Club Bespoke Pt. 03

1 Month Later...

"That's a bit of a weird question for a quiet drink isn't it Hayden?"

Hayden sat opposite his work colleague Andy in the bar across the road from the office building they both worked in. The bar's clientele consisted almost entirely of the people who worked in that building regardless of whichever firm or company they came from. It had been noted on a number of occasions that the place might as well have existed as an exclusive spot for them. Any outsider walking in would have overheard stories of deals being closed, cases being won and whether or not Nicola from accounting was sleeping with Mark from human resources. As Nicola was his manager, Hayden tried to keep away from that kind of talk as much as possible, but it was hard not to overhear it.

Andy's cubicle was right next to Hayden's and the exact opposite of Hayden's own. Whereas his was tidy, organised and pristine, Andy's was covered in printouts, food wrappers and questionable stains. Whilst he may not have chosen to become friendly with Andy, his close proximity and general jovialness made him the closest Hayden had to someone he would consider a 'friend from work.' He liked Leanne, of course, but in a much, much different way.

"I'm just interested in what you think Andy," Hayden replied. "What makes us human?"

"Millions of years of evolution," came Andy's snarky response.

"Please take this seriously," Hayden groaned.

"No offence buddy but I didn't agree to come out to debate the great philosophical questions of our times, I came out for a drink."

"Ok, ok fine. Well let's work backwards instead then..."

"You're really not dropping this then... Ok fine, I'll play ball."

"So, most people would agree that to be human, or considered as such, we need to be able to think for ourselves, react to physical and emotional situations and possess free will, yes?"

"I mean I guess yeah."

"I base that on the fact that most agreed Human Rights Legislations site freedom of expression, freedom from slavery, freedom of choice etc. etc.. Still on board?"

"Sadly yes."

"Ok, so what if we started taking those things away? At what point do we consider someone not human any more?"

Andy thought for a moment, if begrudgingly.

"I dunno, I guess free will is the key one..."

"So take away free will and they're not human any more?"

"Well no, I mean it isn't as cut and dry as that."

"Ok well what if you also take away the ability to feel emotions and physical sensations?"

"Still human, I mean people with paralysis and psychopaths exist. Granted they have free will too but even if say that was taken away somehow, like if they were forced into slavery or a cult or something, they'd still be human."

"What about if we take away the ability to think for themselves too?"

"Well then you've got what exactly? If you can't think for yourself, you have no free will and you don't feel emotions or physical sensations, you're a robot I guess."

Andy was getting to exactly the point that Hayden had hoped he would. It was a question that had consumed him ever since that night.

"But what if you had all of those things but they were suppressed or taken away from you. Would you still be human then?"

"If you had them all to begin with, or even just one of them, I guess so yeah."

This was exactly what Hayden wanted to hear. He had spent the last month trying to come to terms with how he felt about Lucy and the situation at Club Bespoke, debating in his own mind back and forth about what he could do, whether he even should do it. The one conclusion he had kept coming back to was that for all intents and purposes, the Representatives were slaves. They were being robbed of their basic human rights by Bespoke Industries so that they could be used for whatever they wanted. Present that case in any court up and down the country and it would win every time, or so a man from one of the law firms had told him.

There was one huge problem however: most people didn't know the Representatives existed or flat out denied it. Anyone who did seem to know certainly didn't consider them to be human either. Hayden had read some truly awful things that made him feel sick to his stomach on the deepest parts of the web, people sharing their 'Bespoke Experiences' and bragging about what they had done. What upset him even more was that prior to his own experience, it wouldn't have bothered him. He would have sat very much in the camp of 'they're just machines, it doesn't matter'. Every time that thought came into his head now, he was reminded of the look on Lucy's face as she asked him to command her to stop feeling. It sent a shudder down his spine every time.

"What's brought about this question anyway? Not been talking to those workers' rights lawyers again have you?" Andy said, cutting off Hayden's train of thought. "No matter how much you might dislike your job, I don't think it'll stand in a court of law for you to claim you've had your free will taken away by it..."

