"I have no way of knowing this," Elias interrupted, "but do you think that since financial problems may be the root cause for many of those who choose to check in at Aegis, there might be an emotional component to excluding that category?"
The bogus smile quickly returned and Pierce replied, "That very well may be, Mr. Charon. But you may be surprised to discover that this same excluded list is also populated with many who practiced in several of the engineering fields, with the exception of civil, electrical, and computer engineers."
"Why no engineers?"
Pierce tilted back in her seat. "That can best be answered by sharing a story with you. I was still outside of Aegis and living in Miami Beach. My daughter, who was graduating from college at the time, told me that she, her boyfriend, and two of his friends were going to climb into his twenty-year-old car at nine o'clock at night and drive to Orlando so they could go to the amusement parks the following morning.
"I told her I thought it was a stupid idea. She asked why, and I explained that her boyfriend's car could break down in the middle of the night and they would be stranded. Quite indignantly, she replied that I had no reason to be concerned because, after all, if the car broke down, she would have three engineers with her. When I finished laughing, my comment was simply ‘And what will they do if the car stops running, whip out their laptops and design a new car?'"
Pierce indulged in a self-satisfied chuckle as she relished her remembrance of the event.
Elias waited for her to stop before asking, "Did she go?"
"No. She decided not to go, but made it quite clear to me that it was her own decision and had nothing to do with what I'd said. Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Walden is not to the point where there is any value to having engineering experience in our cohort. At some point, perhaps, but not now."
"I see."
Leaning forward and resting her slender arms on the table, she continued once more, "Our careers are not all that define us. Any avocations? Hobbies?"
Recognizing the opportunity to provide the Manager with a suitable answer, Elias knew that if he told her his lifelong hobbies were woodworking and furniture making, he would suddenly find himself on the "right" list; but he simply said, "I'm afraid not. After a long day of crunching numbers, all I wanted to do was go home and watch cable."
Another momentary flicker of distaste flashed on her face before Pierce responded, "Very well."
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, nothing to be sorry about," she remarked airily. "But to change the subject, I understand, as you referenced a moment ago, that you had an altercation with our not-so-friendly neighbors after you arrived."
"I did."
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she proceeded. "Apparently, they are not a particularly conscientious bunch, and many people who enter Aegis make it all the way to our front door, so to speak, without encountering them. You are the first who has and arrived to describe it. If I may ask, how did you manage to elude them?"
"As I told Rogan and Johnson, I guess I was lucky. I don't think they were in position to really ambush me. They saw me. I saw them. It was immediately obvious they weren't intending to offer me herbal tea or a fine glass of wine, so I ran."
Pierce was not completely certain Elias' last comment was sarcastic, so she dampened her momentary irritation and persisted, "You just ran away from them?"
Reading her correctly, Elias answered, "I did omit this earlier. My one off-work activity was running marathons. I found that it was a great way to get the clutter out of my head. I actually planned my vacations so that I would be in various cities during their runs."
"Marathons! Really?" Her entire body language changed as she asked excitedly, "Did you ever run the Boston?"
Elias nodded. "The Boston and the New York."
"Well, no wonder you were able to lose them. I doubt that they are runners."
"It was fairly easy to cause them to give up," Elias acknowledged.
The woman they called the Manager paused, her eyes diverting to the blank wall behind Elias, her mental processes so transparent they might as well have been scrolling across her forehead as she stared. The moment of decision came quickly, followed by the first sincere expression to appear on her face, a slight look of sadness.
"Well," Pierce began, her voice subdued, "do you have any questions for me?"
Deciding to maintain his gullible demeanor, Elias replied, "I do. Has there been a relatively recent arrival by the name of Eric Stone?"
"Eric Stone, no."
Since her answer came so quickly, Elias was tempted to ask her if she was certain, but thought better of it. He had already decided that Stone would not have lingered in Walden.
"In that case, no. I don't have any other questions, at least that I can think of right now. I'm sure I'll have plenty for you later."
At his last comment, her eyes flitted away from his. "Very well, then."
She stood and said, "Please come with me."
Rising and fetching his suitcase, he then followed her to the door through which she had entered. He was not surprised to find Rogan and Johnson waiting there. As he and the Manager joined them, Elias almost did not notice the slight shake of her head as Pierce made eye contact with Rogan.
She turned to Elias. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Charon."
"Thank you," he answered, milking his manufactured image. "I'm looking forward to staying in Walden."
More prepared this time, her gaze remained steadily on his face. The faux smile once again curving her mouth but leaving the rest of her face neutral. "Yes. Well, have a good day."
With that, she turned and walked back into the meeting room, closing the door behind her.
"That way," Rogan indicated.
As Elias followed them, he decided to engage in small talk. "She seems very nice."
Johnson nodded. "She is. She's a good manager for us."
They led him down one of the curving hallways perpendicular to the first corridor. He was now traveling on one of the concentric circles right outside the hub of Aegis.
"Do you both like it here?"
"It's fine," Rogan answered.
"Yeah, I do," Johnson said.
Neither of their responses indicated any interest in continuing the conversation, and Elias was certain he knew why. His suspicions were quickly confirmed when they reached another blockade in the hallway. He saw that this one had a steel plate barred to the center.
