Someone had recently installed a tabletop pastrymaker in the corner. I wasted no time punching in a chocolate eclair. The device mixed, extruded, and flash-baked the dough, while I watched through a dim little window. It cooled the dessert off in only a second or so, with a blast of food-safe super-cold dry mist. Then it foamed-in some cream from a nozzle, while applying a thin layer of dark chocolate to the top. With a ding, my pastry was presented on a little disposable plate that had a bright pattern of flowers. Ghazza wasn't even done adding sweetener to her cup. Oh, yeah -- Corporatespace had the best toys!
"Well," my boss stated at last, "we'll give it a try. But if we need you elsewhere..."
"I'll be right there," I assured.
And that was that. With the blessing of my supervisor, I was given access to highly restricted military neural interface technology. Before the shift was through, I was perusing advanced bio-control systems, wetware/hardware connections...and especially, emergency reset procedures for malfunctioning cyborgs.
* * *
The ball screamed by my left foot, and I twisted fast to scoop it up, missed, lost my balance, and flopped over with a howl of laughter. I wasn't drunk. I wasn't hurt. I was having fun. Falling down was fun. Elaki was about ten meters behind, and scooped it up.
"Plug!" she cried, running straight for me. I was on all fours, still laughing, and she stepped up onto my back, and jumped high. She wasn't a big woman, and her softshoes meant it didn't hurt. I rolled over just in time to see her spin in the air, legs tucked in, then land gently on the hovering sphere above the deck. She got whistles and cheers from everyone, and I joined in.
Indeed, I truly had.
Barney asked me to come to practice, just as he was leaving the apartment -- this, I think, more to be polite than anything else. They were going to break into teams and run through a mock-game, he said. I didn't want to be alone, suddenly, so I agreed.
I swallowed my discomfort, meeting in the pub beforehand, and once again getting the hundred-meter stare from Laydin. I stopped at a market along the way, and bought a one-piece workout/jumpsuit thing. I borrowed a basket from the court (they had a few dozen older, beat-up ones handing on pegs, for general use), and then ran out onto the court, announcing that I had Blue Starboard. They indulged me, and I was having a grand old time. Forget what I said about it not being my game, I told them at the pub. Tip seemed a little irritated by my presumption (or maybe I was just reading more into his tone of voice and unusual dearth of funny tales, than just a hard day's work), but they all agreed pretty readily.
Elaki ran over to the other side of the plug, out of sight momentarily, then reappeared around the far side. She threw the ball down to Fanny, who caught it with a clomp and launched it back over to Green from the opposite way it had come at us. I heard surprised shouts, and in a moment, the little black projectile zipped around the inside circumference of the court unmolested, coming back for a point. Such a scoring pitch was called a full orbit in game parlance.
I was on my feet by now, and used the smack to stop the ball. Scooping it up from a stationary state actually wasn't a dead-simple operation, so I struggled a bit before picking it up with the other hand and placing it in my basket. A legal move, but terribly amateurish. Thinking a repeat of the scoring pitch might be unexpected, I flipped the basket up, and Elaki caught the ball in mid-air. She spun around and tossed it down to Fanny again, who, in turn, launched it as before, after two fast steps in a slightly different direction.
"Oh, come on...!" Barney howled, and so did the others. Paul, the chunky guy with marital problems, whistled in a distinctive razzing way that smackball fans always used when they were upset with a call or play.
The ball dutifully dashed around again, this time with Lili, playing for the Greens, chasing it. She reached low, legs pistoning madly, just as it came to the line, then stumbled and rolled over into our side. Two points to Blue -- one for the ball, and one for the penalty!
"Clear!" Elaki called directly over me, then did a running jump into the air, tumbling to dive straight down, feet first, once she passed into the gravity field of the lower court. She miscalculated, though, and came down sideways, while I hadn't been fast enough to even get out of the way. She dropped like rain, and the two of us collapsed in a heap.