"Huh? No, it's not that. It's just that something happened recently... to someone I know," Hayden said cautiously, aware they were very much in public and not wanting to give away anything about his night at Club Bespoke.

"So you're saying you know someone that's had all their human rights taken away?"

"Basically yeah."

"Well, why don't they do something about it?"

"They can't, they're basically trapped in their situation."

"Why?"

'Because they're a shapeshifting robot' is what Hayden wanted to say, but he knew he couldn't.

"I can't really say, I'm not even supposed to know so if anyone else finds out then things might get even worse."

"Ok fine. Odd thing to bring up if you can't talk about it, but whatever."

Andy took a sip from his drink looking visibly annoyed.

"So why don't you do something about it then?" he continued. "Isn't there like a whistleblowing service you can contact or even the police or something?"

"Unfortunately it isn't that simple. I mean I've looked into it, believe me, but everything I look at just draws up even more blanks."

His searches for ways to help Lucy over the past month had been entirely fruitless. There didn't seem to be that many spaces online that acknowledged the existence of the Representatives and of those almost none of them were saying anything other than Bespoke Industries were geniuses and that the Representatives were an engineering marvel. He thought he'd seen the odd comment or post here and there about the Representatives deserving better representation or the right to choose, but he could never find them again after that as if the comment had been deleted or maybe wasn't even there in the first place.

He kept coming back to how to get Lucy away from the club. He'd tried looking for a plan of the building, whether there were any disused service ducts or doors, but there was nothing available. Even if it had been, who was he kidding? Did he think he was going to scale the building and infiltrate it through the ventilation like some off brand James Bond? And that was just getting in! How did he hope to get back out again? If he was going to do something, it needed to be when he was scheduled for his next meeting with Lucy.

When he'd asked her why she couldn't just leave, she'd simply said 'they'd know, they'd catch us.' He hadn't seen any cameras, but then again he hadn't exactly been looking for them. Maybe it was something to do with Lucy herself? Maybe she had some sort of tracking device built into her? Regardless, this was all mere speculation. The lack of information online meant he had absolutely no way of checking. All he'd been able to do, day in and day out, was to keep checking his emails to see if he'd been sent a cancellation notice. He'd never be able to pay for the earlier slot, but he imagined he'd find a way or something if the opportunity arose.

"Thanks for the talk Andy, but I'm thinking I should head home now, up early again tomorrow," Hayden said with almost a grimace.

"Already? Well, whatever buddy. I still don't get why you keep doing all this extra work though..."

Hayden had spent the year and a half leading up to his appointment at Club Bespoke picking up any and all overtime he could. It meant that most days, he was at the office almost two hours before anyone else and anywhere up to three hours after they'd gone. He'd noticed that after doing this for the first few weeks, his workload had begun to steadily pile up as more and more people seemed to notice the extra time he was putting in. As a result, he spent most of this time finishing off the work his colleagues either couldn't do, hadn't gotten around to doing or just plain didn't want to. Frustrating as it was, and as much as it destroyed his work life balance, he knew it was the only way to be able to live and afford Club Bespoke.

"I just need the extra cash, that's all," Hayden flippantly replied.

"Saving for some big holiday or a once in a lifetime thing?"

"You could say that," Hayden replied with a slight smile.

* * * * *

2 Months Later...

It had been an exhausting week for Hayden. One of his colleagues had gone off sick and another two were on holiday so he'd spent most of his days completing their work as well as his. Thankfully he was being paid for the extra time, but it felt like his week had consisted only of waking up, going to work, returning home and then going straight to sleep ad infinitum. Realistically, he knew he should be spending his day off catching up on missed sleep, maybe taking a little time to actually look after himself and eat something, but any time he had spare that he couldn't spend trying to raise more money was now spent on the conundrum of how to get Lucy out of Club Bespoke.

