Severance

by Chris Bucholz

  Hogg turned on to another side street, little more than a hallway. He used to live near here himself, in a tiny little apartment on 7th. The south of the ship had long been the unfashionable end, populated by low–rent, artistic types, as well as more than a few security officers, being close to their headquarters. Some government workers, too — their offices were predominantly in this part of the ship, on the second and third levels, clustered around the Bridge.

  Gabelman’s friend, a Tyson Enlopo, wasn’t any of those. He was a Loafer, though that wasn’t very remarkable; close to a quarter of the ship’s population avoided work for extended periods. The government had tried mightily to curb this attitude for the last decade, in anticipation of landing several thousand people on Tau Prius III only to watch them starve to death. But the lessons hadn’t stuck, at least not yet. Might take a few practice starvations first.

  Hogg hit the buzzer of Enlopo’s apartment. From outside, it looked like one of the doublewide units that were so coveted in this neighborhood. There was no immediate answer, so he buzzed again. Finally, the door opened to reveal a middle–aged man in a naval uniform. “Can I help you?” he asked, confused.

  “I’m looking for Tyson Enlopo.”

  The man’s brow furrowed. “No one by that name here.”

  Hogg blinked. “Well, I have him down as living at this address.”

  “Oh!” A flicker of comprehension crossed the man’s face. “No, no. He moved. A couple weeks ago, I think. I don’t know where, I’m afraid. Guess they haven’t updated his address in the system?”

  Hogg exhaled heavily. “I guess not. Do you know why he moved?”

  The man swallowed. “No idea. This is a great apartment.”

  Hogg thanked the officer and left him in the doorway. He had a couple of different avenues for tracking down Enlopo, but couldn’t see much point. He fully expected to get absolutely nothing out of an interview with the man. He checked the time. Another half hour left in his shift, easily killable with a meandering walk back to the office.

  “Fuck it,” he said. Something bothered him about this Enlopo and his sudden change of address. He opened up his terminal, and tapped out some commands.

  * * *

  DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

  WARRANT REQUEST — COMMUNICATION DEVICE TRACE

  SUBJECT: Tyson Enlopo

  REQUESTING OFFICER: Sergeant Sinclair Hogg

  REASON FOR REQUEST: Subject has incorrect address listed in both the ship’s public database and security database. Contact with subject needed for investigation into murder of Ron Gabelman, deceased April 3rd, 239 A.L. Subject was known to be an acquaintance of Gabelman’s.

  * * *

  DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

  WARRANT REQUEST — COMMUNICATION DEVICE TRACE 903783343

  SUBJECT: Tyson Enlopo

  STATUS: APPROVED

  JUSTICE OF PEACE NOTES: Attending officer is authorized to seek communication device trace for subject TYSON ENLOPO. When contact with subject is made, officer is permitted to collect current address for ship records. Access to search private residences occupied by subject is explicitly NOT granted by this warrant.

  * * *

  Turnaround for the warrant was less than five minutes, but the terminal trace itself took almost half an hour. Fucking IT. He knew very well it was a 10–second chore for them.

  Consequently, it was well past the end of his shift when Hogg finally tracked Enlopo down in his new and distinctly shabbier apartment. As Hogg suspected, Enlopo didn’t know anything relevant to Gabelman’s death, although the young man did have several impolite things to say about Hogg, security officers in general, and the sexual proclivities of recent members of his maternal lineage. Tired at the end of a long day, Hogg didn’t spend long listening to the shrieking asshole, only vaguely gathering that Mr. Enlopo hadn’t moved voluntarily. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, dick,” Hogg said under his breath as he walked away.

  §

  Stein sat, hands clasped behind her head, staring at the wall. She had just confirmed that the surly woman’s service request was actually in the system. Unusually, she could only access it by directly referencing the request ID. The service request refused to show up using the system’s search and filtering features, or on the Big Board.

