by O E Tearmann
Kevin felt for the poor bastard. But that didn't stop him from stepping to the table and picking up his employee passkey card. He left the door slightly ajar. The man wouldn't wake enough to notice. He never did.
Speeding his steps, he jogged to the warehouse he needed, using the employee passkey card to snik the door open. He entered a clicking, whirring world of cold machines.
Overhead drones followed their programming, flying in through the entry dock and dropping into their allotted recharging stations in long shelves of cubicles. Slow-crawling StockBots moved on their treads, their automated shelving arms lifting the programmed boxes from the stacks on their carrier baskets and slotting them into the carrying nets hanging open beneath each drone.
On the far end, the conveyor belt from the Distributions Room delivered more packages. Kevin's breath puffed white clouds into the refrigerated air. He grinned. He hadn't dared to try this in months, not since he'd gotten Yvonne hurt, and himself for that matter.
But this would make up for his error in judgment then, and his cowardice today. A really amazing shipment would bring a smile to everyone's face. It'd be worth it.
Using the borrowed passkey, he slid into the Distributions Room. This time he'd planned ahead. This time, he was ready.
Boxes sat open in their carefully labeled grids all across the floor of the huge warehouse, the aisles around them trawled by StockBots fitted with manipulators that allowed them to fetch single apples or bananas without bruising them. One by one, the boxes were packed and sent to those who could afford them. Each grid section was labeled in orange letters four feet tall: CES Level. CSS Level. CAS Level. CPS Level.
Kevin's jaw clenched. Even here, even in a room no one was meant to see, people were segregated by their Citizen Standing Level according to the judgment of the Corporations who owned them. He knew without looking in the boxes that the quality in the Citizen Excellent Standing Level boxes would be exquisite. Those boxes of fruit and vegetables were being delivered to the homes of executives, the restaurants they frequented, perhaps for a snack in their air conditioned offices.
The squashed fruit, the diseased, the undersized or rotting would go down the row to the Citizen Poor Standing level boxes. In other buildings across this area, across this country, the same judgment call was being made on bread, meat, medicine, housing. Life.
American AgCo and every other Corporation checked and aggregated people's credit score and the Citizen Rating their corporation assigned them based on how closely they conformed to the standards for good citizenship in the Corporate Citizen contract their parents had signed the day they were born. Together, the aggregate numbers gave every citizen a Citizen Standing Score and assigned them a priority level for every possible amenity. Every corporation’s standards for what constituted ‘a good citizen’ was different, but they had all agreed on the Citizen Standing System and what it would be used to do.
The bastards.
A slow, cold smile turned up Kevin's lips as he stepped to the wall panel. Well. Tonight, he could throw at least a small wrench into the system that ground people down. Only a small wrench, but enough small injuries could bring anything down. He could do his part.
He slid the foreman's card into the reader. The screen's holographic display fizzed into life, highlighting his hands in blue.
Welcome, Douglas Deaver.
The name sent its familiar pang through Kevin. A rare name, Douglas. His father's name. But this wasn't the time to think about that.
Once he was in, he brought up the delivery schedule, clicked 'Make Correction Manually: Card Insert' and slid the carefully-tailored data card the new codes had been written on into the reader.
Kevin held his breath. This had been when it all went to hell last time. God, they needed a decent hacker on base to double-check his work. Since Peter had abandoned the fight to live a low-tech, nonviolent life on the Fringe they'd been barely getting by between his own middling coding and Janice's.
Not a time to think about Peter, either. If the screen turned red…
The blue screen flickered green. Changes Made.
Kevin breathed out a long sigh of relief. "Thank you, Lord," he whispered into the privacy of his helmet.
Twenty minutes later, the passkey card was replaced and the guard's house door closed, locking itself. Kevin was already driving.
It was nearly four in the morning when Kevin arrived at the drop point he'd entered. Killing the bike's engine and uncovering the bike trailer he'd hidden in a stand of rabbit brush, he lay down, crossed his arms behind his head and watched the sky.
