by Nik Abnett
The event, known as ‘the Meltdown’ had happened because of a naive and fundamental mistake. The premier Active’s Companion, Abel, had been a charismatic, who had developed a religious cult, and placed his Master at the centre of it. His Master also happened to be, although it was not known within College, Active. Religious tolerance had been a basic tenet of global government since the historic struggles of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and no thought was given to the elevated, God-like persona that was imposed on the Active. It did not appear to impair his work in any way, and it resulted in a docile College workforce, and a sense of purpose among the Companions and Assistants. Within two Highs, cult members were being recruited from the Drafted, and, within five, all Assistants and Companions were promoted according to their status within the cult, rather than their suitability for the job.
The religious fervour of the majority of the inhabitants of the College seemed to aid its smooth running rather than impair it, and Service, both Daily and Scheduled, worked virtually without a hitch.
Without the stimulus of personalities clashing and shifting, and, without the usual office politics, Service at the College became lazy and bloated. Shift patterns were regular, and Named Operators barely worked at all.
The Active, who was entirely benign in the venture, was considered elderly in terms of effective Masters, and was increasingly infirm, but his ailments had been kept from his followers. Service Central decided to maintain the Active as the figurehead of the cult, in his dotage, and introduce a new Active. That was when the problems began, and, although it was some time before the scenario played out, it was already beyond College Service to recognise or forestall, let alone prevent, the inevitable.
No one quite knew how, but Abel, the instigator and effective head of the cult, had somehow detected that his Master was Active, and he was also able to sniff out the new Active when he arrived, as a boy of fourteen, to replace a Master who was hospitalised for dementia at the end of High that year.
Selection procedures had changed and developed over the hundred and fifty years since, evolving into a system that was virtually flawless, and which, certainly, would never allow another Abel to be Drafted.
In the College’s final hours, Abel set about testing his influence over the Active’s disciples. It proved so widespread, so pervasive, and so utterly outside the control of Service, that he was able to mastermind an announcement, setting out the Messiah’s deathbed wishes, and instigating a mass suicide.
Service had no warning of the announcement, hearing it simultaneously with the rest of the College.
After that, everything happened very fast. In half-an-hour the event was over.
In the aftermath, when the situation was analysed from all angles, by experts in the field, new rules and regulations were set out. It took some time to formulate guidelines that would not restrict freedom of religious expression, but it was finally accomplished. A system was also initiated whereby rules and regulations were constantly tested and verified.
SERVICE WAS TWO hundred years old. It did not run like clockwork, but no one had seen a Code Orange or higher for fifty years, and Service Central was proud to claim that it would never see another Meltdown.
THE OTHER MAJOR incident had happened within thirty years of the first. It had been much less dramatic, and, as it turned out, less damaging, but no one had known that at the time.
A very well-established College in the Urals came under some criticism from Service Central for corruption, and the decision was made to bring in an entire new Service team. The team of brightest and best had been assembled from all points of the globe, when personal travel was still widespread. Specialists were brought in from South America and Western Europe, and the bespoke team was trained together and all started work on the same day.
On paper, the new system had looked perfect, impenetrable, with more built-in fail-safes than would ever be required. It had taken two years for the College to fall apart. The collapse was slow, but the problems were deep-seated, political and incredibly divisive. The imposition of an entire new Service team proved too much for the Masters’ entourages, and the Seniors and Students to bear. The problems went deeper than anyone had realised, including Service Central, and proved impossible to solve. The situation at the College became progressively worse, and culminated in a stand-off between East and West. Sensibilities and prejudices through centuries of back-biting and in-fighting had caused a rift that could not be solved by shared education alone.
Ironically, the College did not have an Active in residence at the time of the collapse, and, for the most part, the Masters, who had very little interest in political and cultural differences, were oblivious to what was going on.
There would never be another Meltdown, but, to prevent it, the College was dismantled, wholesale. The oldest of the Masters were retired, with their Companions and Assistants, and, those that could be, were re-assigned. Some took years to settle in their new positions, and others never managed it, and were, eventually, put out to pasture. The Service team was broken up, and all members re-assigned to Colleges close to their birthplaces, some returning to the Colleges where they had been to School.
At that point, it was decided that, as far as possible, all College inhabitants should be local, and any new Colleges should be populated slowly, over a number of years. It also became clear that trying to move Masters from one College to another was all but impossible, and the rules were changed so that Masters could not be moved without their express permission; it was understood that the very nature of Masters meant that this was extremely unlikely ever to happen.
There was always a free-flow of ideas across the World, especially where education was concerned. Masters, and particularly Actives, did not understand prejudice, and connected only at a cerebral level. They might not be able to make eye-contact, or answer a combination question, but they could share ideas and information at an incredibly esoteric level with complete strangers, without any thought of prejudice.
