by Hugh Howey
After a few hours, Naima went through the overtime pay mathematics in her head a few times, and then counted how many hours of sleep she would be able to make up this evening if she went home at the normal time, and avoided arguing with Alex. The results of the calculations made her feel secure and satisfied, as did the fresh red dawn burnishing the quiet room. Things were on their way to getting better, she thought, and then she got a notification on her device.
She assumed it was only Alex, but when she turned the device over, the startling and unfamiliar image of that guy from Raygun Coffee!, Jason Berg, was on the screen instead. Do you have lunch plans, it read.
She felt the urge to reply suddenly uncoiling deep in her body, surprising her. In her vulnerable state, having slept little, the open prompt seemed to compel her, like the sharp spindle from a fairy tale. Naima touched n and o, and stared sullenly at the device as it fell dark.
A moment later, it came alight again: Then how about breakfast? :)
Naima touched o and k.
WHEN SHE CAME back to the office, Pauline had come in, and had to know everything. “I’m not hiding anything from you, I promise,” Naima said after a while. “It was just coffee at Raygun. It was like fifteen minutes.”
“He likes you,” Pauline said, shaking her head with determination.
Naima reddened and shook her head. “It was a normal coffee. I just thought it would be a good thing to do.”
“It is,” Pauline said, putting her earpiece back in and turning toward her dialogue trees, fingers aloft like a child pretending to be a symphony conductor.
Naima had no energy left. The warm coffee and the cold office air combined to nurture a dangerous longing for real, dark sleep, and even if she did try to cautiously revisit the memory of the trip to Raygun Coffee! with Jason Berg, the details swam, and she couldn’t trust her recollection. Of course she hadn’t been forthcoming, only answering questions, but she had put an effort in, and so there was more to revisit, to worry about, to self-correct. Had she been weird? She was already beginning to forget things he had told her about himself. Had she been rude?
One of the girls from the graveyard shift was summoned into the office of Nico Dix, returning to her desk after a short time. Another graveyard girl went in soon after, and when she came out, Naima herself had a summons. She realized, with a jolt of nausea, that she had forgotten to check her hours, and that she had probably violated the billable overtime cap.
In Nico Dix’s office, Naima confronted a crescent-shaped desk made of smooth white fiberglass, reflecting the luminous bays of marching headlines, updates and action items that floated overhead. Nico Dix herself sat beneath a blazing arch bearing the Context mission statement, each digital letter designed one voxel at a time by the teens from Nico Dix’s Digital Art Head Start program: TOGETHER WE LEARN AND GROW.
“Naima Barton, welcome,” said Nico Dix, rising to her feet. She shook and pumped Naima’s hand ruthlessly, with a bewildering degree of intention and eye contact, and then they both sat down.
“I value your time,” Nico Dix solemnly began, “so I’ll just jump in: I’m just checking in with some of the staff about their level of buy-in.”
This again? Naima controlled her face, and nodded in a way that she hoped would communicate a high level of buy-in.
“Because once again, a member of the media has been trying to make unethical contact with my staff,” Nico Dix frowned. “And I had hoped that given the recent discussions Agile Language has been having as a team, there would be no cause for concern that a reporter would penetrate our sacred circle of sisters.”
Naima’s gaze wandered involuntarily to a news display with a banner that said EXPERTS SAY HIGH TEMPERATURES AND DROUGHT ARE CULPRITS IN NEW DENDROID DISEASE. She took note of each letter, but did not read the words. Nico Dix went on talking: Obviously this was a workplace and not a surveillance state, she said, and she had no real right to control what kinds of conversations Naima had with people outside of the office, except for where they might seriously violate the nondisclosure agreements that were crucial to Naima’s ongoing employment, and of course Naima was not being accused of anything, not at all, it was more a dialogue about the expectations, and why, after Nico Dix had already shared so much about her own vulnerabilities and her fears for her own personal safety as a woman in technology who had many enemies, for fair reasons, for competitive reasons, but also for unfair and abusive and gendered reasons, why then, had Naima not chosen to guard Nico Dix when a stranger approached asking to exchange information so close to the office, during a time when any leaks could spell the end of hundreds and hundreds of jobs?