The wind was blessedly cool. The night sky had taken on the clear blue that hinted at the possibility of dawn, stars pinpricks of cold fire. Feeling the world turn beneath him and hearing his blood coursing in his ears, Kevin waited.
The buzz began far off. Kevin's blood was loud in his own ears. He'd checked. He'd double-checked. But that could always be the sound of an armed ViperDrone.
Then he saw the shape, bright white against the stars. The delivery drone swooped gracefully low on its six whirring rotors, carrying net unfolding like a flower to drop a shining white box. And then there was another, and another, and Kevin threw his head back to the stars and laughed in delight as the boxes stacked themselves up at his feet.
It was close to six in the morning by the time Kevin carefully maneuvered his laden bike under the slicktarp and entered his base pass code. The temperature was already beginning to rise, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he brought the first stack of boxes down the stairs into the base cool. The thrill of what he'd just pulled off and the giddiness of the StayWake made him feel hyper-alive. "Bounce, bounce, nothing's gonna bring me down!" he sang quietly under his breath, rounding a corner with his bounty in his arms.
He almost ran into Liza, who was glaring at him.
Kevin grinned, hefting the boxes onto one arm and using his free hand to shove his flattened red hair out of his eyes. "Top of the morning! Fancy strawberries for your breakfast?"
Liza stepped close enough to Kevin that they were nearly nose to nose. When she spoke, her voice shook. "Where. The hell. Were you?" Her eyes narrowed. "Are you on StayWake? Your pupils are tiny."
"Ah, but my success was enormous," Kevin quipped, tipping his chin down towards his burden with a bright grin.
Liza stared at him for a long, long moment. Then she sighed and turned away. "I'm writing you up," she muttered wearily. "Goddamnit, Kev."
"Liza!" Setting down the boxes in the hall, Kevin took a few steps and touched his friend's shoulder gently. "Liza, I just-"
Liza whirled on him, her dark eyes gleaming with tears. "No, you didn't 'just', Kevin. You fucked up! You went on a run without informing anyone. You could've fucking died out there, and we never would'veknown. And you're hopping yourself up again. You're going to destroy your kidneys if you don't quit, and you don't give a shit at all. All you care about is getting something that'll make everybody grin and proving that you can do anything! Well, you know what? You can't! And when you fuck up, people die, remember? Last time you took a stupid fucking risk, you ended up in surgery and Taylor ended updead, and… and…"
Kevin felt as if his muscles had frozen. Liza stared at him, her expression dropping from anger to horror in the blink of an eye.
"Kev," she murmured. "Kev, I didn't- I didn't mean…"
When Kevin spoke, his words were unusually perfect in their pronunciation and totally uninflected. Even he thought he sounded robotic.
"I know quite well what happens when I fail. But thank you for the reminder."
The tears brimmed over in Liza's eyes. "Damn it, Kev. Don't you pull this bullshit on me! You said you were going to be there to help me get everybody straightened out. I can't do this alone, but if you're going off pulling stupid shit, too… You said you'd-"
"I said I'd be here. I said I'd help ho
ld us together. That's what I'm doing," Kevin stated with quiet precision. "And I'm standing right here."
In the breathless silence, someone cleared their throat. Kevin and Liza both turned sharply. The new commander was standing there, looking tousled, looking bewildered, and most definitely looking annoyed.
"Okay," the man began eventually, eyes moving from one face to the other. "Is somebody going to tell me what's going on?"
Kevin swallowed. Of all the times. And of course the man had to look as if he'd just rolled out of bed, still soft and gentle around the eyes with sleep, his blonde hair still mussed and catching the day-cycle lights in a faint halo. If ever Kevin didn't need to be distracted it was now, and the very man that he needed to impress was the distraction.
Kevin forced himself to straighten and cleared his throat. "Sorry sir. Just a difference of opinion."
Liza snorted.
Aidan studied Kevin's face. Kevin realized that his body was shivering subtly with the tail end of his dose. Terrible timing.