Fanny had, in the meantime, caught and relaunched the ball, her back to us, so she didn't see that her teammates weren't in position to follow up. Someone on the other side deflected the projectile hard, and it buzzed back from an oblique angle. It hit me square in the lumbar region, as I lay on my side, and I squeaked as might a pinched dolphin. My smothering teammate had already been laughing from the fumbled drop-down, and my high-pitched complaint only turned it into a full-on guffaw.
The ball had hurt, but not too bad -- just like the collision. Nonetheless, the two accidents happening together made Barney stop gameplay long enough to order Elaki and me to take a break.
She helped her fat landing pad to his feet, and we limped over to the lift, at the equator. It sat flush to the deck until we called for it aloud, then the AI extruded a circular handrail up from the floor, while a hatch opened, revealing a round platform within. We entered the ring, and the elevator sunk through the floor as the hatch re-closed above our heads. This was the only spot in the court that exactly corresponded to the direction of apparent gravity on the station. A combination lounge and locker room space was under the court. It had several Tri-D units displaying the action up above from various angles.
"Thanks for the catch," the short-haired woman offered, when we sat down -- she, upon a plush sofa to one side, I in a matching chair.
"Such as it was," I laughed, filling a tall disposable cup with ice-cold water that was right there within reach of my seat. I handed it to her, and she accepted gratefully. I filled one for myself, and sat back with a groan. Barney had been right to send us off -- I'd pulled about a dozen muscles.
"You'll want a hot shower and a nerveblock," Elaki advised. "Hey, are you doing anything later on?"
"I don't know...I was thinking of going into work, actually. I have a lot of reading to do. Why? What's up?"
"A friend of mine is shipping home tomorrow, and we're throwing him a party. Should be going all night. Nothing fancy, but there's food and music. Wanna come?"
She looked at me frankly, with a rosebud smile, her small athletic build accentuated by a vermilion pixie cut and elfin features. Her dark brown skin was glistening, and she looked very cute at that moment.
"Sounds like fun," I replied with grin, cementing that this was well-and-truly a day of surprises.
The session wrapped up soon. After showering and applying the suggested nerveblock strip, I bid the other Vipers goodshift, and followed Elaki down a service corridor, then over to an airlock in an obscure section of the station.
The party was being held in a large exterior fuel pod that had been recently emptied for a refitting scheduled for the following week. Fully scrubbed clean, it was climate controlled and had atmo connections linked in from the station for the sake of workers who would be doing the refit. An extensible plastic tunnel, attached to the airlock, provided access. I noticed that the lock's sensors had been disabled from this side, like how Dieter and John had done it. Pedestrian Control would have no idea it was opening and closing. Something similar must have been effected upon the station monitoring devices in the companionway as well, since revellers were coming and going all night.
The tube remained retracted as a matter of course, folded up accordion-style to the airlock, until it was called for remotely by anyone in the tank wishing to leave. This was a bit slow and clunky, but it kept the noise in check by isolating the bacchanal by vacuum.
Loud revels were generally frowned upon by station administrators, because people sometimes overdid it, and couldn't make it into work for their next shift -- to say nothing of how disruptive it was for the neighbors. Quiet, sedate gatherings were more in-keeping with the sensibilities of the Handshake (o
r its more conservative management types, anyway), so they actively discouraged anything that was less controlled.
Well, they would have hated this thing!
The tank, once we were inside, proved to be packed with colored lights, holograms writhing in time to pounding music, and people doing the same. I lost sight of Elaki almost immediately, though I'd been right behind her. People I didn't know, and people I thought I'd seen in the companionways and on the streets -- or maybe on the trams, the offices, the workshops, the meeting rooms, the whatever -- all danced and bobbed around me to a pooka/ska rhythm so penetrating and slamming, it was like getting tackled over and over.
Sound traps hung from the curved ceiling (or whatever you call it, inside a fuel tank), killing echoes and dampening the worst of the distorted noise. It was still batteringly loud, though, and I could barely tell what was sound and what was sight with the lights and holos flashing and dazzling in perfect time to the beat.