  There was only one place she could think of where the system could be making this error. A pseudo–AI scanned each service request as it was submitted, correcting mis–categorizations and deleting duplicates as necessary. This pseudo–AI was pretty good — Stein hadn’t known it to make mistakes before. Which wasn’t to say that it wasn’t blamed for making mistakes — blaming the computer was a healthy part of being human. But in Stein’s opinion most of that was unwarranted.

  But she couldn’t think of any other explanation here. Users couldn’t edit the timestamp on their service requests, which meant this one was getting mangled somewhere else. She drummed her fingers on her desk, then pulled up the IT service request page on her terminal. Filing a service request for a problem with the service requests. This alone might cause the system to explode. She began filling in the form, looking down at her desk display, as she decided how to paraphrase this problem. “No Service Requests Found!” her desk reported in a friendly orange font. Her eyes widened.

  She had filtered the desk to search for heating and cooling service requests reported from that specific room over the last week. She expanded the location to include most of the Annex. Some service requests popped up, including the two Gabelman had recently worked on. She expanded it to include everything south of 14th Street, which included the Annex and the entire aft — over a quarter of the ship in fact. Almost a hundred requests. She narrowed the search to the last day, which shortened the list to seventeen.

  Looking over the list, Stein was surprised to see that she didn’t recognize most of them. She had by no means an encyclopedic knowledge of the ship’s heating and cooling complaint registry, but as the nominal day shift supervisor, she did see most of them. Most people on the ship worked from nine to three, and consequently most service requests were submitted during those hours. There were always a few submitted at night, which the skeleton and swing shifts handled when they could. But looking at this list, Stein was surprised to see the majority of these service requests were submitted in the evening, after she had clocked off for the day. Which was why she didn’t recognize them. Her team hadn’t handled them.

  Thinking back, Stein realized she had seen very little work in the aft in the last week, or even in the last month. There were the calls Gabelman got sent on, but those were in the Annex, not the aft proper. She adjusted the location range to include only locations aft of 10th Street. The list of requests narrowed to thirteen. All of them submitted in the evening or overnight. She checked over the last week. The same pattern. And again over a month. Going back two months, the pattern returned to normal, with the majority of service requests again being filed during the daylight hours.

  “That is fucking strange.” She catalogued all the facts at hand, rotating them around in her mind, trying to piece them together. For the last month, it appeared that someone was manipulating service requests to keep her shift away from the aft of the ship.

  She cancelled her IT service request, feeling unsettled. Something else was going on here, bigger than she understood. If someone had tampered with the service request pseudo–AI, they’d have to have IT support for that. Which meant the navy. A wave of paranoia washed over her; she suddenly got the distinct impression that she should have been a lot more subtle over the past few hours.

  “Hang on. Fuck that,” she said aloud. “I’m just doing my job.” Stein looked at the time displayed on her desk. Quitting time. Actual quitting time even, not even a half hour late. And she wasn’t going to let this stupid mystery eat into her time. “Unacceptable,” she said, standing up quickly, knocking over the chair behind her, but not caring. Tired of mysteries, she left the office, wanting only to go home and do something s
imple and obvious.

  §

  “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard you sound so enthusiastic,” Sergei said. “I’d almost say you were glad to see me.”

  “Oh?” Stein said, smiling. She watched the young security man rotate his beer on the surface of the bar. They were sitting on stools pulled up to the bar in the Peregrine, a watering hole on the 3rd level. “The Ship’s Oldest Pub,” a sign above the bar proudly claimed, although Stein had heard that it held that record by only a couple of hours. She had called Sergei as soon as she left the office. “Long day at work, I guess.”

  “I’ll bet. I heard your name mentioned today.”

  Stein’s eyes widened. “About what?”

  “You might be an emotionless monster,” Sergei said, “but when a person is murdered around here, it’s kind of a big deal.”

  Stein’s shoulders sank. “Oh. That.” She hoped her body language would communicate how little she wanted to talk about it.