"Are you okay?" Aidan asked eventually. "You look kind of-"
"Just fine," Kevin interrupted brightly. "Just a little-"
"No, sir, he's not," Liza interrupted him, glaring at Kevin. "He's sleep deprived and high on StayWake. Again. With your permission, sir, I'm writing him up for abuse of stimulants and failure to follow procedure."
Aidan blinked. "Wait. Failure to follow- Did I miss something?"
Liza poked Kevin hard in the chest. "This thrill seeking idiot just went on an unsanctioned run and got us a bunch of CES level supplies from somewhere."
"The words 'thank you' could have been inserted so easily," Kevin added dryly in Liza's direction, then glanced at Aidan and decided to shut up.
The other man was staring at him in a wide-eyed emotion he couldn't quite read. Then, to his surprise, his new commander covered his face with one hand. He stood like that for a long, long moment. Then Aidan sucked in a deep breath and raised his head.
"You want to explain this?"
Kevin swallowed hard. "It was my mistake that lost us half a supply shipment yesterday. I felt it was my place to rectify the situation."
Aidan's blue eyes held his for what felt like an eternity. Then the commander turned away. "I'll write the reprimand, Liza. Thanks. Kevin, get stuff put away. I understand that you thought you needed to do this, but going on a mission without approval was a totally unacceptable move."
"I understand, sir," Kevin murmured. He wasn't sure if the man heard him or not.
Feeling the thrill draining out through his boots, Kevin turned to do his duty. No, this was not going well at all.
Event File 13
File Tag: Report Preparation
Timestamp:10:00-4-8-2155
"Okay, you're good!" Dozer shouted over the sound of the garage door rattling up. The jeep's electric motor whirred into life, sizzling under Aidan as he flicked on the vehicle's holographic HUD and pressed the go pedal. He heard the old jeep's AC rev up as he drove out of the break in the slick tarp and hard sunlight slanted across the machine's roof.
Aidan took a breath. Okay. Two hours out, meet with Commander Magnum for a first-week in person debrief and report, two hours back. Five hours. In five hours, it'd all be over and he could relax.
Five hours. He could do that. He could do that.
Couldn't he?
The jeep's all-terrain tires rattled over scrub grass and pebbly soil, sending a plume of dust out behind him that made Aidan glad Dozer had checked the surveillance drone patterns and planned a route for him. That dust looked like a banner in his rearview mirror. What if a random EagleCorp patrol saw? What if some Fringer desperate for cash bounties called him in?
"Stop it," he whispered to himself as the jeep topped a rise. "Just stop."
He hated this. He hated the paranoid scenarios his mind threw up when he was anxious, making difficult situations that much more terrifying.
"You're fine," he whispered. "Stop freaking."
And, yet, the idea of what he'd say in his report still made his pulse race. How was he supposed to make everything that had happened this week and everything he'd screwed up sound good? He'd completely screwed over a simple requisition run. He'd screamed because of a lizard, for godssakes. He was screwed.
His heart missed a beat at the sight of a rock he hadn't noticed and he skewed the jeep sideways, fishtailing on the loose soil. For a handful of frantic heartbeats, the world spun.
When the landscape steadied down, Aidan took a whooping lungful of air. Resting his head on the steering wheel, he listened to his frantic heartbeat. "Fuck."
Raising his head, he pulled out his tab. He had to get himself calmed down. Had to make this meeting in time and in a state to make sense. Had to make a good impression. If he was going to pull that off, he needed to get his head on straight.
Fingers fumbling, he typed fast as the holographic screen shuddered, trying to compensate for his jerky movements. The cooling fan began to whine in the tab's case as the holographic generator got to work.
"Hello, Aidan," Omi's digitized voice murmured gently. "How are things?"
Aidan felt the hysterical laugh claw its way up his throat. "How are things? My logistics officer is hot as hell and he's getting high, taking crazy risks and skipping out on procedure. My munitions officer is batshit crazy. My hydroelectrics officer and my medical officer both scare the crap out of me. I screwed up a req run that a first-year specialist should've been able to handle because nobody told me what the hell was going on, and my personnel officer broke down crying and screaming yesterday in front of me in the hallway and I think I'm going to do the same thing any time now. That's how things are. I'm screwed!" He dropped his head onto the steering wheel again. "I'm totally screwed."
