didn’t recognize were secured in ceramic jars. He didn’t know if there was any missing. The surface of each volume seemed even and raked smooth as Zen sand gardens.

Smooth white powders in smooth white jars on smooth white counters atop smooth white cupboards gave way to the smooth white floor accented by a splash of red. Futilely searching a place absent of color made his eyes fixate on the floor’s red shape. His brain tried to make sense of the pattern and the haphazard lines it formed. His eyes unconsciously followed the radials back to an amorphous blob. The red disappeared under another larger, darker form. Programmed by the four million years of evolution since Australopithecus, his brain sorted that one out instantly.

Oh yeah, he spoke in a conversational tone to himself, remembering what he already knew, the body.

The kitchen was not as monochromatic as the intruder perceived. It was a collection of subtle off-whites and washed out pastels. The colors had been specifically chosen to make contaminants easy to see, while retaining enough contrast to be able to work without losing sight of drawers, oven handles, and counter edges. Of the two men in the kitchen, however, the one who had understood and appreciated the distinction was lying on the floor. A puddle of his own blood formed a macabre halo around his head. It radiated outward, growing his angelic presentation, as necrotic fluid drained, unbidden, from the recently opened holes in his skull.

Chapter 1.0: That Can-Be Attitude

The office space, which served as Kellogg’s regional talent recruiting, occupied the entire twenty-first and twenty-second floors of a glistening tower of glass and steel downtown. The building was accessible by light rail, and Kellogg’s had twenty-five parking spaces reserved for visitors in its subterranean garage. The offices employed two dozen professional interviewers and another seventy-five recruitment managers, who spent most of their time refining job descriptions and matching resumes and reputations to corporate needs. These full-time employees received industry standard salaries and benefits, with generous bonus packages for successfully filling more specialized requirements.

Because of its location, employees and corporate citizens referred to the operation as two-one two-two. As vital as it was to the growth and continued vibrance of the corporate state, the recruiting section served as little more than a filter when the more revered Freelance Division was involved.

Freelance talent was handled by specialists in the top five floors of the building. The lowest of these five levels was stuffed with acoustical tiles under bags of unmixed concrete. The middle three levels were filled with fully furnished cubicles but no workers. There were no reserved spaces in the garage, no tiles in the building directory, and the elevator required a key. The top floor was an isolated temple for the high council of Human Resources. Only nine full-time employees worked in Freelance Division. It was lavishly furnished with old-world style, real leather chairs at mahogany desks. In the interior space, gilded sconces cast arches of gold tinted light to hold up the ceiling. The walls showed no signs of wear; corners were crisp as a freshly pressed suit. Along the exterior, potted ficus took advantage of the natural light afforded by floor to ceiling glass. Every occupied space was an executive suite, and half of the elite staff had corner offices. Opulence was piped in through the air conditioning to impress prospective employees.

Corner offices were not where important interviews were conducted, though. The Regional Vice President of Human Resources, Martin Gibson, personally handled those placements. His office was in the middle of the south exterior wall. Circumscribed on a map of the top floor, Martin sat as the head of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, with his team stationed as the outstretched hands and feet.

In the heart of Freelance Division was a waiting room packed with a dozen unpleasant men. Each sized up the others, measuring himself against them in his mind, as he waited for his turn to impress Mister Gibson. None of the men had been escorted to the waiting room. They had each found their own way – breaking in – to apply for the open position. It was readily apparent by their appearances and postures that all of them were capable of tremendous and spontaneous violence. Imagined battles rumpled the air, as the applicants plotted each other’s demise.

Sitting calmly at her own heavy wooden desk, Martin’s secretary, Gwen, kept all of them at bay. Freelancer was a corporate way of saying mercenary. The term implied a certain level of professionalism, but it didn’t change who they were or what they might do. She dealt with such men every day, and she did so with the confidence and authority of having the one thing they all wanted: a job.

Gwen’s smile was pleasant and fiercely professional, unframed by short, layered blond hair. Her blue tinted blazer was held closed by a single gold button, showing her synthetic silk blouse. She was healthy and physically fit but didn’t register as a threat to any of the competitive men. So, while they sat waiting at her instruction, they paid her little attention as she lazily worked her translucent desktop terminal with one hand, while her other rested in her lap.

Gwen greeted the dangerous men as they arrived – separately – over the span of a half hour. She directed each to wait in the comfortable chairs of her space. When the last of them had been waiting at least thirty minutes, the elevator opened, bearing Martin Gibson and his associate specialist, James, into the waiting room. One of the prospective freelancers started to stand as the pair disembarked. He thought better of it and sat down. Martin appeared to take no notice of him, but James did with a sideward glance of his eyes.

