King's County

by James Carrick

  "35 Water bus nexus has a secondary decay pattern warning," the voice said. We both waited... "You’re looking right at it, Waller."

  "Highlight it red?" I said while staring - and it worked. The cross shaped pipe went light red, then I fixed it to a darker shade. That was my part. It would be replaced within a few hours, weeks before actual failure.

  "OK, pull out," the voice said.

  I put my hands on the desk and pushed. It felt like my eyeballs were left behind. Blinking brought the white and beige world of B level into focus. The Voice had pulled up a chair next to me to talk.

  "You interacted with a citizen." He said it like I should have known better.

  "Yeah. Sorry, I thought he deserved it. They damaged the durum wheat in that section and were disrupting traffic."

  He looked away avoiding eye contact. He stared at the wall behind the transparent screens as he spoke to me,

  "Don't interact with citizens in any way. That's exclusively A level’s domain. I want you to restrict yourself to the gardens and stock yards for a few weeks...OK...If you can do well enough on your own and there’s a need, then maybe we can broaden your role."

  "OK, not a problem. Do you want to get dinner?" I said.

  The question pained him, "We keep strict hours, 8 to 5. But I'll give you ten minutes at the end of the day tomorrow to ask any questions."

  I checked the time on my new watch. It was 4:59. He was up and walking around the curve of the room.

  The day before I had played a trick on the skateboarders by summoning a mole to pop up underneath them and bite their heels. It terrified them much more than I expected. I almost felt a little bit bad about it. It did work, though. They quickly scattered back the way they had come. One of them left his stupid skateboard behind which I made sure to mark for disposal.

  But I didn't want to make any more waves with this new group of mine so I quickly settled into the routine. I found it easy to do.

  Two weeks flew by: up at 7, in the chair from 8-5 (the system was completely inaccessible outside of those hours) then home to eat, read for a few hours, and do light exercise before showering, having one last snack, and then going to bed just before midnight, every night.

  If there was a game on, I watched it instead of reading. Geake messaged me from Pittsburgh. He and Penny had decided to settle there. I spent four hours composing a short reply.

  In the morning I tended the gardens. At noon, I had lunch, always by myself, on the outside deck. Afternoons were spent checking various ducts, valves, and conduits, reservoir levels, raw commodity stocks and their associated transport schedules. With The Voice's approval, I planned for a slightly higher fence to be built around the highway.

  After three weeks, the work started to run out. The gardens were in top shape. They now required no more than an hour a day of attention. All of the conduits and things that had needed it were replaced or repaired. They’d be good for at least a year. Everything else was mostly fine on its own. I could check on things once or twice a day, maybe adjust something, but it wasn't always necessary and would take only a few minutes of my time.

  *

  Crazy day at work, how are you? - Dinner? - Hello.....hello, hello, hello - Just kidding. You doing OK? - Get back to me or just come over. Whatever's fine. - Are you out? - hey faqu – you lookwd like a bicth you know that

  *

  I walked around the operator's room until I found The Voice's desk. He was leaving, right at 5. Seeing me he panicked. He didn't like surprises. I asked him anyway about maybe expanding my duties but got no answer. He just took off to the elevators like he’d seen a ghost.

  *

  Sorry about that. I had a few drinks too many. What's going on? - I'm at home -

  *

  After five weeks I started falling asleep at my desk. I couldn't find more than about half an hour of things to do on any given day. I'd peeked over at the other system operators. They seemed busy. No one ever said anything about my sleeping or me pulling my weight. After a few days I didn't worry about it any more.

  This meant I stayed up later at night. I stopped exercising. It was pointless, just a habit that served to distract me. The chip in my back took care of my body. I read every book in the house instead and sent out for more.

  *

  What happened? -

  *

  Days blended together. Coming off the elevators in the morning, the sight of my desk and chair triggered yawning. I slept upright. I slept with my forehead pressed against the interface frame.

  I went to the roof on dry nights just to sit looking around, down at the lights of the waterfront, and smoking. I'd grind the butts out right on the shingles and toss them in my little strip of hydrangeas and bluegrass.

  After a week of these nights, I decided to get dressed and head down to maybe meet some people, at least talk to somebody. I tried. The network of wooden walkways connecting all the little houses like mine didn't connect out other than at the main road that I took to work.

  And everywhere was dark. My neighbors weren't night people and they had their little area the way they liked it. Exploring now was out of the question. I decided to use the KC+9 system to plot the best route from my house and try again after work.

  With this new mission in mind, my mood immediately improved. I fixated on getting one of those cold beer-like drinks in the green can, the one they sold in that waterfront kiosk.

  The next morning, I finished up garden duty by 8:20. The system was mine until noon. I didn't want to skip lunch or do anything out of the ordinary that might attract attention. What I intended to do was specifically not allowed.