  Sergei didn’t pick up what she was putting down. “I shared a trolley with Hogg this afternoon.” He took a drink. “Do you think he was using? The kid I mean. Ron.”

  Stein chose her words carefully. “Nope. And if he did, he wasn’t using a lot. I never noticed a thing. Not that he was a terribly social person.”

  Sergei took a long pull from his beer. “Hogg says the same thing. Wonders if the drugs were planted on him. I think he’s a little detective–happy to be honest. Don’t know why they haven’t sent someone competent to take the case off his hands.” Sergei flagged down the bartender and ordered another beer, Stein matching his pace. “He was on quite the rant. Apparently had to crawl across half the ship because someone’s address was wrong in the database.”

  Stein considered relating the similar odd behavior she had seen in the service call database, but decided against it. Not the right topic for small talk. Not with a cop anyways.

  It had been a dirty trick, approaching her out of uniform. A smile, and a pair of big friendly eyes. A damned dirty trick. If she had known he was a security officer, she wouldn’t have looked twice at him. But with his charming earnestness, and her fluctuating loneliness waxing on that particular night, she did look twice, and then several times more. She hadn’t bothered asking what he did. Didn’t care. Too often the answer to that question was “Nothing,” which always made her feel awkward. One encounter became four, and by the time she ran into him on the street, smiling his big goofy smile in his big ugly security uniform, it was too late. The hook had been set.

  Her childhood antics had caused her to run afoul of security, but not enough to create any lasting ill–will. She thought they were jerks, but truthfully, she had thought everyone was a jerk at that stage of her life. It was later, during the Breeder thing, that it became harder. Peaceful protesters, wanting child allowances, beaten down by uniforms with clubs. Stein hadn’t been hurt, but friends had. Things got bad after that, though Stein had mostly excused herself from that part of the fight, a decision which probably saved her life. Ever since then, she’d found it damned hard to look at a security officer without imagining a set of crosshairs superimposed on them.

  Until she met one with dopey, puppy dog eyes.

  Problems on the horizon though, just like always. He wanted more. More of her time, more of her thoughts, more of everything. She didn’t. It would come to something bad and painful, eventually. Always did. But for now he was fun to share a beer with, and, occasionally, a bed.

  But not someone to trust with crazy hypotheses about AI systems tampering with the maintenance database to inconvenience government workers. Instead she asked, “So, even the Security database is incorrect sometimes? Sergei, Sergei. Letting slip these chinks in your armor. People will stop fearing you soon.”

  Sergei snorted. “It happens. Not that I’ve ever seen it happen, but it must. People move. Addresses change. I don’t even know how it updates, but it does. Any system built by man will break sometime.”

  Stein silently assented, her day job a result of it. A sudden punch in the back of her shoulder announced the arrival of Bruce, and shortly thereafter, many more drinks.

  §

  “And that’s why everything you believe in is wrong,” Bruce concluded, three hours later.

  Sergei nodded, his face composed. It wasn’t the first time he had met Bruce, but he had been on his best behavior on that occasion. Less so tonight — Stein had been stifling laughter all evening watching Sergei’s reactions to Bruce’s antics.

  “Fair enough. I guess I’ll have to make some immediate changes in my life,” Sergei said. He held up his glass, allowing Bruce to lustily collide his own with it. Stein smiled. Maybe I’ll keep him around a bit longer.

  Sergei’s eyes drifted over the bar, to the mirrored wall with the stacks of bottles and glassware on it. He focused on something. Stein followed his gaze, but couldn’t see what he was looking at.

  “That prick can’t even drink properly,” he said.

  “Who?”

  He blinked in surprised, seeming to have forgotten where he was. “No one. Koller. Some asshole I work with.” He jerked his head backwards. Stein looked behind them, seeing a burly looking man sitting against the back wall, staring at the table, a nearly full glass in front of him. “Real son of a bitch,” Sergei continued. “Wouldn’t know a good time if it sat on his face.”

