Vending Machine Lunch

by Roadbloc

  Johnston walked past a row of beggars on the floor. Without looking at them, he tossed a rupee towards them, still sucking furiously at his rolled tobacco as he thought of Jacob. The beggars, all at once, scrambled at the coin, beginning to fight over it. That was probably why giving to beggars was strictly discouraged Johnston thought. Not that anyone cared, you either gave to them or you didn't. No law or advice of the government was going to change a thing.

  His thoughts were still on Jacob, furiously building up his mental hate for him again. Even when it came to actual work decisions, Jacob often tried to correct Johnston, arrogance floating in his eyes and words as he did so. It was times like that when Johnston just felt like landing a powerful punch into Jacob's face. Of course, he couldn't do that and he simply wouldn't. He'd be given his notice of leave pretty much immediately and would more than likely face Enforcer charges of assault. That would be the last thing he wanted. But just to show Jacob that he wasn't as amazing as he thought he was would be fantastic for Johnston.

  The sky was rapidly growing darker. He coughed and threw his rolled tobacco on the ground. The final pulls had become too soggy to smoke thanks to the rapidly growing mist of rain that clouded his vision. He became aware that he was also getting rather wet thanks to it. It wasn't as if it was tipping it down, far from it. The moisture in the air seemed to cling to anything it touched.

  The rows of buildings were beginning to die off, the constant supply of pedestrian walkers, beggars and other people amongst were wearing thin and the road was narrowing. Ahead of Johnston, maybe about a mile away, was the Deimos facility. It was a metallic, cylindrical structure that was more wide and long than it was tall. The entire facility was surrounded by a large stretch of concrete nothingness and then finally a large electrified and razor armed fence. Several light blue search lights scanned the structure and sky around it and the exterior of the facility appeared to be illuminated the same light blue colour. Johnston continued along the thinning road, now alone and approaching the dangerous fence.

  No unauthorised personnel beyond this notice. All trespassers will be Enforcer charged and treated like any other criminal.

  The red sign strapped onto the fence was the only clue or recognition that this was an important place. Not that people didn't know that already. Everyone knew about the Deimos and Phobos facilities and they both repelled people like the centre of a magnet does to iron filings. People never stepped close, people never cared. What went on behind the fence and the within the metal cylindrical structure was a total mystery to the public. Well, apart from those involved. Which included Johnston.

  An unfriendly looking guard guarded the only entrance gate. He was dressed exactly the same as Johnston was, just without the leather jacket and his uniform was blue instead of black. Johnston always wondered why the one and only entrance in the fence was big enough to fit vehicles through it, despite everyone who worked there walking or taking the horrendous Metro. No-one who worked there had the rights to a vehicle. His mind couldn't ever come up to a conclusion fast enough, as the guard spoke.

  "Alright there Johnston?" he asked, his big lips smiling downwards in a friendly sort of manner, "You're looking a little rough."

  Johnston fished for his work ID card in his jacket and displayed it to the guard. The guard looked uninterested and opened the gate, a feeling of boredom resonating from his body language.

  "Just feeling a bit tense," replied Johnston, shoving his ID card back into his pocket and coughing loudly, spinning around to face the guard as he walked through the large gate, "Nothing a sharp drink at the Drinking Well can't fix. How’s the wife?"

  "Still in the intensive care unit," replied the guard, squinting at Johnston "She's slowly improving."

  "Give her my regards won't you?" said Johnston, placing another stick of rolled tobacco between his lips, "And I expect to see you in the Drinking Well in the morning."

  The guard chuckled, "Alright buddy."

  Johnston turned around and faced the Deimos facility. It was a damn large structure, he was almost quite proud on how quickly it had been assembled and set up. Not quite his brain child, but certainly his labour child. He lit his tobacco and strode towards the building and a group of mingling people.

  "Good evening Johnston," said a short girl with poker straight dark hair and large brown eyes, "You're looking a little peaky today."

  "Nothing a sharp drink can't solve Jaimie," said Johnston, sucking on his tobacco, he turned to the other two men in the group, "Evening Josh, Jacob," he nodded to the corresponding person.

  "Johnston," said Jacob curtly, handing Johnston a clipboard that listed information on the facilities daily maintenance report, "The facility has been primed for trial run mark forty-six. We'll will be attempting a sustained sequence of one hundred and ten percent in the resonance chamber."

  "One hundred and ten percent?" queried Johnston, coughing slightly and taking a pull of tobacco, "Is that not a bit steep for the time being? The schedule demonstrates that we have plenty of time before such a level of resonance should be tested. Other things can be tested-"

  "It has been requested by higher authorities that we deviate off the original testing schedule and speed it up so that a normal process can take place sooner," said Jacob smugly.

  "By higher authority I trust you mean him? Our land's father?" said Johnston, sighing slightly, "With all due respect to the guy, he needs to be told that the testing schedule simply cannot be deviated from. The schedule was drawn up by our scientists following every safety precaution. To deviate would be extremely risky, especially since this is experimental technology-"

  "The leader has requested it," interrupted Jacob, smiling slightly, "And therefore we shall be fulfilling it."