The truth was he was not any closer to achieving that goal than he had been two months ago when his conversation with Andy steeled his resolve to do whatever it took to free Lucy. He'd spent hours trawling the internet collecting any and all available information on Bespoke Industries and in particular the Representatives. Every rabbit hole he dove down into brought him to a dead end. He was sure that there was at least something out there he could find but was beginning to accept that he simply didn't have the ability or wherewithal to find it. He'd even considered signing up for an online course in basic computer programming, hoping to find some sort of way to manipulate his web browser into finding him what he wanted, but it would have cost too much money and time.

His last resort had been trying to access the dark web. He'd heard stories of people being able to find anything there including people who can find things out and get things done. What these things were was entirely left up to the imagination of the person asking. Once again, however, he was simply priced out of being able to get what he wanted. Part of him was a little glad as he had no real wish to deal with these people, but it was still frustrating to know that were he a wealthier man, things would be so much easier.

Throughout the days he continued to periodically check his emails, his heart rate rising every time something new popped into his inbox and the swift gut punch of disappointment when it was only a spam email or some promotional offer for something he'd signed up for a free trial of once. He remained vigilant however; even if he couldn't afford it, any opportunity to see Lucy sooner had to be taken, even if only to have the chance to check in on her.

Sat at his computer now waiting for his emails to routinely refresh, Hayden felt his eyes starting to become heavy. He wanted to just let them close, sleep for however long it took for him to feel some sense of rest, but that couldn't be allowed. He sat himself up and widened his eyes as if forcing them back open. He needed something to keep him awake. He thought back to the old cartoons he'd watched as a kid where the characters would use matchsticks to hold their eyelids open. He knew for sure he was in trouble if ever that felt like a good idea to him. Coffee would have to do for now.

He got to his feet and stretched, his back punishing him for his hours slumped over a keyboard. He needed to get back to the gym at some point soon, some of the strength and tone he had built over the space of the last year having ebbed away with his focus purely on work and research. He walked to his kitchen and grabbed a mug from his draining board before slotting it under his coffee machine and fumbling with inserting the coffee pod into it. The machine whirred into life as he set it away, being far louder than it had any right to be for such a small appliance.

Hayden was just about to reach for his finished mug of coffee when he heard a knock at his front door. He certainly wasn't expecting anyone so already he felt uneasy. He'd never liked opening the door to anyone, particularly those who were uninvited and unannounced. He heard a second noise, the sound of lightly clattering metal and then a soft thud. It sounded like someone had just dropped something through his letterbox. His mail wasn't usually delivered yet and they certainly never usually knocked unless it was something big. The situation was getting curiouser and curiouser.

Hayden tentatively walked into his hallway. As he suspected, there was now a small padded envelope sitting at the base of his door. He approached cautiously and looked out of the peep hole in the door. There was no one there. Whomever it was must have simply knocked, dropped the package through and then left.

'What an odd thing to do,' Hayden thought to himself.

Hayden bent down and picked up the package. It was quite light and he couldn't hear any rattling inside. There was no address written on the front or back, no markings of any kind in fact, not even a stamp or a label to say where it had come from. Hayden about jumped out of his skin as the package began to vibrate, dropping the package to the floor. The vibrations sounded out against his floor and seemed to be sequential, one long buzz followed by a brief moment of silence repeated over and over. It must have been a phone. But why? Who gave him it? Who was ringing it?

Hayden scooped the package back up and carefully opened it, its contents still buzzing away as he did until a small black device slid out into his open hand. It looked like an old style mobile phone, not quite the brick-like monstrosities he'd seen in old TV shows, but certainly nowhere near the touchscreen standard he was used to seeing. Bizarrely it was missing all of its buttons except one, a faded green button that presumably would accept the call. Looking at it, it was as if all of the other buttons had been deliberately removed.

The phone continued to vibrate angrily in his hand as if it was scolding him for not answering. Bitten by the curiosity bug, Hayden pressed the green button and then held the phone to his ear.

"H-hello?"

There was a moment of silence. Hayden wondered whether the call had simply ended, before an odd sounding voice started talking back to him.

"Hayden Blake?"

"Y-yes?"

"If you want to help your friend, be at the Kings Bridge underpass at 7pm this evening. Bring nothing with you except this device."

