by Rob Hart
“I think you should have hit him harder, then,” Paxton said, which earned a smile. “I didn’t know people got partnered up here. All those videos we watched, the security officers were generally on their own.”
“Blue work is mostly solo, unless it’s special projects, or task force stuff.” Dakota turned her face a little toward Paxton, looking him up and down. That eyebrow again. “Dobbs tells me you’re the man’s going to crack our smuggling problem.”
“I haven’t exactly agreed to that yet….”
Dakota smiled. “Sure you have.”
They reached an elevator bank. Dakota swiped her wrist across the panel and placed her arms behind her back, taking another look at Paxton. He truly could not tell whether she was interested in getting to know him or saw him as an inconvenience. She had the demeanor of a blank piece of paper.
“So where are we headed?” Paxton asked.
“Walk around a bit,” she said. “Stretch your legs. I hear it’s up to three hours now. The introductory videos.”
“I wasn’t timing it, but that sounds about right.”
“It’s mostly cover-your-ass stuff,” Dakota said. “Not for you, for management. Something goes wrong, they can say they reviewed this stuff, it’s not on them, it’s on you.”
An empty elevator arrived. They stepped on and Dakota selected the bottom floor, which would bring them to the tram station. As the doors slid closed, she said, “I don’t need to tell you this. You worked in a prison. But as time goes on, you’ll see there’s the Cloud way of doing things and the right way of doing things. Sometimes those are the same, sometimes they aren’t.”
“I am familiar with that concept, yes,” Paxton said.
They stepped off the elevator and strode down the corridor, turning the corner into a thick crowd of people lined up at a long row of kiosks against the wall, where they could input their problem—housing issue, banking questions, etcetera—and be directed to the appropriate floor and room.
Dakota didn’t speak. Didn’t look interested in speaking. She walked, and Paxton followed. A few people threw glances their way. He understood this dance. Dobbs called the polo shirt an equalizer. It wasn’t. Didn’t matter if the badge was tin, it still shone if it caught the light at the right angle.
A tram car pulled in and they climbed aboard. The crowd seemed to part for them. Still Dakota didn’t talk. This, Paxton understood, too. For them to talk, to engage in conversation like normal people, would humanize them too much.
Paxton hated how easy it was to slip back into that mind-set. Like walking the stacks all over again.
They rode the tram through Care, then the warehouse and Incoming, finally arriving in the lobby of Oak. They took the escalator up into the terminus of the promenade, where a tram line came in from Incoming and went out to the processing facilities. There were also loading bays and docks for shipments. Food and goods for the stores running through the promenade. A lot of those goods were moved around by electric golf carts with rolling platforms attached to the back. It was a big, busy space, workers in green and brown dashing around each other, moving goods.
Dakota cleared her throat. “This right here. This is the problem area.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is where everything comes in,” she said. “I mean, technically, it all comes in at Incoming, but mostly in large packages that get doled out where they need to go. Our theory has been that this is where the oblivion comes in. Maybe different shipments each time. Could be a ring of employees. Could be a single person. There’s a lot we don’t know about how this works. But my gut tells me that it all comes down to here.”
Paxton walked a bit, looking, not at anything in particular, but around. He could see how this might be a good entry point. There were a lot of nooks and crannies. Alcoves where the golf carts were stowed, doors branching off into what he assumed were webs of hallways running behind the storefronts. There were more than a hundred people unloading boxes, putting them on carts. You’d need an army to watch the entire thing.
“Why not just put in more cameras?” Paxton asked.
Dakota shook her head. “The overlords don’t like them. That’s still in the video, right? Dobbs has had this fight, but this comes right down from the man at the top. Says they’re not homey. That it’ll make people uncomfortable.” She threw up air quotes around the last word and piled on an exaggerated eye roll.
“Right. All the people who are wearing tracking watches everywhere they go.”
Dakota shrugged. “When one of us owns the company, we can change it.”
Paxton took a few more steps, surveying the surroundings. “Food shipments were always popular. We had this big rush of heroin for a little while. Turned out, everything was coming in shoved down in jars of peanut butter. Dogs couldn’t smell it.”
“We’ve been up and down the food deliveries,” she said.
“Tell me about oblivion,” Paxton said. “Like I said to Dobbs, I don’t even know what it is.”
“He mentioned that, yeah.” She looked around. Made sure they were alone. “Come here.”
She led him to a quiet corner, next to a long row of plugged-in, recharging golf carts. She reached into her pocket and came out with a small plastic case, wide as a postage stamp and a little bit longer. She opened it and slipped out a thin piece of film. Tinted green, rectangular, barely smaller than the case. A breath strip.
“That’s it?” Paxton asked.
She nodded. He took it and turned it over. Light and thin and a tiny bit sticky.
Dakota took it back, slipped it in the case. “Absorbed in the mouth, goes right into the circulatory system, bypassing the gastrointestinal tract so it doesn’t degrade.”
“How do you know people aren’t just walking in with it? I could have brought ten pounds of it with me when I came in yesterday.”
