Renovations

By Kari Kilgore

Bob Henderson despises the modern world.

Talking elevators. Automated cars. Smart phones that track every move, mood, and thought.

The day his office building grows security cameras in the halls, Bob realizes the modern world might despise him right back.

What happens when the network decides to search for itself?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Mar 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386558095

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The eyes in the hall stopped Bob Henderson’s heart.

Nothing else in the endless expanse of corporate offices had changed. Same polite beige walls hung with officially approved, bland artwork. Same muddy brown carpet with an inoffensive swirling pattern. And all the same co-workers scurrying about, striving to do just enough to fit in without standing out.

In the sixteen years Bob had been doing his level best to scurry while appearing to stroll, not so much as a single landscape or wildlife painting had changed. Not without a survey, results study, and staff meeting first.

Yet at the intersection of every smaller hallway and open space, a silvery, globe-like eye sprouted from the ceiling. Bob’s arm hair tried to rise under his sleeves, made impossible by the black wool suit jacket he still had on from the latest corporate mucky muck meeting.

He forced air into his lungs, cringing away from his own sweat breaking through his heavy layers of deodorant and aftershave. He was certain he heard tiny cameras over the general office background noise, moving and focusing inside their concealing mirrored domes, recording every movement and sound.

No one noticed Bob frozen half out of the elevator. He didn’t notice himself until his heart lurched back into action with a painful jolt. By the time the elevator politely asked if he needed help, his work partner Tim was several paces down the hall.

The system’s voice sent Bob out like a shot.

Tim finally turned, forehead furrowed under his tidy blond corporate haircut.

Bob, what’s wrong?

It’s not enough they have the computer controlling everything. Bob hoped he kept his now thundering heart and laboring lungs to himself. That blasted Central Building Unit. Lights, phones, the whole damned building. Now they have to put cameras in the halls? Who told the CBU to do this?

Tim stared at the row of gleaming half globes.

I’m sure they’re not cameras, Tim said. They look like mirrors. Remember a few weeks ago when Cheryl ran into Walt coming around the corner too fast? They just programmed mirrors for safety.

Without half a dozen survey emails? Bob said, shaking his head. If you believe that…

Tim half-smiled in his folksy way that didn’t calm Bob for a second.

Hey, you and Carol coming by tomorrow night? Tim said. Steve says it should be a heck of a game, good as last time.

Yeah, about that. Bob hated the way his face turned red, but that didn’t change a thing. Carol’s not really around anymore. They both stopped outside Tim’s office, and Bob knew word for word what Tim was going to say.

You got into a another fight about the networks, didn’t you?

Just like always, buddy. Knew I could count on you to help make a bad thing worse.

Tim stared at him for a second, not making a pretend nice face this time. Bob walked away before Tim could dispense words of wisdom. Somehow the one who’d been happily married since he was twenty-two years old felt qualified to give relationship advice to a forty-one year old newly single guy.

Bob counted three more of the mirrored globes along the hallway to his office. There was even one outside his door,