A press of bodies constrained me all around, pushing, leaning, brushing by, shouting unintelligibly to one another, or maybe to me...it was overwhelming!
I made my way forward, hoping to reach a wall and put it to my back. Instead, I came across a table piled high with drink and food dispensers. There were a lot of machines, actually, a few of them expensive-looking; someone planning the party must have worked for a distributor on-station. There was a tall fellow with vaguely Asiatic features standing behind one of the liquor fountains. The machine's service panel was open, and he poked around the guts with a small tool. The guy wore a focused headlamp to see what he was doing, despite all the spinning, sparkling party lights.
"Is it broken?!" I shouted to him. He looked up, but hadn't caught my words. I yelled again, and this time he nodded.
"One of the mini-pumps! I knew I should have brought a service kit tonight!"
"How did you get all this stuff in here?!"
He grinned, and stabbed the air in the direction of the extensible tube.
"By hand, one-by-one!"
"Did you use a flatcar to get them to the airlock?!"
"Robot! Delivery drone! Nobody ever notices 'em coming and going! Had one drop these units off in a supply room, right near the lock! Just a few at a time, over the last week! Worked like a charm!"
That sounded like a clever idea, and I told him so. He grinned.
"Listen," I called, "I have a private package I need to move from one closet to another! Do you think that would work for me?"
"Is it big?!"
"Sort of -- and heavy!"
He considered it, taking a drink from a cup at his elbow, evidently pleased to dispense elicit advice.
"You need a red drone! Not the yellow or green ones! It doesn't work with them! What department are you in?!"
"R&D!"
"Okay, then you have it easy! R&D drones have priority! Wait 'til somebody else is sending one out on a job, then stand in it's way! Tell it, Task Update Override Priority Gold!"
"What was that?!" I had my ear up close to him by now. His breath smelled like alcoholic fruit punch. He repeated it.
"Tell the robot what to get, where to get it, and where to bring it! Every closet has an index number -- you need to use those. Enable the job with, Task Update Complete! The drone will go ahead and make your delivery, then return to its normal queue! There is a record of the job, but it's appended to the last person's ID who gave it a task, not to yours -- and, if there aren't any delivery problems, no one even looks at the log!"
I thanked him for the info, and offered to help with the repair work, but he didn't need any. I repeated my thanks at the top of my voice, then barrelled slowly back through the crowd. This was good info, and it made me happy, but the pounding noise and spraying lights were swamping the nerveblock, and I had to get out.
A hand grabbed my arm from behind. I turned to tell Eloki I wanted to leave, but it wasn't her.
At first I didn't recognize the grinning young woman. She wore a shiny sleeveless blouse, and glowing hair dye with matching party makeup. Then she laughed at my confusion with a distinctive bray that cut through the pounding beat like a splash of ice water.
"Floy!"
"I'm glad you're here! I don't know anybody!"
"I don't either!"
"Half these people are Team!" She informed me, still grinning, and clearly feeling good from some sort of chemical assist. "I think I outrank 'em all! Nobody's even noticed me, yet!" She put a wavering finger to her lips, then honked again in mirth.
"Is that good or bad?!" I shouted.
"Good for now! Then bad! Oh! Really bad!"
But her grin implied that she didn't care -- or didn't want to. I didn't want to, either.
This hidden rave was very much not my scene. I didn't even have a scene, really, but if I'd been looking for one, I sure wouldn't have started here.
Noise, strobe lights, bodies, booze, recdrugs, noise, noise, noise...!
Time to leave. I had to think about delivery drones, and, really, I had to get some sleep. The practice session was rolling back on me hard.
Yet, CPS07 Floyeen Nuellan was certainly in no frame of mind to make career-impacting decisions.
Responsible recdrug use wasn't illegal, but if she'd popped a few happytimes or mood-lifters before walking in, it would have put her in a fun, fuzzy state before she could really judge the situation. Legal or no, getting high and partying with hundreds of subordinates would not impress her superiors. Not on this space station. Poor timing on her part, and maybe worse judgement -- but who hasn't been there before?
