Free The Unincorporated Man by Dani Kollin

Which is why I took the liberty of buying two thousand options of each of you when you first came to work for me. It’s more than you’d ever be able to buy at your current salaries, and I’m willing to sell you those shares back at your current valuations—if, and only if, you keep this quiet for another two weeks.”
    “We can’t keep it quiet, Mosh. Word’s already out,” said Neela.
    “Yes, Neela,” he agreed, “word is out, but aside from the four of us and our good friends at GCI, very few know what was inside the unit, and if what was inside was successfully reanimated.”
    “So then how will buying stock in ourselves now make any difference at all?” asked Gil.
    “It’s the smoking gun, Gil,” answered Mosh. “Profit Sniffs get leads all the time. If they followed up on every ‘find’ they heard about they’d be out of business in a week. What they look for is the smoke, not the gun.”
    Neela finished his thought. “And our run on the facility and ourselves would be the smoke.”
    Mosh nodded. “Exactly.”
    “So what if the Profit Sniffs find out now?” asked Dr. Wang. “As long as we’ve got our shares secured we can go along for the ride. And I think you’ll agree it should be a profitable one.”
    “Yes,” said Mosh, “but you’re all forgetting one very important thing.”
    Dr. Wang looked at Mosh a little quizzically. “And that would be?”
    “The patient,” Neela answered in Mosh’s stead.
    “But,” said Gil, “you yourself said he was doing fine, Neela.”
    “For someone who’s been through what he’s been through, yeah, I’d say he is. But this isn’t a standard revive. If we’re all to profit, he’s going to have to integrate effectively. I very much doubt you or I will fare well in the media circus that’s about to engulf our little backwoods enclave, much less our recently revived patient. Mosh’s offer is the best for everyone. I suggest we go with it.”
    They all nodded in agreement.
    “OK, Mosh,” Dr. Wang said, whipping out her DijAssist. “Talk to me about the options.”
    “A second if you would, Dr. Wang?” interrupted Neela. “I still have one last question.”
    “Yes?”answered Mosh.
    “Has anyone seen Hektor?”
     
    Justin felt great. He’d always lived life on his own terms, and now he’d done the same with his death. And though he knew he was probably being monitored, he couldn’t help but walk around his room with an idiot grin on his face. In fact, the last memory he ever had of feeling this good was when he emerged, at the ripe old age of fourteen, from the back seat of a 1967 Ford Fairmont with one Jenny O’Donnell. She’d managed to teach him, in the course of one evening, everything there was to know about the opposite sex—or at least everything a fourteen-year-old thought he should know. Yes, he was feeling good. He was even looking good. He stared at himself in the mirror for a full hour. This was not the cancer-stricken body he’d been suspended with. It was his body, no doubt, just a lot younger and healthier. Justin figured it for thirty-five to forty years of age. He wasn’t surprised. Even in his era, the father of nanotechnology, Eric Drexler, had posited that once man controlled cells at a molecular level, the idea of replacing aging skin cells with newer, more vibrant ones was just a matter of time. Well then, time had certainly been kind to him. But for the fact that all he wanted to do now was eat, he probably would have already been out doing things and going places. He had more energy than he knew what to do with. And while he knew he should probably be planning and mapping out his next conversation with his handler, as he thought of Neela, right now he just couldn’t help himself. He paced back and forth impatiently, waiting for breakfast to arrive.
    He heard a short, gentle tone coming from the direction of the door.
    That had better be my food, he thought.
    “Come in,” he called out.
    A handsome man