The Kellogg’s executives were dressed in custom fitted suits. The cuts matched, though the colors did not. Martin wore a dark navy jacket with matching pants and a crimson tie. The color was slimming; Martin was large framed. He was in reasonably good shape but could stand to lose ten pounds. His broad shoulders implied a more solid mass. Combined with cropped grey hair, his shoulders helped him carry his girth with distinction. James was taller and thinner. His hair was dark and his suit was almost tan. It didn’t make him look wider so much as nicer. Martin’s colors and slight limp imposed an air of authority. James looked more like a neighbor – not the sort who was legally required to introduce himself, but not one to borrow tools from, either.

Flanked by James, Martin crossed the room in a few direct steps. He looked at Gwen, pleasantly.

Gwen stopped her absent tapping on the clear terminal and smiled. Good morning, Mister Gibson. She turned her attention to James. Hello, Jiminy. It wasn’t his nickname or a perversion of his name. It was an inside joke between Gwen and James about his status as Mister Gibson’s conscience.

Gwen returned her attention to her terminal and pushed a software control that activated her desk’s intercom system. Her earring’s receiver connected to the paging button on Martin’s desk in the office behind her. The top of the terminal lit up with a soft red glow. The fiber optic quality of her terminal made this indicator impossible to see unless a person was standing precisely where Martin did. Having alerted him to her action, the notification faded.

Mister Gibson nodded. Did you have a pleasant weekend?

As much as one can expect with such a light snowfall in Aspen, Gwen replied with the code word for the week, indicating no one in the waiting room threatened her. It was an innocuous enough statement within earshot of a dozen mercenaries with no real bearing on her life. Martin didn’t pay her enough to take weekend trips to the out-of-state ski resort, but she had to work the word in somehow.

Martin gave her a smirk before he proceeded through the heavy wooden double door and into his office. James followed and turned around to close the doors behind them. Once inside with the doors secured, James moved methodically through his morning routine. He hung his jacket in the wardrobe by the entrance. He took off his shoulder holster and suspended it from the hooks installed for that purpose. He removed his compact fast-action gun from the holster, closed the wardrobe, and crossed the room to Mister Gibson’s large desk. He sheathed the weapon in its slot in the desk. The machine pistol was always there during interviews in case it was needed. With the sort of interviews Freelance Division conducted, it was unwise to leave company firearms on premises. Even the armory vault on the floor beneath them was kept empty, or full of non-functional decoys. All of Kellogg’s armed employees carried their weapons out of the building every night.

While James was doing his shuffle, Martin was studying the cup of coffee that rested on his desk’s warming plate. It was a simple, sand colored ceramic mug, full of hot coffee. The contents appeared to be the correct color for how he liked it prepared. The warmer was on, as it should be. The handle on the mug was turned toward his chair, for a comfortable reach to sip at the brew, and that was not how Gwen placed his cup every morning.

Several years earlier, Martin had been a less patient man. Not less patient, per se, it was more accurate to say he had been less confident. Pressured to fill requisitions for freelance security operators quickly, he rushed to begin interviews. One morning, he had moved to his desk quickly and snagged the handle of that same mug with his little finger. It wasn’t his first synthetic skin graft, but it was the first one he had received to treat an injury. Kellogg’s nearest medical unit was too far away from the offices for urgent care, so Martin required two follow-up surgeries to replace the grafts municipal emergency room doctors had employed.

Every day since, Gwen placed the hot ceramic mug on the warmer with the handle facing directly away from Martin’s high backed, leather chair. Except when she was under duress, for which the cup’s handle was placed perpendicular to the line from his shoulder to the warmer. Usually, the duress handle would be toward the middle of the desk, as it was less suspicious than even the correct position. The handle pointing toward him could only mean one thing. Someone other than Gwen had placed the cup in the warmer, and Gwen had not been along to correct it or change it to their distress signal.

James looked at his boss, then at the cup, and back again. He pushed a soft-control on Martin’s terminal, and the screen came to life with an image that made him stifle a smile.

Martin looked at the picture and smirked. His expression hid his genuine relief. Well, shall we get started, then? he asked rhetorically. He pushed a hardware button built into the surface of his desk, lighting up Gwen’s earring.

The interoffice communications jewelry was not, as had been assumed, on Gwen’s earlobe. It was clipped to the ear of the woman seated at her desk. Gwen was, at that moment, concealed in the space between the woman’s knees and the desk’s façade. Two pairs of speedy-cuffs loosely bound her hands and feet. The obvious intent was immobilization, not brutalization. The woman’s hand was not resting idly in her lap. Her fingers were wrapped around a subcompact .40 calibre pistol aimed, calmly and directly, at Gwen’s head.

They were dressed alike, with the same hairstyle and color, including the off-brand purple highlight in their bangs. Eye color, cheekbones, and skin tone all matched well enough to fool the gross biometric sensors in the lobby and employee elevator. Her voice matched well enough to get her through a voiceprint sensor, with a short pass phrase. Systems requiring longer speech samples would likely detect differences in rhythm or the nanosecond pause introduced by the tone correcting implant in the woman’s throat. Even upon close, casual contact by two daily associates, the woman had passed identification as Gwen.