  That sounded like most cops to her, but she kept that thought to herself. On her other side, Bruce, who rarely kept things to himself, was busy noisily licking the inside of his glass, trying to get the attention of the bartender.

  Sergei tugged at the sleeve of Stein’s shirt. “We have to go now,” he said.

  “What, why?” Stein asked, alarmed. She searched his face for clues, finding only a pair of twinkling eyes. She smiled. “Oh. That. Yeah, all right.” She turned to Bruce. “We have to go now,” she repeated loudly.

  “What’s all this I hear about you having to go?” Bruce asked, squinting at the pair.

  “We have to go,” they replied in unison. Stein giggled, her eyes widening, surprised at herself.

  Bruce nodded, looking down at the new drink which had just arrived. “Well, it’s a school night for me, too.” He finished the drink in one swallow, then flagged down the bartender again. “So, I’ll be here for awhile. You two have fun.”

  They stood up and began walking from the bar, Sergei casting another glance at his mopey friend in the back while Stein eyeballed her own. She felt a flicker of guilt leaving Bruce there. He had certainly left her alone many times, pursuing one of the many lady friends he’d had. He could very well have another one tonight. Still, that flicker of guilt lingered as she walked out, catching a final glance of him. Every now and then the massive walls that he carried around seemed to get a lot heavier.

  §

  “VAV 341–E15 is…at sixty–four percent. Hooray,” Bruce called out over the terminal.

  “Sixty–four percent,” Stein confirmed, noting that down on her screen. “Delta of seventeen percent,” she relayed to Curts, who was sitting at the other desk in the room.

  “What eq–qu–qu–quipment number again?” Curts asked.

  “Uhhhhhhhh. VAV 341–E15.”

  “Got it.”

  Stein looked up and stretched her arms out. She had arrived to work that morning to find Curts and a controls diagnostic waiting. Apparently Curts wanted to identify every busted sensor on board the ship, by yesterday. It was completely unnecessary, considering that of the thousands of problems they would identify, exactly zero would be fixed. Make–work of the very worst kind — work that someone made her do.

  A controls diagnostic involved a technician physically inspecting every control sensor and actuator on every piece of heating and ventilation equipment on board the ship. They then communicated its current status back to Stein and Curts, who compared it to what the ship’s central system was reading. A simple matter done once, a hair–tearing experience when multiplied by fourteen thousand sensors an
d five thousand actuators. A full month’s worth of work, if they worked around the clock. Which she most assuredly would not.

  The strangest thing about it was that Curts had stayed in the office assisting her for every minute of it, despite how fantastically dull the work was. Stein resented the implication of this — that she would potentially shirk the chore if he wasn’t there. Curts had suggested that this diagnostic was particularly important, potentially relating to the ship’s upcoming deceleration. Stein mentally called bullshit, knowing the laws of momentum didn’t care one whit about how comfortably ventilated its projectiles were.

  Curts had an awkward position, nominally reporting to a mayor who had no interest in what he did, spending most of his time around the navy guys who looked down on what he did. Responsible for every system on the ship that wasn’t related to the naval operation of the vessel, which encompassed quite a bit, this had kept most of Curts’ predecessors pretty busy. But Curts had lately spent most of his time liaising with the naval engineers, serving as the bridge between the two worlds, conducting joint work in anticipation of the Push. Stein had seen little evidence of what exactly Curts’ work entailed, though if it meant he was generally around less, that was good enough for her.

  Three in the afternoon finally rolled around, and the technicians began filtering back into the office. Those that did return were in a uniformly foul mood — many didn’t even bother coming back, opting to head straight home or places less reputable. Curts loitered in Stein’s office — really his office, she glumly conceded — double–checking something on his terminal. Stein left him there and went to change back into her non–orange clothes. In that sense, she was one of the fortunate ones, having not gotten dirty that day.