Apparently, this border to Walden was not as elaborate as the first Elias had seen and included no cameras on the other side, as Johnson hurriedly peeked through three different peepholes, making certain there was no one lurking. After he gave an "all clear" sign to Rogan, the other man lifted the heavy bar from the steel door.
"Where are we going?" Elias asked innocently.
Rogan leaned the bar against the wall and turned to his visitor. "I'm afraid we are escorting you out of Walden."
"Out?" Elias exclaimed, mustering some degree of shock in his voice. "But why?"
"The Manager decided."
"Come on, now. I like it here. Oh, it's because I'm an accountant, isn't it?"
Rogan simply shrugged and said, "It's up to the Manager. That's all we know."
With that, he gripped the handle on the door and swung it open. Johnson stepped through and checked the hallway more thoroughly. He turned back to Elias. "You have a clear route. It looks okay out here. Follow this hallway to the next main corridor, then turn left. You'll find another group there."
"Another group! But I don't…."
Rogan held up his hand to stop Elias. "Look, Mr. Charon. It's nothing personal, all right? Just please don't argue."
Elias decided he had played out his act as far as it should go.
"All right."
He stepped through the opening and paused. Johnson rejoined Rogan on the Walden side of the opening, and they promptly closed the door. The sound of the bar being dropped back into place punctuated the finality of th
e decision.
Charon began his walk down this hallway, mentally adding the new facts he had gained from his interlude with the people of Walden to his picture of Aegis. His pistol still in his right pocket, he carried the suitcase with his left hand and kept a closer vigil on his surroundings. He did not want to be blindsided again, knowing that he could not count on the fleeting apparition to rescue him a second time.
As he slowly proceeded, his mind composed a narrative of his findings thus far. He had suspected that Aegis would, in some ways, become a microcosm of society. That was obvious and inevitable. But which society was the question. Would it be a mini-version of the society he had just left? Or something else? An answer was beginning to formulate in his mind, but he knew he needed more information before a final conclusion could be gleaned.
Approaching the first "spoke" corridor since departing Walden, Elias slowed his pace. Determined to avoid another ambush at this intersection, he quietly placed his suitcase on the floor several yards back and drew his pistol, flipping the safety to the off position. He bent his arm, holding his gun at shoulder height and pointed toward the ceiling, and then moved forward while hugging close to the wall. When he arrived at the corner, he took the next step rapidly, half spinning into a shooter's stance and quickly sweeping the corridor for threats from either direction. It was empty.
Retrieving his suitcase, Elias followed the instruction provided by Rogan and took the route to the left. He was, once again, impressed with the size and scope of Aegis. As he traveled the corridor, proceeding cautiously and stopping to repeat his method of entering each intersection, almost an hour transpired before he encountered anything but emptiness.
Ahead of him was another barrier across the wide corridor, yet this one was different from what he had encountered at Walden. It was also made with concrete blocks, but instead of there being a solid floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall blockade, there was a full-height wall in front, which began at the right side of the corridor and stopped approximately five feet short of the opposite side. Only a few feet behind it was another wall, attached to the left side of the corridor and disappearing behind the first.
Another difference was that this front barrier also had several narrow slots integrated into the masonry, the purpose obvious as he heard a voice ring out from behind the wall. "STOP WHERE YOU ARE!"
Elias froze.
"PUT DOWN THE SUITCASE AND RAISE YOUR HANDS."
Complying, Elias asked in a voice deliberately shaky, "What do you want?"
Ignoring his question, the man behind the wall authoritatively shouted, "MOVE AWAY FROM THE SUITCASE AND LIE FACEDOWN ON THE FLOOR."
Elias crab-walked two steps to the right and dropped slowly to his knees while keeping his hands raised. Then, slowly, he lowered his arms, and placing his palms on the floor, lay facedown down and said nothing. As soon as he was down, he heard two sets of footsteps approach. Judging by the sound, one of the two stopped several feet away, no doubt positioning himself to guard the other. Elias assumed they were armed.
He heard the other guard circle around and approach from behind, reaching down to begin searching him, and finding the Beretta almost immediately. After taking it from Elias' pocket, he resumed the frisk until satisfied that there was nothing else of concern on the newcomer's person.
"All right. Stand up."
Despite his excellent physical condition, Elias rose from his lying position with feigned difficulty, including grunts and groans as he lifted himself. The two men, dressed in green cargo pants, black T-shirts, high-laced boots, and sporting an assortment of tattoos on their arms and necks, both carried Glocks holstered on their hips. Elias guessed they were in their mid-twenties. One of the two was pointing a 12 gauge shotgun at him while the other was down on one knee, rummaging through the contents of his suitcase.
As Elias stood, automatically raising his arms above his head without being told, he looked more closely at the tattoos on his guard and said, "So, 4-1 or 1st Cav?"
The guard grinned instantly. "Yeah, 1st Cav. Are you infantry?"
"Doc Charon. I was in the 4-1."
"Medical Corps, huh? Afghanistan?"
"Iraq and mostly Germany."
"Attached to which unit?"