There was a silence, and Naima realized she was expected to reply. “I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I did a graveyard shift and I’m a little tired. What was the question?”
“Why,” Nico Dix said, holding out both her palms.
“Sorry,” murmured Naima.
“Why did you exchange contact information with a journalist yesterday, and then meet with him this morning?”
On the desk display appeared the earnest company portrait of Jason Berg in his lanyard, and Naima suddenly felt shame twisting her insides, heat rising in her face. To her great horror she observed, as if from one end of a long, baroque hallway, that tears could come. She hadn’t felt them approach in a long time.
Hundreds and hundreds of jobs, Nico Dix was emphasizing, which she had worked hard to create particularly for women like Naima herself, and for her friend Pauline, against a tide of discrimination and resistance. It wasn’t only because of the salary, the benefits and the media appearances that Nico Dix shouldered this obligation to lead, although those things were nice, she had a nice life, she was under no delusions about her privilege, but was it all really worth it, when every media appearance was practically an invitation to Nico Dix’s enemies and harassers and detractors to dive into her personal life or to scrutinize her appearance or speculate on her finances, and it all got exhausting, the violation. But she never gave up, because the mission of diversifying the AI industry was deeply, personally important to her. It was her mission to offer Naima, who was so gifted and had so much to offer the company, every opportunity that she, Nico Dix, had needed to toil and suffer to attain.
“I didn’t know,” Naima was finally able to say. “He said he worked at Silo Pharma. He didn’t ask about Context at all. We didn’t talk about work.”
Then Nico Dix told a story about a prominent executive, she could not say which one, who had dazzled her with mentorship, making her feel like she had made it, only to send a series of lewd texts late at night during a conference. Nico Dix never wanted any woman to have to experience that, and so the most important thing was solidarity.
“He didn’t ask me anything about work,” Naima said, feeling stupid.
“No?” This surprised Nico Dix, who looked over her notes again, as if cross-checking against other interviews. “He didn’t ask about audio hardware?”
“We talked about coffee,” she insisted.
“I see. We’ve all been under pressures that could impair our judgment,” Nico Dix said. “What can I do to support you in maintaining solidarity with the company? I know you are a primary caregiver to your partner who is in recovery. Can the Context family help with that?”
Help. Naima was thinking about nap pods, and when she might be able to find a full hour to reserve one. In a panic, she realized it was already close to lunchtime, perhaps too late to even book something on NapApp. Why were people always offering to help Alex, to help Naima with Alex? Help, she thought, and Nico Dix returned her panicked look expectantly.
“I’m sorry,” Naima said after a while. “I’ve just been really tired, and maybe the help thing would be good, I’d just need to talk it over with Alex, since he already…his needs are specific, and he might not…we’ll see about it.”
“Good,” Nico Dix said. On her display shelf was a portrait of herself, wearing silly cat ears. The portrait read JOYFUL
NESS, and Naima deeply hated it. A dangerous sinkhole began to open inside her, and she suddenly realized the hatred was naked in her face, an off-putting expression, and she rubbed her face with her palms as if to wipe away something incriminating.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’m…I am buying in, I have solidarity. I’m just really exhausted today.”
“Of course,” said Nico Dix. “You practically worked a double shift. Mistakes can happen when you’re tired. For today, what about taking the afternoon off, get yourself an Equinox Box or something and have a rest at home, we’re fully staffed, go ahead.”
“Thank you,” Naima said, feeling suddenly dizzy.
“As for the journalist, I advise you to block his contact and forget about it,” she added. “Tomorrow we’ll talk more about your family needs. Will you send in the next person waiting?”