The holographic generator eased into a lower pitch as the psychological health coach program worked. "Let's work through the points one by one," Omi's voice murmured gently. "You are worried because you don't think you did well on a requisitions pickup?"
Aidan sucked in three long breaths the way he'd been coached, forehead resting against the cool plastic. He unbuttoned the top button of the dress-uniform shirt he'd put on to see Magnum in.
"They had a second pass code with the contact as a safety measure. Nobody remembered to tell me about it. The guy sent the semi with half the shipment we were expecting away before Yvonne talked him around," he whispered. "Nobody told me. I didn't ask. And I lost us half a shipment. We needed that. I mean Kevin replaced it the next day, but if I hadn't screwed up… and the way he replaced them is a whole other problem."
Slowly, he raised his head, eyes closed. "Omi, they don't trust me. And all I did was make sure they keep thinking I'm useless."
"On the contrary, Aidan," Omi's soft voice stated, "I believe you displayed an important point. When they fail to confide in you, there is difficulty. When they cooperate, there is success. They will not forget. I believe you've increased their respect."
Aidan laughed softly. "I wish."
"Did you notice a change in their behavior after you spoke with them on the subject? Did you notice a change in behavior when you spoke with your medical and hydroelectric officers?" the modulated voice asked gently.
Aidan shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Janice started smiling at me. And…" He considered his next words. "And she stood up for me in front of everybody in the canteen. I know she's supposed to be my subordinate, that it's not a big deal. But Kevin says she runs the show and, if she likes me, everybody else will listen."
That had felt good, hadn't it? Seeing Janice grin at him, watching her cuss out Lazarus and then turn to him and smile.
Smiles. The way Kevin had smiled at him yesterday… and the way that smile had faded.
"Aidan?"
"Yeah?" he asked into the whir of the air conditioning.
"You should begin driving if you want t
o arrive on time. We can speak during the trip."
"Oh. Yeah." Blinking his eyes clear, Aidan brought the engine back to life and carefully maneuvered out of the long skid divots he'd left in the soil.
"Based on my information, I think your logistics and requisitions officer is right." Omi's modulated voice stated, "And speaking of Kevin, would you be alright speaking about him?"
Aidan nodded slowly. "Yeah."
"You are attracted to him."
Aidan nodded weakly. "Yeah, but it's my job to reprimand him when he disobeys."
"As you should, Aidan. You are protecting his life by deterring him from taking unsafe actions." The cooling fan kicked up to a higher pitch in the tab. "Don't think of it as yelling at someone you like. Think of it as protecting him from his bad decisions. That is what you're doing. You're protecting someone who hasn't realized that he needs assistance. Yet."
"Yeah, but if he ends up hating me for it…" Aidan sighed.
"Aidan, based on the man's records he is highly intelligent and socially aware. He does not appear to suffer from misplaced animosity. Running a behavioral algorithm of his previous actions, I believe he will take the admonition as constructive." The hologram's face flickered in a smile. "He may not obey, but he will understand your motivations. I have also run behavioral algorithms on the other three crew members you are concerned over. I believe you are succeeding."
Aidan shook his head. "That's just code."
"It is code that produces very accurate analyses," the hologram stated quietly.
Outside, the yellow grasses rolled away endlessly under the bowl of the hot sky. Aidan thought the words over for a breath. Jackson had been an amazing coder, working with kickass programs he'd tried for a month to pirate out from under TechoCorp. He knew he could trust this analysis. But his emotions just didn't want to hear it.
"You are doing well, Aidan," Omi's voice repeated. Aidan glanced at the representation of his sister, and felt himself smile. It might not be his sister, but it looked like her. Sounded like her. Jackson had been right to use her image. He'd always trusted Naomi.