Dakota laughed. Not with him, at him, and he felt blood rush to his face. “Sniffers. Installed on the scanners you came through. More effective than dogs because you don’t know they’re there. You think we didn’t think of that?”
“What about visitors? People coming in and out?”
“First, everyone here comes through the scanners, visitor or resident,” she said. “Second, people don’t get a ton of visitors here. You know how much it costs to rent a car or fly. I mean, my mom used to visit once a month, when I started working here. Now I see her on Thanksgiving.”
“And what about naloxone? Does it stop an oblivion OD?”
“Different chemical process. No way to stop it. Try to keep up, okay?”
The blood that had rushed to his face flashed hot. “I figure the reason you’re coming to me is you want a fresh perspective on this, right? So, sure, I’m going to throw out a few obvious questions. If you could do it on your own, you wouldn’t be asking me.”
The words were caustic in his mouth. Dakota paused. Her eyes got a little wider.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a bit much.”
“No,” Dakota said, lip curling into a grin. “It was exactly enough. C’mon, let’s walk some more.”
They strolled in silence for a bit, until it became too much, so Paxton asked, “What did you do before this?”
“Odd jobs, mostly. Some night security work, because it was quiet and gave me time to read, which is why I think I got shuffled into this,” she said.
They moved onto the promenade, where there was a steady flow of people moving back and forth. Paxton caught stray glimpses of blue polos, in shops, along the upper walkway. A few of them saw him and gave a brief nod.
“To be honest, I didn’t want to work security,” Paxton said. “I wanted to work the warehouse floor. Any color but blue, really.”
“How come?” Dakota asked.
“Wasn�
��t a big fan of the work.”
“This is a lot different from a prison,” Dakota said. “Probably. And look, I get it. I got here and I wasn’t excited either. But I’ll tell you, it comes with perks.”
The way she said perks made it sound like it rhymed with secret. Generally, Paxton knew what she meant. The prison had perks. Contraband didn’t go into the trash—it usually went home with the guard who found it. Most of the time that was money or drugs.
Not that Paxton ever saw it. But he’d heard stories.
“Like?” he asked.
“You ever want a day off, you’re a hell of a lot more likely to get it from Dobbs than from some random white,” Dakota said. “He takes care of us. When he sees you’re doing the right thing.”
There was more to that “right thing.” Of course there was more. Paxton knew he hadn’t earned more yet. But he wanted to. He was surprised by that feeling. Wanting Dakota to like him. Wanting her respect. Approval was a funny thing. It was like a little pill you could pop in your mouth to make you feel good.
“Security! Security!”
The two of them turned toward the source of the yelling: an overweight, elderly man in a green polo shirt, waving at them from the mouth of a convenience store. Dakota took off at a trot and Paxton followed.
The store was small. Snacks and toiletries. Refrigerator case along the back wall for drinks. Magazine racks. The man was holding a lanky black man in a red polo shirt by the arm. The man—no more than a kid, really—was struggling to get away from him, but the elderly man was big and meaty and had a good grip.
“What happened, Ralph?” Dakota asked.
“Caught this kid stealing,” the man in the green shirt—Ralph—said, mostly directing his attention to Dakota, but throwing a few suspicious glances at Paxton.
“I didn’t steal nothing,” the kid said, giving one final yank to free himself, but once he did that, not running either. Just taking a few steps back, looking for space.
“He pocketed a candy bar,” Ralph said.
“No,” the kid said, growing agitated. “No, I did not.”
“Search him,” Ralph said. A demand.
The kid turned out his pockets voluntarily. They were empty. He looked back and forth between Paxton and Dakota. Shrugged his shoulders. “See?”
“Musta eaten it,” Ralph said.
“Then where’s the wrapper?” the kid asked.
Dakota looked over at Ralph, as if reiterating the question.
“How the hell should I know?” Ralph said. “Kids these days, they’re clever. But he took it. I saw it, with my own two eyes. Comes in here, acting all suspicious.”
The kid sneered. “Suspicious, right. What’s suspicious about me besides the color of my skin?”
Ralph threw his hands up, suddenly offended. “Hey, hey, I’m not racist. Don’t go accusing me—”
“It’s not an accusation,” the kid said, nearly yelling. “It’s the truth.”
This was the moment. The flash point where it got better or worse. Only way to handle the flash point was separation. “Hey,” Paxton said. He pointed to Ralph. “You, go over there. Now, while we sort this out.”
Ralph put his hands up, walked back toward the counter.
“Good call,” Dakota whispered to Paxton, then nodded at the kid. “You take it?”
The kid raised his hands in front of his face, chopping them to punctuate his words. “How many times do I have to say it? No.”
“Okay, kid, look, here’s where we’re at,” she said. “Ralph is old, and he’s a bit of a bastard. He’ll push this and it’ll turn into a thing and there’s a chance you end up with a strike. Or you can send him a couple of credits now and we tell him you paid for it, and we talk him down for you.”
“So, you want me to pay for a candy bar I didn’t take because this racist old man is loud? That’s what you want?”
“No, I want us all to go down the path of least resistance,” Dakota said. “Which means this all ends in the next two minutes, nobody gets a strike, and in a month’s time you won’t even remember how much this cost you. You got me?”