"I was with the Big Red One."
The smile broadened. "Pussies. You ‘prolly' spent all your time treating STIs."
Before Elias could reply, the second man flipped the suitcase closed and rose, nodding at his partner, who lowered the shotgun and took three steps forward, extending his hand.
"I'm Sweezea. This is Crabill."
Elias shook Sweezea's hand, then Crabill's.
After removing the clip from the Beretta and checking to make certain the chamber was empty, Crabill handed Elias his pistol and said, "Welcome to Madison." He turned over the clip to his partner.
"Madison?"
"As in James."
They turned and walked toward the entrance to the barrier. Elias asked, "Madison, Walden. Do the punks by the entrance have a name for their territory?"
Sweezea laughed. "Yeah, ZooCity. You had the pleasure of making their acquaintance?"
The three men turned to the right as they passed behind the first wall, and Elias saw another man stationed there. He had been watching through one of the view slots and held an AK-47 at the ready, in case his two partners needed help.
"This is Hutson," said Sweezea.
The third man turned to face Elias and, dropping his rifle down to the rest position, stuck out his hand. As he did, Elias read aloud the tattoo on his forearm, "Screaming Eagles."
"Yes, sir."
"Don't ‘sir' me. I worked for a livin'. Just a medical corpsman. Charon."
As Elias said this, he noticed the firmness of the grip intensify slightly and the handshake itself become more enthusiastic.
"Good to meet you, Doc."
Hutson resumed his vigil at the slot as the two others led Elias behind him and around the first switchback. The corridor barrier was a series of offset walls with five-foot openings at alternating ends. When they came to the final offset wall, Elias saw that this walkway was shorter than the others, and built into the end of the aisle was another block wall, also with gun slots facing them. He could see the barrel of what he deduced was an automatic rifle of some type projecting through one of the slots and, at the moment, trained directly on the center of Elias' chest.
"Nice defensive setup," he complimented.
"It works," Sweezea acknowledged. "So how'd you snake past the ZooCity denizens?"
Elias shrugged to communicate that it was no big deal. "A little difference in orientation. They seemed to think that sidearms are for pointing at people. I was always taught that guns were only good for one thing."
Both Crabill and Sweezea were amused by his comment, and Crabill added a facetious "Bang, bang."
"So there's a body back there?"
"Two."
"Cool!"
They cleared the defensive maze and entered the wide corridor.
"I'm going to stay on post," Crabill advised.
Sweezea nodded. Crabill held out his right hand to Elias and said, "See you around, Doc." Elias once again shook his hand.
As the two of them set off down the corridor, Sweezea asked, "You mentioned Walden. You met those guys, too?"
Elias kept pace next to his escort as he answered, "I did."
"Man, you get around! Why are you at Madison? From what I hear about that bunch, they would've snatched you like you were the last whore in town."
"My choice. The second I walked in, I realized that I'd have to leave my testicles at the door if I was gonna live there."
His companion laughed again. "Boy, you nailed that, all right. Still, I can't believe they didn't give you the full-court press to stick around."
"I didn't tell them I was a doc."
"What'd you tell them you did?"
"Accountant."
"Good call."
"Yeah, I figured tha
t out pretty quickly. So where are we going?"
"To meet the Chief."
As they walked, Elias noticed that the environment behind their entrance was, once again, different. ZooCity had been a chaotic mess. Walden had appeared neat in comparison, but had a casual, worn look and feel. Madison, by contrast, was spotlessly clean. Where there had been no placards of any kind in Walden, Madison had an abundance of crisp signage everywhere he looked, mostly filled with indecipherable abbreviations and directional arrows. There were also lines painted on the floor, each a different color. Elias determined that the color of the lines corresponded to the font color on individual signs. As they reached each minor intersection of hallways, some of the colored lines continued straight, while others turned to the right or left. This place, he thought to himself, was set up by someone with a bad case of OCD. The overall feel created was one of regimentation and structure.
As the two of them walked, they passed a man in his late fifties or early sixties, down on one knee, with a drop cloth spread out over a four-by-four area, a bucket of white paint on the cloth, and a paintbrush in his hand as he touched up a small section of wall adjacent to a door. Mounted on the door was a handmade wooden sign, engraved with the legend, "Chief of Staff – Milton Pierce." Sweezea stepped over the drop cloth and knocked twice. A male voice immediately responded, "Come in."
With a slight jerk of his head, Sweezea indicated to Elias that he was to follow, and opened the door, entering. With everything he had seen so far, Elias expected his escort to come to attention and salute the man inside; however, other than a subtle stiffening of his posture, Sweezea acted as if he were bringing a new hire in to meet his civilian boss.
"Sir, this is Doc Charon. He's a newbie."
The man behind the desk was in his forties. He wore a long-sleeved, white shirt, which was crisp and well starched, and he was clean shaven, with hair that was long for a military cut but short for a civilian. Elias decided this compromise was deliberate and contrived to convey a specific message that the man was neither.
"Charon," the man greeted him, standing and extending his hand. "I'm Milton Pierce."
They shook hands, and Elias probed, "Pierce?"
The Aegis Solution Page 7