Yes, Mister Gibson? the woman spoke to the tone in her ear.

Whoever you are, Martin spoke calmly, kindly release my secretary, and come in here.

I understand, she replied pleasantly. What about the men who are waiting?

I will leave that to your discretion, for now. She could hear the terse smile on his face. Don’t keep me waiting.

Yes, sir, she tapped her terminal, closing the interoffice communications app. She looked over the terminal at the dangerous mercenaries. She contained her smile to the professional look of a call-center employee who was explaining that a claimant’s life insurance policy didn’t cover death. Gentlemen, The Kellogg’s Corporate States thank you for your time, and apologize for the inconvenience, one of the men was already standing and walking toward the exit, but the position has been filled.

The more experienced men accepted the news without emotion. The youngest two seemed to take it as a personal affront. The woman at the desk delighted in being the deliverer of the message, but didn’t let it show.

Thank you for your interest, she continued as the men each stood and walked out. Those of you who submitted resumes may be contacted if other positions arise for which we feel you may be a good fit. She had heard the line enough that she didn’t have to look at the auto-cued script floating on Gwen’s screen.

With no one left in the waiting room to see, the woman slid away from the desk, allowing Gwen to crawl out and stand up. The imposter kept her pistol aimed at the secretary but wasn’t menacing about it. She took a pair of scissors from the desk and cut the plastic strap around Gwen’s wrists. She handed the scissors to the secretary, and Gwen bent over and cut the strap around her ankles.

Sorry about that, the woman apologized calmly.

Shall we go see if Mister Gibson is going to kill you or hire you?

The woman gestured for Gwen to enter the room first, After you.

Gwen opened the double doors and stepped inside and to her right. The woman followed but stayed centered in the door. Her pistol remained in her hand, but she held it in a neutral ready position instead of aiming at anyone in particular. James stood close to his own weapon, with his hands loosely clasped in front of him. He was ready to draw if the need arose.

Mister Gibson sat resplendent behind his heavy desk, hands folded in his lap. Please, lift your skirt, he directed emotionlessly.

Excuse me? the armed woman asked as though she had been told to do exactly what Martin had told her to do.

Lift your skirt, he repeated, a little louder and clearer. The woman pondered for a moment. As I expect you noticed, he explained, there are no cameras in here. Nor are there any in the waiting room. This sort of work demands the utmost privacy and an equal level of security. He paused to let out his breath and draw a new one. Gwendolyn’s eyes are linked to my terminal in here. Everything she saw was displayed here.

Martin leaned forward slightly. So, put your gun away, lift your skirt, and show me what she saw, he repeated his instruction for the third time. Or turn around so she may shoot you in the back. Consider it a proof of identity.

The woman put her pistol in the waistline of her skirt at the small of her back. She moved both hands to the front hem, lifting it upward slowly. She was feigning discomfort. In fact, she had no feelings at all about the sexually charged request. It wasn’t a lack of shame, modesty, or some latent exhibitionist desire. She knew what Martin was going to see.

Still, she inched her skirt higher, uncovering her sheer pantyhose-covered legs. James watched with interest, and Martin with professional dispassion as nude color over naked, synthetic flesh was exposed slowly. Once at her upper thigh, she quickly pulled her skirt up like a magician’s reveal. Instead of some racy decorative underwear, she wore tight black shorts. They could have been worn casually on a city street or in a health club. What had interested Mister Gibson was the yellow, block text scribed across the front of her workout pants. In plainly visible letters across the woman’s nether region it read, STAY STILL.

James let out a controlled giggle.

She tapped her finger slightly, and the lettering changed. KEEP QUIET it read.

Thank you, Miss? Martin prompted.

Canbe. The infiltration specialist gave not her name, but her professional alias. Many freelancers used aliases or handles. The practice had begun with cyberspace operators using login names to represent their selves. In Canbe’s particular field, a handle was practically mandatory.

Candy? Sounds like a stripper. James looked at her incredulously.

Canbe’s face turned instantly sour as she redrew and aimed her pistol directly at James. Can Be, she scowled. As in, I can be the last thing you see in life. Her skirt fell back into place accenting her disgust.

Or you can be whatever we need you to be? Martin interrupted calmly. We have an office block full of murderers, Canbe. What we need is someone who is good at getting into places without arousing suspicion. Since you selected a character from The Phantom Tollbooth, I’m going to jump to your home island of conclusions. He leaned forward placing one elbow on his desk, and pointing at his newly hired freelancer. I assume you are such a person.

I am. It was the shortest sentence she knew.

Good. Holster your weapon. Can you change out of my secretary’s body? I worry that it will give James nightmares.

The real Gwen smirked.

Canbe lifted her skirt again, and strapped the pistol to a holster hidden on the inside of her thigh. She concentrated for a moment, and her face contorted as though in pain. Her cheekbones, brow, and nose shifted, taking