  Johnston sighed despairingly and smoked a little more tobacco, "Well I guess I have no choice. I can't say I agree with this though."

  "Me neither," said Josh. Jaimie nodded her head in agreement.

  A bell rang loudly. It signalled the shift change. It was time for the day workers to go home and the night workers to start working. A hurry of people in blue shirts and trousers began.

  Johnston began walking towards the facility, smoking the remaining tobacco he had in his roll and inspecting the data on the clipboard given to him. The others followed him.

  "Jaimie?" said Johnston, pointing at a certain bit of data on the sheet, unwilling to ask Jacob's opinion of his question, "It states here that there was a small discrepancy at two this afternoon. Contamination. What happened?"

  "Whilst running some pre-trial tests, an engineer found his scanner picked up a small trace of external matter within the top shield filter of the resonance chamber," said Jaimie, her hair bobbing up and down as she walked, "After running further examinations and tests upon the said discrepancy, it was discovered to be part human DNA and part foreign."

  "It has been sent off to an independent scientist lab for further examination," said Josh, accidentally walking into a plume of smoke that escaped Johnston's mouth.

  "I thought I'd requested it to be sent to a government run scientist lab," injected Jacob, narrowing his eyes at Josh, "You have betrayed a direct order from a regulator-"

  "Jacob calm your head down," said an irritated Johnston, throwing the butt of his tobacco down, coughing and passing the clipboard to Jaimie, "Josh was right to send it to an independent facility. The government would have just denied its existence or whatever. We need actual results here, not just permission to continue regardless of anything."

  "Johnston, the confidentiality contract-"

  "-does not mention anything about sending off samples to independent scientist facilities," interrupted Johnston, getting more and more irritated by Jacob's pointless arguing by the sentence, "I, myself encourage such a thing. I'm trusting that Josh did not send the sample off to the scientist facility stating it came from the Deimos facility?"

  "Nope," said Josh.

  "There we go," said Johnston, scowling slightly a
t Jacob, but feeling satisfied he had won this particular battle of the on-going war of moral status with Jacob, "The sample could be from the inside of someone's oven for all they'd care. They just deliver the results, which is more than what I can say for government scientists."

  "The trial run forty-six is scheduled in ten," said Jaimie, cutting a potential argument short, "All interior workers will be expected to wear com-link ear clips. Any com-link transmissions will be contained within the interior walls of the facility by the transmission barrier layer. In other words, once you guys are inside and the trial run has started, you're on your own."

  Johnston pulled out his com-link ear clips and attached it to his right ear. It was a simple mechanism, designed for easy long distance communication between members of staff. Obviously, the long distance bit was rather unnecessary, or so Johnston thought. The others followed suit.

  "Are the exterior lights fixed," asked Johnston, looking at the many large lights shining blue.

  "Yes," said Josh, "I had an engineer team work on them today. Apparently there should be no problems from now on."

  "That's what they said last time," said Johnston, "Are you defiantly sure that they have got the colour coding right? I know what these so called engineers are like."

  "I can't say myself, however they assured me it was working perfect," said Josh.

  "Great," said Johnston, stopping as he had now reached the entrance to the facility's interior. It was a large metal hydraulic door, at the moment, opened, the actual door itself hidden in the wall above the large doorway. Everything in the place seemed to have a blue light, dazzling Johnston. Yet again, this door was pointlessly big enough for vehicles, however a lot of personnel did enter and exit the facility during its 'neutral' periods for equipment tests and maintenance.

  "Who's the lucky person today who gets outside control?" asked Johnston.

  "Can't be me," said Jacob, "I defiantly did it last time."

  "It's me," said Jaimie, smiling a little knowing that she had an easy shift.

  "Right," said Jacob, "I'm in the outer hanger and you two are in the chamber control rooms then."

  Johnston felt like retaliating to Jacob, but he knew this time he was right. Jaimie left and headed towards a canvas structure in the centre of the concrete nothingness that had just been erected by a handful of blue uniformed employees.

  “Any news from Phobos?” asked Johnston.

  “Nope.”

  "Okay then. Heigh-ho, let's go," said Johnston, entering the facility with Josh and Jacob.

  They walked through the outer hanger, a large room with nothing much in it except a control desk. Johnston wiped his face, feeling how great it was to get out of the continuous miserable misty drizzle that onslaught everything outside. Inside, everything, yet again, seemed to be illuminated blue and was made of some sort of metallic substance. At least everything was blue, Johnston thought. It gave him confidence that the engineers had actually fixed the lights.

  With Josh, Johnston walked through a smaller metallic hydraulic automatic door. The motors made a whiney whooshing sound as the door slid upwards, revealing, the Deimos Facility chamber.

  It was a mass cylinder, just like the exterior, except, obviously smaller. In the centre of the cylinder was a slight gap going all the way round, in a zigzag style. This gap revealed a small portion of the resonance chamber, and, like everything else, was glowing light blue. At opposite ends of the chamber were two control rooms, both metallic and boxish. One each for Josh and Johnston.

  Many people were milling around, usually with clipboards or their pagers, checking stuff off, scanning parts of the facility with scanners, getting ready at their controls for the trial.