The next person. Naima thought of the other graveyard girls who’d entered the office just before her and felt a new wave of humiliation. How many other people on her team might Jason Berg might have given his number to? When she came out of Nico Dix’s office and saw Nitin waiting, slight and leaning fearfully, she felt hatred again, that Vantablack sinkhole widening inside.
SEALED IN THE toilet stall, Naima pulled her knees up to her chin, regaining herself to the sound of artificial breezes and chirping birds, willing the panic to subside. Her gaze wandered along an unidentifiable smudge flecked with occult material, the sight of which she found inexplicably satisfying. Supposing she remained here, fell asleep to the sound of the brook, woke in the evening to the prehistoric hum of the big vacuums coming alive at sunset? Her jaw unlocked just a little, and she turned over her device, bringing up Jason Berg’s face. The earnest expression, which had touched her, now made her sick, as she thought of him trying to make new coffee buddies with people on her team.
“Asshole,” she whispered. Send message, the Context AI offered. Naima declined, but she did not immediately delete Jason Berg’s contact, either. She was almost certain she had not told him anything.
There were more messages from Alex about her day than usual. The conversations seemed unusually energetic, but also lucid and motivated, which made her feel hopeful, and also a little bit guilty, about everything. If she mentioned Nico Dix’s offer about recovery support, it might trigger his paranoia about the tech industry, and it also might make him think Naima didn’t trust his independent process. I need to give him the chance to succeed, she reminded herself. She re-read all of his messages, and tried to imagine him smiling and functioning highly in the world as he wrote them, but she couldn’t conjure the image, and her anxiety only rose. She decided not to let him know she would be coming home unexpectedly. She wondered what was the fewest number of sleep hours a person could get in a week without dying.
THERE WAS NO Alex in the Mini Con. When Naima came in, the window was open all the way, the rattle of building machines and untethered human sound muscling in from outside. There was the jarring scream of a drill, and an unfamiliar smell: Tobacco vapor. It was immediately wrong, there was no reason for the apartment to smell like that, nor for the window to be open in an effort to dispel it.
Raw fear leapt up into Naima’s throat when there was no Alex in the dark and disorderly bedroom, nor in the bathroom, where the trash compartment had been mysteriously emptied though the space itself was still cluttered. Naima wrenched and shook the bedsheets, threw the cushions from the sofa, tore through the kitchen, palming the countertops for residues, sticking her hands heedlessly into the jaws of the sink drain. Fury yawned so suddenly in her that she thought she might fall in, black out.
So what if Alex got some tobacco, she spoke to herself, it doesn’t need to mean anything more than that. Maybe he got it from someone at Adventure Zone, maybe one of his old coworkers had even come by. They went to go do something related to a new opportunity. They went to go make a surprise for Naima, and their reward was her suspicion. I need to give him a chance to succeed, she told herself as she dragged the ottoman to the kitchen, and placed it underneath the storage cabinet, the one she couldn’t reach, the one she mistrusted, and climbed up. She found the panels opened easily.
Everything looked like it always did, she saw with concussive relief. Bright purple and orange merchandise from CampSino, Alex’s old company, were stored there and forgotten: Foam toys, t-shirts from a company tournament, some boxes full of vinyl logo stickers (CAMPSINO! THE SOCIAL NETWORK JUST FOR REFUGEES!!). Everything was fine, Naima thought. Then she gave the pile of t-shirts a yank, so that it all suddenly spilled out of the compartment with an unexpected clatter, and she fell backward off the ottoman onto the kitchen floor, amid a rain of finger-sized silvery eggs.
There were hundreds and hundreds of them, Naima had never seen so many, not even in the alleyways of the Old City, practically bursting from the storage niche, tangled up with the detritus of the old company. Some of the eggs were recently used, ragged holes in their ends like erupted sores from whence Alex, his eyes rolling back, had sucked their gaseous contents and then lied to her face every day for months. But yet more of them were unopened, perfectly smooth, waiting for him to return from wherever he went when he thought she was at work.