"W-what? Who is this?"

The phone went dead.

* * * * *

The rain that had been forecast was supposed to only be a light shower but instead the water was lashing down faster than the city's drainage could handle, concrete canals and reservoirs forming in the streets among the cracked and disregarded slabs. The only mild reprieve was to be found beneath the underpass, but all it took was a slight gust of wind to drive the rain underneath to hit anything it would ordinarily miss.

Hayden was stood under a dimly lit section of the underpass, soaked to the bone and feeling miserable and unsure of himself. Why had he followed the instructions of a random voice on the phone? They could have been anyone! Not that he would have recognised the voice even if it had been someone he knew. He wasn't certain but it seemed as if the voice had been electronically distorted somehow, enough to hide the real voice of whomever was on the other side in any case.

What had brought him here were the voice's first words:

'If you want to help your friend'

Unless something awful had happened to Andy, there was little doubt what was meant by that. Whoever this person was, they knew what he was trying to do. That must also mean they knew he'd been to the club. The big question was how? Hayden had never spoken a word about his experience to anyone else and even if he had, it certainly wouldn't have been in earshot of anybody. This person knew his name, where he lived and must have known he was at home to properly time the delivery and the call. Every instinct Hayden had had told him not to follow up on this unless he wanted to wake up in a bath of ice somewhere missing a few of his organs. And yet here he was because they had specifically said 'help your friend'. With no other potential solution at hand, Hayden really had no choice but to be stood here, in the rain with the sun disappearing over the horizon.

In the distance he spotted a car turning the corner. It was hard to see through the veil of rain but he could just make out the telltale light on top of the vehicle that told him it was a taxi. It was one of only a few vehicles he'd seen on this road so far and he'd paid each one special attention just in case, but so far they'd all just driven past and back out into the rain. The taxi on the other hand was slowing down and came to a stop just a few feet away from him. Hayden watched as a gruff looking man in about his mid to late 50s leant out of the window of the driver's seat.

"You Hayden Blake?" he asked with an accent Hayden didn't immediately recognise but could tell wasn't local to the city.

"Y-yes, that's me," Hayden replied.

"Right, get in then," the man said ducking back inside the window.

Hayden walked briskly to the passenger door, running on pure adrenaline as his heart rate skyrocketed. He opened the door and sat inside, closing the door behind him. The locks on the door closed automatically and the car pulled away. Before Hayden could react to this he noticed he was not alone in the back seat. Sat beside him was a figure dressed in dark clothing, hooded and with a smooth, spherical mask obscuring the entirety of their facial features. Hayden drew back in shock as the figure turned to him.

"Show me the device you were given earlier," the figure said before Hayden had a chance to utter even so much as a 'who are you?', its voice distorted in much the same way as Hayden remembered over the phone.

"O-of course," Hayden stuttered as he fumbled in his pocket for the little black phone.

He presented it to the figure, a man from what he could guess of their dimensions, who seemed to regard it for a moment before taking it from him.

"Empty your pockets," the figure continued.

Hayden did as he was told. Being someone who was very good at doing as they were told, his pockets had been empty save for the device the voice had requested he bring and his house keys.

"Good. Roll up your sleeves."

Hayden followed this instruction too, wondering what it was all in aid of but too scared and curious not to comply. Just as the figure had regarded the device, they now regarded Hayden's arms.

"He seems to be clean. Take us to The Vault."

The car slowed and took a u turn in the street. Hayden felt confused but invigorated. Whatever test he had just apparently been given he seemed to have passed and now onto 'The Vault' (whatever that was). He noticed the figure was staring at him again.

"You should really put your seatbelt on," they said.

"Oh, o-of course."

Hayden turned and looked over his shoulder to try and find the buckle. He flinched as he felt something sharp pinch his neck and turned to see the figure moving back away from him holding a now empty syringe. The dim street lights' sickly glow suddenly became vivid and hellish. Hayden didn't even have time to panic before the darkness seemed to envelope him and he slipped into unconsciousness.