So, no, this wasn't fun...nor was anything here my business.
It really shouldn't have been.
"You wanna get out of here?!" I called.
Still grinning, still laughing, but now, with tears starting down her face in a myasmic flow of radioactive eye paint, she nodded vigorously, and caught up my arm.
"I'm having a very bad night!" she supplied, toothlily, giggling like a turkey's gobble.
"I kind of picked up on that! Let's get you home!"
We pushed and wedged our way through, but Floy stopped half way, and got down on all fours.
One of her dangerous-looking stilettos had come off. She was crawling the floor between dozens of stomping feet in search of it, laughing and crying the whole time. I used my fat man profile to plunge through the crowd until I could pick her up under the shoulders.
Thereafter I just shoved her forward like a piece of furniture. She limped along ridiculously on her one tall shoe, and would have fallen with every other step if I hadn't been holding her up.
Elaki was camped near the exit hatch, possibly ever since we'd gotten separated. The place was too full for her to have seen us coming; we just barrelled forward, and there she was with a few friends I didn't know. The smackballer was startled to see us, and cast an arched glance at Floyeen.
"Ejoq! There you are! Wait! Are you leaving?!"
"I found a sick co-worker!" I shouted back.
"I'm sick!" Floy echoed, face a glowing mess, grin bright, coughing giggles quite audible this close up. "Everyone always says so!"
"I can't just leave her here!"
"Home, James!" my boss commanded imperiously, pointing at the door with a beringed finger. Then she laughed some more, and swept Elaki into a sudden hug, which startled everyone.
"I'll see you at the pub tomorrow, okay?!" I called over my shoulder, while moving Floy forward through the hatch -- but if the elfin woman replied, I didn't hear it.
The Seven couldn't give me a sensible answer about where her quarters were located, so I looked up CPS07 Floyeen Nuellan in the first station directory we came to. It listed some shared bunking in a Team facility half the circumference of the station away. That would have made getting her home in this state, and unnoticed, impossible. Instead, I steered her toward my place, hoping Barney would be a good sport.
We took the tram. Floy was loud and senseless, and, as I'd hoped, people did their best to ignore her.
"This is my boyfriend!" she announced, grabbing me around the neck with one arm, possessively. She said this to an older woman in the next seat over, who just smiled at us nervously, and looked away.
"Are you my boyfriend?" she whispered into my ear, somehow spitting when she did it.
"I'm you're friend," I assured, wiping out my ear canal with a finger.
"I'll take it!" she shouted, still close, and then brayed sharply. The older woman changed seats.
Quite surprisingly, Barney wasn't home when we got to the apartment. It was now late third shift, which usually found him snoring in his room, but, though his smackball gear was there, indicating he'd come home after practice, the large man, himself, was nowhere to be found.
"What a place! It's so big! Mine is small. Team makes us live small."
She really needed a shower, but a shower would have been inappropriate and very difficult to wrangle just then. I guided her to my room, and to the narrow, plush mattress in the corner. She stumbled into it, her one shoe tripping her up. She screeched as she went down, then made mule noises, face buried in a pillow. She rolled onto her back, still laughing, smearing makeup on the sheets, and threw her legs wide.
"Come to me, my prince!"
"I'm on the couch, tonight," I stated flatly, closing those legs, and slinging them over so she could stretch out. I wrestled off the treacherous shoe with a remarkable amount of difficulty, as if it was determined to remain a plague on the night. Floy chortled the whole time with small nasal hoots. When I stood up, she reached out for my hand, but missed.
"No, no, no! I don't want to be alone, Ejoq!"
"Few people do," I confirmed, drawing up a blanket to her chin. The tears had started again, this time without any laughter. They were heavy and flowing, though she didn't sob once. It was like she didn't even notice.
"Work is going to be soooooo awkward tomorrow!" she warned as I turned to leave. I paused at the door to reply, but she was already asleep.
Risk Analysis (Draft 04 -- Reading Script) Page 30