“Piece of shit,” she marveled softly aloud.
“Sorry, I can help,” read her Context-enabled device, lighting up on the floor beside her. Its screen was cracked, but it still worked.
The drill was screaming outside. Naima slowly realized that she had cut her thumb falling among the eggs, and with calm detachment she flicked the blood toward the wall, where it spattered rudely across the white.
“Call Jason Berg,” Naima said, a great and strange warmth, and also an ache, spreading all through her body at once.
“Hi,” said the friendly, optimistic voice on the other end.
“This is Naima Barton from Context,” she said. “The secret is that we’re not machines. We do lots of processing by hand, based on illegal logs we keep for eight hours at a time, and sometimes we listen live.”
Silence on the other end, as if he were absorbing this, or recording it, or, Naima imagined, already launching some kind of grand publication, going to channel, going live.
“We’re not machines,” she said again, her voice rising like a balloon.
THE WELL
LAURA HUDSON
THE WELL HAD been boarded up for as long as anyone could remember. Esther found it one summer, nestled in the woods behind the old transmission towers, those immense steel aliens frozen in strange geometries on their march toward the horizon. She was ten now, old enough to go off on her own, and when she was alone anything could be a story. As she walked up the dusty path left by a dried stream, she imagined she was an itinerant Sister on a pilgrimage, each step solemn and holy.
When Esther saw it out of the corner of her eye, she did not know what it was at first, only that it felt out of place, an interruption in the conversation the forest was having with itself. Things that people made always looked different from things that simply were, their lines too perfect to be wild. There were two rotting wooden posts, one on either side of the well, connected by a pole that must have held a bucket, once. It looked a little like an altar, she thought. A heavy metal lid had been placed across the top, one that would not move no matter how hard Esther pushed.
Soon it was her favorite place to go whenever her Mama was too busy to entertain her. When she told the other children, one of them whispered that there was probably a body buried at the bottom. Esther decided instead that a girl had been imprisoned inside it, and was waiting for someone to save her. Maybe someday when she was stronger, Esther thought, she would set her free.
The well could be so many other things besides a well: sometimes the turret of a castle, which she paraded across as a queen, waving to her subjects; sometimes a pulpit where she gave fiery sermons that moved her parishioners to tears; sometimes a ship that she sailed, lonely and brave, through an ocean of roiling green.
I
t was hard for her to imagine there had ever been water in it, even though there was no other reason for it to be there, no reason for it to be at all. There were lots of things like that in the world: the cracked roads that ran to nowhere, grass springing up in every fissure; the half-sunken homes moldering beside them, revealing their skeletons.
It was wrong for a thing to be a lie, of course, so it was her duty to find a reason. Perhaps it was a monument to a woman who had died of fever during the war, built by a grieving lover who wanted to keep her memory alive in its stones. Or perhaps the water had been poisoned by a traitor, and drunk by some brave hero who warned the rest of the town with her dying breath. Esther swooned atop the well, dying.
The well had nothing to say about it; it was a mouth that had always been closed. Mama told her that it had simply run dry, in the nervous way she sometimes did where her voice crept higher with every step down the path of the sentence. Perhaps Mama had dreamed something horrible about the well once, Esther thought. Dreams were often hard to forget.
EVERY MORNING, THEY went to Church to remember the truth. The hour before the service was always a bit like sleepwalking, when the people of the town floated together in the state between dreaming and waking, like children who had not yet been born.
This was a silent time of renewal, according to Sister Abigail, a time for clearing the mind and preparing to receive the Word. It was best not to speak when the lies of the previous night were still fixed in your mind, their fictions indistinguishable from the truth. Esther liked the quiet, the way it felt like still water, broken only by the sounds of her Mama and Auntie’s leather shoes striding across the floor, the hiss of eggs frying in pans, the soft rustle as she pulled on a fresh set of clothes.