  Johnston entered his control room through another metal hydraulic door and sat down on the rather plush spinney chair it contained, before his control desk and the window view to the chamber. Collapsing on the chair, Johnston tried to think of a place with a better chair. This certain one was a dream. More comfortable than his bed, Johnston had many times desired to take this particular chair home. It was a dream.

  "Com-link radio frequency check. This is Control to all Deimos Facility staff. If you can hear this, please enable two clicks of static through your com-link ear piece. If you see any member of staff not wearing their com-link radio ear piece, please remind them to do so. If any member of staff does not possess a com-link radio ear piece, they must leave the interior of the facility immediately and report to radio control where they will be able to collect one for use. Over and out."

  It was Jaimie's voice. Johnston internally sighed and coughed a little. Maybe he was just getting old, or maybe he was just slow, but he would have personally appreciated some time just to sit and do nothing. Not long, maybe five minutes at most, but more than the two seconds he had just got. Jaimie was a damn good worker, but Johnston felt that she was perhaps just a little too enthusiastic. And it often felt awkward when Josh was around her. It was crystal clear he had a crush for her. Or at least Johnston thought that.

  Coughing again, he tapped the small button on his ear piece twice, enabling two hisses of static to be broadcast over the com-link. He could imagine Jaimie right now, trying to keep on track of all the hisses of static she'd received, working out which employee it was from the ear piece ID and then crossing them off on a list. Johnston hated that part of the job, but the rest of the night in the radio control tent was a breeze.

  "Regulator Johnston, confirm you are in chamber control room one, and all supervised staff are in the correct locations over." said Jaimie.

  Johnston tapped his ear-piece, looking out the window to his staff, "Confirmed over."

  "Encoder Josh, confirm you are in chamber control room two and all supervised staff are in the correct locations over."

  "Confirmed over," Josh's cheeky voice piped up over the radio.

  "Regulator Jacob, confirm you are in the hangar control room, and all supervised staff are in the correct locations over."

  "Confirmed over." came the arrogant reply, as though he wanted things to hurry up. But you couldn't hurry up safety.

  "Control to all Deimos Facility staff, in approximately two, we are going to commence trial mark forty six," said Jaimie over the com-link, "May I remind staff that any trial briefing notes should have been read before entry to the building. Safety regulations apply as usual. Com-link ear pieces are to be worn at all times during the trial.

  "Please note that during the trial the transmission barrier will be active, resulting in no transmissions being able to enter or leave the interior of the facility. Please note that all com-link transmissions are recorded for training and security purposes, so please refrain from using foul language or flooding the com-link with unnecessary transmissions.

  "You are kindly reminded that colour coding will be active at all times. As a reminder and for safety purposes, I am to state the colour codes, which are displayed by the majority of lights in and around the facility. Blue means the facility is in stasis mode. Green means the facility is running or running a trial with no issues. Red means the facility is running and is in danger of failure or meltdown. In the unlikely event that the colour code is red, please shutdown any machinery you are able to do so. An emergency transmission is to be sent via gamma-link immediately when red colour code occurs, by any member of staff, by inserting their emergency transmission card into the CRT terminal in the interior communications office. The gamma-link is able to penetrate the transmission barrier and alert the exterior of the facility, in the unlikely chance that we have an exterior colour code failure.

  "If there are any queries, please voice them within the next one, otherwise, prepare for the beginning of trial forty-six. Over and out."

  Johnston sighed and coughed at the same time. He'd heard that speech many times, in fact, around forty-six times in total now. He helped write the damn thing, but it was always necessary to make sure that everyone was full prepared. One mistake and who knows what would happen.
>
  The thought of the contamination lay heavy on Johnston's mind. He was not happy running such a bold trial at the moment, never mind running it with contamination. Josh had done all that was possible, and sent the sample off to an independent scientist, however, he was still not impressed that Jacob was happy about running the trial, despite the circumstances. It was as though Jacob actually approved of the land's father's decision. But it was this type of recklessness that ruined the land in the first place. For the first time in his life, Johnston wished he had been conceived in Union City. He hated this land, Elision City, so much. He hated his job. He hated the government. He hated Jacob. He was beginning to hate his life, slowly, day by day.

  "Sierra Delta Jan to control, there is a problem with lever 13b-18HTC. Please advise on course of action over."

  Johnston had no idea who Jan was, but the Delta team was not his concern. Their object was to maintain the power flow in the facility, obviously an important job, an energy spike or power fluctuation could take the entire facility out, however it was a pretty easy job in Johnston's opinion. If power was fluctuating, the port of call was simply just to drain the land's grid power. It often resulted in power failures in people’s homes, however, the Deimos facility got priority. Or the Phobos facility.

  "Control to Sierra Delta Jan, could you elaborate with your problem? Over."

  "Yeah, um... the lever is unable to move, it is seized in the upright position over."

  There was a short pause. Johnston examined his control desk. Everything looked okay. At least he got a bit more resting time before the trial.

  "Okay Jan, could you please confirm that you are on about lever 13b-18HTC? Over."