  The inhabited areas I wanted to explore were inaccessible to me as a B level operator. Earlier, out of curiosity and boredom, I’d looked for a way into the park, skirting around the edge of the gardens, but was unsuccessful. This was my last idea.

  The hedges around the theater seemed like the best place to try my plan. I brought up a side view of one of the larger hedges, expanded out and found the ivy starting to spread onto the marble colonnade. The nearest mole was a minute away. While it made its way over, I picked out a particular strand of ivy and traced from its roots all the way to the end hanging down, halfway curling into the air.

  The mole breached the surface. I brought it along up the vine over the edge of the planter. It teetered there, barely able to balance on its flat belly. I focused, going blind, thinking of nothing but the delicate light green tendrils at the end.

  I opened my eyes at the sound of it clattering across the hard marble floor. My mole was out of the garden.

  I still had control. Quickly, before we were seen, we scurried to the side of the stage to hold there while I tested the theory.

  The sub-data for the theater came up with no resistance. It worked. I could access the inhabited city sectors the same as the others.

  First I just looked around the park. I had to plan a route to a safer location for us. I wasn't sure if anyone could see me or not. Running across the wrong type of person could get us reported.

  Through the embedded sensors, potentially anything could be seen from almost any angle. All permanent static structures had the sensors. They were mostly invisible to the eye. The largest was about 1mm in diameter and good for longer distances, most were much smaller. Only a few square meters of a wall could have a hundred of them: cameras, microphones, chemical and pressure sensors. The input from them was collected and synthesized into the KC+9 interface.

  Nearby were a few guys lying around on the grass and on the theater steps sunning themselves, artist types by the look of them and probably little risk. I took the chance and maneuvered the mole through the theater and out into the middle of the park being careful to not reenter the garden in case we couldn't easily return.

  Following one gravel trail, a long spoke leading to an open central circle, we found the perfect spot: an art display of student sculptures (the ubiquitous blobs were all perched on stilts for some reason). We
buried safely away into the base of a paper mâché swan-like thing.

  I was going to get a look around, a real one. Forget lunch, I had just under seven hours until the system kicked me off, if I wasn't caught first, and I wanted to use all of it.

  My house was easily found out of an expanded overhead view. The way to the waterfront was deceptively simple. A right turn onto the main road and another right then a quick left down an empty street would get me to the steps to the glass enclosed tunnel going alongside and over the highway. Simple enough. Mission accomplished, and it was still early.

  I wandered over to the art colony next. It seemed smaller than I remembered. I realized I could look inside just the same as outside. Opal’s name ran through my head; before I knew what I was doing, she was there, sleeping on a little bed built into the wall. She rolled onto her back and exhaled. Her eyes twitched. She was in the middle of a dream.

  Her room was smaller than mine had been. A lower level, I guess, less access. Maybe they'd had the idea to make me into something more, higher status, maybe one of those phony deans.

  I watched her for awhile and got the idea to bring up her stats: She'd been asleep for over a day. She’d had sex eleven times in the past week with 3 different men and 1 woman, and she'd rarely been sober in over 10 years. She was 58 years old. She'd produced 6 solo artworks and collaborated on 3 in the past 19 years. Her works were all located in residence which I found meant the big storage room.

  I watched her and listened to her murmur in her sleep. Some time passed. My senses blanked out for a bit. I came around to find myself staring down at the roof of the art complex.

  A tab indicated Ricky, one of the idiots introduced to me by Elena, in the courtyard cafe. I zoomed in - his mouth was open, slumped in two chairs - I looked further - he wasn't sleeping normally. He was in an internally induced coma to give his chip time to detoxify his blood. The chip couldn't keep up with his earlier rate of intake.

  I'd seen enough. I went back to my neighborhood, our segregated cluster of single, efficient Japanese/Craftsman detached homes, and hovered on it: Quiet as always with a little wind making the only noise. I resisted hovering directly over Qim’s house but she was the reason I was there.

  Eventually, I gave in, before I really wanted to. She was home walking naked out of the bathroom. She stopped at a large square of black and red silk that was her bed. A guy, a naked nobody, came to stand behind her.

  I stayed in her room but with my eyes tightly shut. I couldn't leave and I couldn't look at what was happening. I felt my fingers in an iron grip on the edge of the desk. Panic shimmered and peaked. A strong, slow building relief washed through me until I felt nothing and then I looked. Moles and worms waited, squirming their gray metal bodies on the carpet beneath the bed. Ten moles bristled with all appendages out. Many more worms raised up twirling, flexing their external vibrissae to sniff the air.

  *

  I flew, scanning, over the tops of the old, wet downtown buildings, perfect stands of trees, formidable stacked gardens with invisible intelligence. I left the county and went west over the water to Olympia.