The kid looked at Ralph, who was at the counter. He didn’t like it. Neither did Paxton. But he understood where Dakota was coming from. Sometimes you had to look aside on the little things to keep the peace.
What was the exchange rate for a credit?
“This ain’t right,” the kid said.
“It may not be right, but it’s easy on everyone, including you,” she said. “There are a million other shops you can go into that aren’t run by obnoxious old men. So, c’mon. Do us all a favor. Take the shot on the chin. Live to fight another day.”
The kid sighed. His shoulders slumped. Then he walked to the counter, tapped at his watch, and waved it over the disc, which lit up green.
“That’s what I thought,” Ralph said, triumphant.
The kid had nearly turned all the way around, but at that, he stopped. Balled up his hand. Put his head down and closed his eyes. Gave serious thought to plowing his fist into the old man’s face. Paxton stepped forward. Got close to the kid, so the kid could hear and not Ralph.
“Not worth it,” he said. “You know he’s not worth it.”
The kid opened his eyes. Frowned, and pushed past Paxton hard on his way out of the store.
Dakota turned to Ralph and sighed. “You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?”
He shrugged. Smiled a little smile of victory. “What?”
Dakota left and Paxton followed. When they were out of earshot Paxton said, “The kid wasn’t wrong, you know.”
“You think he’s the only one who would have suffered for that? I bring in Ralph and the kid, you know what happens? Dobbs sits me down and he says”—she dropped her voice a few octaves—“ ‘All this for a damn candy bar.’ ” Her voice returned to a normal register. “And he would have been right. It’s a lot for a few credits.”
“So that’s how Dobbs likes things to get done?”
“When an incident gets logged, it turns into a stat. A stat going into a report. Those reports determine a lot. Our job is to keep the numbers low. Think of it like a reverse quota. The fewer things you have to carry upstairs, the better.”
They walked some more. Through the second dorm, into the next section of promenade, and finally, to the third. Paxton’s watch buzzed.
Your shift has ended. Your next shift begins in 14 hours.
Dakota was looking at her watch, too. Her shoulders relaxed, presumably because she got the same message. “You have good instincts,” she said. “Separating them like that. I think you’ll be a good fit. Think about what Dobbs said, okay? A lot of this job is walking around, being seen. The oblivion task force is at least interesting.”
“I’ll think about it,” Paxton said.
“Good. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
She turned and left, not waiting for a response. As he watched her disappear into the crowd his stomach grumbled at him, so he wandered to Live-Play, not entirely sure what he wanted to eat, until he came across CloudBurger. He’d been wanting to check it out. The CloudBurger was renowned for being one of the best and most affordable fast-food burgers in the country, but you could only get it in a MotherCloud facility.
Burger sounded about right. He’d earned a burger. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d had one. He stepped into the restaurant, greeted by the smell of sizzling meat and fryer oil. It was packed, most of the seats filled up, though at a small table off in the corner, an empty seat across from her, was Zinnia.
ZINNIA
Your shift has ended. Your next shift begins in 12 hours.
Zinnia looked down at her watch with a mix of relief and resentment. Was this how people lived in the real world? She was us
ed to deadlines. Taking jobs as they came. But this, having to punch a clock, or at least having the clock punched for you—she didn’t like it. She needed seven and a half hours of sleep to function. That meant four and a half of free time, which did not seem like a lot.
Would you like to proceed to the nearest exit?
Zinnia raised the watch to her mouth, said, “Yes.”
The directional vibrations carried her across the warehouse floor. It took twenty minutes to find an exit. She stepped through the door, expecting to see some kind of hallway leading to the tram or an elevator, but instead found herself in a room not unlike the one where she’d queued up to get in. A long, snaking line of people, and at the end, body scanners. Men and women in blue polo shirts and baby-blue latex gloves waved people into the scanners, instructed them to put their hands up, and the machines whirred their giant blades around them.
“Can I get through?”
A young Asian woman stood behind her, and Zinnia realized she was standing in the doorway. “Sure, sorry.” As the woman brushed past her, Zinnia said, “This is my first day. Is this the exit?”
The woman nodded gravely. “We go through the scanners on the way out, yeah.”
Zinnia sighed. Followed the woman and got in the line. Five minutes passed. Then ten. At the eighteen-minute mark Zinnia made her way into the scanner. Raised her arms over her head. The mechanical blades spun around her. It was a millimeter-wave machine, shooting electromagnetic beams at her to create an animated picture of what was under her clothing. The man on the other side of the scanner looked at a screen, nodded, and waved her through. Zinnia glanced back, saw her outline on the video screen. She could just barely make out the shadow of her nipples, the tuft of hair between her legs. Seeing it, and then the grin on the face of the security officer looking at it, made her want to slap him, a little impulse tickling her fingers like static electricity.
Having proven that she didn’t steal anything, she was allowed to leave, through a long hallway that wrapped in a curve until it reached the tram platform. As she waited next to a young man with black hair and a sharp nose, she asked, “Is it always like that?”