Their social currency was ideas, not religion, routine, habit, custom, dress, or basic education, and, as such, their prejudices were limited. They felt nothing for those who did not communicate ideas back and forth with them, neither good nor bad.
Chapter Eight
PITU 3 WAS still pressing his Service button between his thumb and forefinger when Metoo arrived six minutes after he had first taken hold of it. She would have been quicker, but Named Operator Strazinsky had no precedent for making his next decision; his adrenalin was flowing, and he had almost no concrete information. It took him four minutes to make his move.
His station was reading Code Green, unverified by any tangible threat, and Strazinsky had used his seventeen years of experience in Service, including five as a Named Operator, to conclude that, not only was he working a Master’s station, but that his subject was ‘away with the fairies’: a not terribly kind, but essentially benign phrase that Service used, informally, to describe the many and varied occasions when a Master, or an Active, veered harmlessly from the norms ascertained for his particular character.
Strazinsky was under a certain amount of pressure, not least because he had been in a Code Green situation for more than thirty-six hours, and he knew that his subject was a Master, which meant that he could also be Active. It was the general consensus among Named Service, worldwide, that there was very little to choose between a high-grade Master and an Active, beyond the very specific brainwave pattern that was critical to the safety of the planet. Nothing had been proved, and scientists had been working on the syndrome for more than two hundred years, but it was generally thought that one gene here or there, or one childhood trauma, more or less, could mean the difference between an inert, but useful, beard, and a fully fledged, dyed in the wool, unalterable, unfathomable Active.
Diagnoses were being made increasingly early in the lives of potential Actives, but tests were, even now, by no means conclusive.
Strazinsky’s experience
in Service played a significant part in his decision-making abilities in this particular instance, and, after the metallic taste in his mouth subsided, and his hands stopped shaking, some four minutes after Pitu 3 compressed his button between his index finger and his thumb, Strazinsky took the conservative route.
If it had been Code Blue, the Operator would have taken Pitu 3 out of the equation; he was probably just a frightened kid, witnessing some of his Master’s stranger behaviour for the first time. In the five years that he had been a Named Operator, Strazinsky had worked on Code Green situations a number of times. The Code often got ramped to Green by novice Assistants panicking, or by Students, like Pitu 3, being inexperienced. Things usually cooled off pretty quickly, the problem was resolved, without incident, and the Code Green disabled.
This Code Green had been active for longer than any he had worked before, and Service had not found the problem or neutralised it.
As an Operator, Strazinsky had hit tone buttons that had activated Code Green; as a Named Operator he had never precipitated the ramp-up to Code Yellow.
Strazinsky hit the button on the counter in front of him, despite being fully aware that doing so could change his career, and even his life, forever.
SERVICE SOUNDED IN Tobe’s flat.
It took less time for Metoo, hopped up on adrenalin, to make it across campus to Tobe’s office than it had for Strazinsky to take the decision to press the Service button on the faded, grubby countertop in front of him.
Metoo arrived, breathless, outside Tobe’s office. She looked into the room at him before she did anything else. She looked startled as she peered into the office, her skin pale and her eyes wide as she feared the worst, without knowing just how the worst might manifest.
Tobe did not seem to register her anxiety at all. He stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by torn pages from academic texts, and swathes of handwritten calculations. As things stood, they did not look unduly troubling to Metoo. Tobe was in his office, in the room where he was most comfortable. He had been working, albeit frantically, and obsessively, but she had witnessed similar scenes before, during her time with him. Service had not been quite so trigger-happy on those other occasions.
Metoo did not know that Tobe’s station was at Code Green, or that Service had been monitoring the situation for so long. She did not know that Strazinsky, tired, frazzled and not a little afraid, had been obliged to make a potentially career-altering decision on the Schedule Service button of a second-rate Student, whose standing in the College hierarchy was certainly significantly lower than the man in question preferred to believe.
Tobe was safe, and oblivious, so Metoo, tense, and sweating slightly, dropped her chin onto her chest and drew in a deep breath, before turning to face Pitu 3.
His face was pale and drawn, elongated by the drop of his jaw that had set fair since it had taken up the position more than six minutes earlier. Pitu 3 had clearly never seen anything like this before.
Metoo had seen Tobe like this two or three times a year for as many years as she cared to remember. As a Student, she had admired his ability to cut out the World completely, in order to concentrate on his mathematics. As his Assistant, she had watched Kit dealing with Tobe, inadequately, she had thought at the time, dosing him with anti-depressants and sleeping draughts, and putting him out of action for days or weeks at a time.
Her breathing back to a more normal rhythm, Metoo took hold of Pitu’s hand: the one that was gripping the button around his neck so tightly that his knuckles were white.
“You need to let go now,” she said. “Pitu, you did the right thing. You did well, Pitu. You can let go of the button now. Let go, Pitu, I’m here. Pitu, it’s safe. The Master is safe. Let go of the button, Pitu. Service has sent me. You can stand down.”