  Over the water and in the mountains and forests there were still plenty of sensors. They were embedded in the trees and even in the air, hosted on floating gray dirigibles a cm long. There were worms and moles in the forest soil but fewer, less rigorously deployed than in the urban core farms.

  I stopped over the forest near the mountains. Pausing brought up suggestions of sub-data: system hardware locations, wildfire proclivity, rainfall amounts, temperature and humidity at different altitudes, wind speeds and directions; means, ranges and forecasts for everything. I ignored them all, more came: historical tabs, geological data, background radiation, dozens of zoological overlays, list headers for every wild plant, every wild fungus, bacterial profiles, soil composition, pH, density, granularity / then there were the people.

  They lived on the Olympic peninsula in small groups, 71 in total. The largest group was 6 people, most were couples. I focused on a pair lounging around a pile of vividly green mossy boulders framing a short, falling stream.

  The man lay on his back covering his eyes with an old piece of fabric. The woman cleaned her feet in a pool of the clear water.

  Another couple approached. The man sat up to talk to them and gestured for the other man to sit by him while the women bathed.

  They spoke a language I didn't understand or recognize. The men soon left. I followed them a short distance to a sheltered area beneath an overhanging rock. They sat on clean boulders arranged around the remains of a fire.

  Out of his blue frayed and sun-faded but still serviceable jacket, the first, the older man withdrew an engraved ceramic pipe. He checked it over and passed it to his friend. The old man was lean with darkly weathered skin and he moved with a quick, deliberate gracefulness.

  The men smoked in relaxed silence. The women arrived, chatting in their language, and went under the rock to busy themselves with the few possessions tucked inside.

  A table was unfolded, places were set. Soon they were eating. The old man went under the rock and returned with an ancient encrusted wine bottle. A bit of vapor curled out when it was opened. He poured some of the precious liquid into each of their cups and they stood turning to face the shelter.

  It was to the mountain that they looked. Cups were raised to the mountain and drained.

  I left them to explore further. Down and around the other side of the mountain, something strange stood out. A blue tab indicated it was infrastructure but not that of KC+9.

  At first glance, it appeared to be a cave but the curved lines of the opening were too symmetrical and well defined. It was overgrown with mossy vegetation on the top and sides but a foot trodden path led into it.

  The tab told me it was a Universal Factory. Still in service though used rarely now, it was there to supply the peninsula residents.

  A woman walked up and paused at the opening. She cupped her hand and called out in the same language the others had used. She was also older looking, sixty or so, and had the same lean, windburned vigor. She wore a high waisted purple dress under a long brown coat and no socks with rugged men’s leather shoes. I saw her name was Mel Waller.

  She sat cross-legged by the entrance, facing away diagonally. She put her hands on her knees and closed her eyes.

  I prayed for her to stay there long enough. She was soon asleep the system told me. I relaxed along with her. The sun came from behind a cloud, filtering through the emerald leaved canopy, making patterns on the ground where she sat.

  A mole poked his nose up, just breaking the surface, then pushed half his body out. She didn't notice. I brought him out and balanced him upright on the driver paddles at his tail. I dropped him and flicked out an appendage to flip him over.

  Her eyes slowly opened; she saw me and smiled. I scurried around in a figure eight and quickly flipped a few more times making her laugh.

  She reached out a long finger and touched the tip of my nose. I whirled around upright on the paddles and flipped again. She groaned a little, laughing in a lower tone. I was losing her.

  From inside the factory cave came the cry of a man. He emerged holding a tool in his hand. Mom got up to go to him.

  He showed her the tool. It was a handsaw, freshly made inside the cave. He admired it, wiping his hand along the dull side of the blade. She played along for a moment, dutifully inspecting the saw, then she remembered me and pulled on his arm.

  They walked over. I balanced on the paddles and did my flip. He bent down for a second, raised his eyebrows and kindly laughed. Then he walked away. He didn't say anything, or look back or wait for her. She gave me a little wave from her waist and hurried off to catch up to him.

  I stuck out all my appendages and twisted around in the grass tumbling and bouncing around. A double flip: I had a new trick. But her back was turned. Soon she was gone.

  "That's enough, I think. Come on out now." The voice was not in the forest. I r
esisted.

  Everything shut off. I felt myself pushed gently back into the chair, staring at the beige wall of the B level control room. He was sitting to my right, one leg over the other, in another operator’s chair pulled up to my station.

  His suit was a dark brown, deep, richly toned wool that drew my eyes into it. He wore traditional leather shoes of equally high quality with black socks. He patiently watched me noticing and spoke,

  "I’m not sure what to do with you. You broke a lot of rules here today."

  "We’re hoping that you didn't go too far, John." It was Qim, startling me. I turned to see her seated behind me.

  "I decided to bring her in after the incident at her home," he said.

  Qim folded her hands in her lap and stared at them. I turned the chair back around. The guy stared at me, trying to wait me out, make me say something.