You don't tell him. What good would it do? You don't even know if his footage is up there anyway.

The conversation moves on and you talk about your job, his friends at Vanguard,

the upcoming movie night, how much he hates whoever picks the movies for said movie night.

You sign off promising to call again next week and to smuggle him some of his favorite contraband

candies when you visit next. After your call, the transcript is added to his file under the Family

Contact tab. There's a green smiley face next to it, indicating that the algorithms have determined

that the conversation was a positive one. Resident happiness is directly correlated with positive

family contact, the page cheerly reminds you. Apparently, the bots haven't quite figured out how

to tell when that family contact is lying.

Vanguard Estates is a production of Flash Forward. The story was written by me, Rose Evelyth,

edited by Ace Tilton Ratcliffe and Georgia Wyatt, and produced by Ozzie Linus Goodman.

The sound design is by Misha Stanton, and the music is by Elan Blanc. Marcus Jones was played by

Keith Houston. Imani Jones was played by Shara Kirby. Robot number one was played by Ashley

Kellham. The Vanguard Estates representative at the hospital was played by Aya Islam. Jira Lewis

Cohen was played by Sandia Dirk's. You can find out more about all of those amazing editors,

producers, sound designers, musicians, and voice actors at FlashforwardPod.com. An earlier

version of Welcome to Vanguard Estates was performed live for pop-up magazine. You could also play

through a web version of the story at FlashforwardPod.com slash Vanguard, which features some really

cool illustrations by Maddie Lupjanski. And of course, there are 13 other endings for you to hear,

so if you want to know what else could happen, head back to episode one and start again.