Chapter Nine
“TOBE,” SAID METOO, “it’s time to go home.”
“I’ve got a tutorial,” said Tobe, standing, his feet apart, where he had positioned them in gaps between the chalk calculations and the pages of text books that he had torn out and stuck to the linopro. He seemed completely oblivious to the predicament that he had thrust his Assistant-Companion and Student into.
“Service cancelled the tutorial,” said Metoo. “Your Student...” she began before trailing off, and looking at Pitu 3 for inspiration. “Your Student has been taken ill.”
Tobe looked at Metoo, who stood in the corridor next to his Student. She could not tell what he was thinking from the expression on his face, but he did not appear to be unduly distressed. The odd situation, and, particularly, the break in his routine was bound to unsettle him, but Metoo’s panic was subsiding, and her only immediate concern was to deal with Pitu 3, and then get Tobe home, so that Service could do its job.
Pitu 3 was still standing in the corridor beside her, his button still hanging around his neck. Metoo reached towards it.
“May I?” she asked, gently taking the button in her hand. Pitu looked down at the button, and then caught her gaze. He looked like he might cry, and she realised that he was in shock.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m going to get some help.”
Metoo typed C-Q-D into Service, using Pitu’s button and an old Morse signal that she had been taught when she had become Tobe’s Assistant-Companion. If all else failed, and she had no other access to Service, Metoo was authorised to use any Student’s button, which would relay her individual three letter code, overriding the Student button ident.
Service arrived on the scene in less than two minutes. One of them wore the Medic Operator’s armband that reassured Metoo that Pitu 3 would be taken good care of, and one was a Police Operator.
“Ma’am,” he said, “did you identify yourself on a button override?”
“Yes,” said Metoo.
“Which button, ma’am?” the Police Operator asked.
Metoo pointed at Pitu 3, who was having his pulse and temperature taken by the Operator with the Medic’s insignia.
“Mudd,” said the Police Operator, speaking to the Medic, and gesturing towards Pitu 3’s button, hanging on the grubby chord around his neck. The button was illuminated. Neither Pitu 3 nor Metoo, nor Tobe for that matter, nor half of the Service Operators standing in the hall, had ever seen a lit button. “Remove that, immediately, for verification and processing.”
Pitu suddenly broke out in a sweat, and his knees buckled beneath him.
“I...” he began, and then he went down.
The Medic knelt down beside his patient, put him in the recovery position, and slipped the button from around his neck.
“Piggy-back to your Schedule,” said the Police Operator, and Mudd removed a length of flat nylon ribbon, from his belt, with a loop and buckle at each end. He buckled one end firmly around Pitu 3’s right wrist and the other around his own left. Until Pitu 3 was safely back at Service, he was physically and electronically linked to his Medic Operator. It was for his own safety, as well as for the good of Service, the College, and, potentially, the planet.
Within another two minutes, Pitu 3 had been stretchered out of the corridor. Metoo and the Police Operator remained outside Tobe’s door, and Tobe remained, where he had been standing, in the middle of his office.
Two more Service Operators had set themselves up outside Tobe’s office, in the corridor on either side of his door.
Metoo realised that the Police Operator was about to cross the threshold, without any thought to the data that covered the floor.
She anticipated the move, and put her hand on his upper arm, firmly.
“Don’t,” she said.
“He needs to be extracted,” said the Operator.
“Not like that, he doesn’t,” answered Metoo.
Chapter Ten
NAMED OPERATOR STRAZINSKY had pushed his chair away from the screen in front of him, and thrown the switch on the facing edge of the counter. He was running his hands up and down his thighs, partly to relieve his anxiety, and partly to wipe away the swe
at that had collected in his palms. His hands should have been raised. He remembered Protocol, and lifted his hands into the air, as if in a gesture of surrender.
A TONE SOUNDED on the Service Floor. The remaining eight Operators stopped what they were doing, pushed their chairs back from their screens, and threw the switches on the facing edges of their counters. Eight pairs of hands were raised into the air.
The first man into the room was Ranked Operator Dudley. He was on duty on the Service Floor, and had the dubious privilege of taking over from Strazinsky. It was his first Code Yellow in thirty years with Service, including twelve as a Ranked Operator. He had found his niche and had no ambition to climb the career ladder any further. He was a short, neat man with the sort of dry sense of humour that was virtually unheard of among Operators. He was also, completely and utterly, reliable, and there was a little more confidence in the room when he was there.
“Verify headset,” he said, before he had even sat down in the seat that Strazinsky vacated for him. The headset arrived just as he finished keying in his Morse signature. He did not hesitate for a moment, and was already reviewing visual and aural material before his second had arrived, and even before Strazinsky had left the Service Floor with his escort.