by Nik Abnett
Service Central, masquerading as Tobe, had no way to answer the question, and so stalled, while they collected information, and waited for the opportunity to interview Tobe.
Metoo, when she was asked, could not answer the question, even after she had spent some time reviewing the data in the garden room, watched over by Operator Saintout. She was a good theoretical mathematician, but no one considered that there were any remaining problems where probability was concerned, so she had not studied it since School.
She was certain of one thing: Tobe was looking for the answer to a question. She knew, only too well, that Tobe might not know the nature of that question, might not be able to express it in any language, mathematical or otherwise. Why something happened the way it happened could not always be explained; some things simply were. Tobe did not understand that. The chances of Tobe ever understanding that were, in Metoo’s vernacular, “Slim to none”.
Chapter Seventeen
RANKED OPERATORS MCCOLL and Dudley continued with their duties. Of the three remaining Ranked Operators, Patel was the best rested, and she had eaten, so she was sent out to Tobe’s office to supervise the extraction at 18:00.
She had to take the room apart, starting with the floor, for logistical reasons, and then moving on to the wipe-wall, the bookshelves, the desk, and finally the fabric of the room. There would be nothing left when she was finished. Of course, she would not be doing the job alone, in fact, it was not intended that she would be doing the job at all.
Estefan and his colleague were stood-down for debriefing, and two more Techs and two Operators were brought in at the end of their Rest periods. Service Central wanted fresh men working the room; what came out of there could prove critical.
One Operator and one Tech began the process of working their way across the linopro, under Operator Patel’s instruction. Patel was aware that the information on the linopro had not been drawn from the door, inwards, but she also knew that it was the only way to collect and record all of the data. She began by instructing the Tech to make a 30 centimetre square on the threshold of the room, using pins and string to mark out the area. When everything was collected and bagged from that square, including copies of all the handwritten data, they could move on to a second square. All the squares would be numbered to form a grid, with the corresponding number on the bag containing the information from each square, so that the whole lot could be reconstructed if necessary from the data they collected.
It was difficult, painstaking work: collecting the tatty pages from books without leaving bits stuck to the linopro, copying out complex equations, including crossings out, errors and smudges that nobody present understood, while trying not to impose their own values on the artefacts.
The first square took almost half an hour to dismantle and bag up. When they were finished there would be a hundred bags just for the floor, and it could take fifty working hours to complete. By the end of the second hour, Operator Patel was viewing the process almost as if she was performing a kind of forensic archaeology. With one person copying and another documenting and bagging, per square, it was important to have both teams working the room at the same time. She worked out the optimum order for the squares to be completed in. Both teams working together would cut the time in half, to twenty-five hours. The team in the left half of the room worked in rows back and forth, across the room, while the team on the right of the room worked in columns along the length of the room.
Increased familiarity with the process, and the fact that the mathematical data seemed simpler and clearer, the closer to the middle of the room the men worked, made everything go faster than expected, and collection of data on the linopro was completed in a little under eighteen hours. Operator Patel did as much work as any of them; four people were working at any given time, and one was resting, or bringing refreshments. They also only worked fifty minutes to the hour to allow for comfort breaks and to keep the workforce relaxed. It was an efficient system, and Operator Patel got more out of her team than anyone at Service Central had dared to hope.
Operator Patel preferred to keep the teams that she had trained for the job, rather than bring in new staff, and, having made her case to Service Central, she was allowed to continue with one of the teams after a four hour rest period. The second team would come in after an eight hour rest period, and the first team would get their second four hours of rest. Then, both teams would go back to working the original system until the next task was accomplished and the wipe-wall was dismantled.
TOBE HAD WORKED on the first day, when he should have been taking tutorials. He had started work early on the second day, which should have been a rest day, and a rest day was imposed on him on the third day, after Pitu 3 had hit his Service button at 08:30 in the morning.
It would not be impossible to impose a second rest day on Tobe on day four of the event, if things were not sorted out before then, but Metoo did not relish the thought. She could still hardly believe that things seemed to have gone so far. Tobe was in his room, apparently tossing a coin and collecting the data, quite happily, while Saintout was wondering about in the garden room, doing goodness only knew what, and waiting for her to make one of the most important decisions of her life.
She signed in to Service, and asked, “Anomalies?”
The answer came back, “Moderate and monitoring.”
Metoo took a deep breath.
“Please advise,” she said.
“Maintain the subject,” Service replied.
Metoo wanted to scream. It was her job, to maintain the subject. She had been maintaining the subject for her entire adult life. She was on-call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. She fed him and clothed him. She had set his routine when she had first become his Assistant-Companion, moulding her predecessor’s regimen, as she went along, to better suit Tobe’s needs, without changing things so dramatically that she upset him. She had even weaned him off all the drug therapies that her predecessors had used for their own convenience. For the past eight years, she had maintained the subject.
She had watched him while she was his Student. She had liked and admired him then, but her relationship with him now was much deeper and more profound than it had been when she had merely sat in his classroom.
How dare they tell her to, “Maintain the subject”? How dare they? It was all she had ever wanted to do for him, not because she had to, but because of the relationship they had. In fact, it was less than she wanted to do for him, less than she wanted to do for them both. She didn’t want to ‘maintain’ she wanted to nurture.
Metoo understood Tobe; she knew him. Service had profiles on him, they had his dossier, they knew his mental status, they had completed every kind of test on him, possible, including several that she considered cruel and unusual, but none of that mattered; Metoo lived with Tobe, and her life belonged with his.
It didn’t seem to matter to them. No matter what she did for, or said to, Service, if they couldn’t test it, count it, or quantify it, they could not understand it.
She signed out of Service, and tiptoed towards Tobe’s room. He was sitting on the cot, his feet apart, on the floor, looking down at where he had dropped the coin she had given him. She had been listening to the coin bouncing off the linopro for most of the day. He was content, untroubled, breathing easily and physically relaxed. Service was the one panicking, not her, and not Tobe. If there was something wrong, she would know it. She didn’t know it, couldn’t feel it.
Confident that Tobe would continue his activity until supper-time, which was still a couple of hours away, Metoo ducked back into the garden room.
“Okay,” she said to Saintout, “this is what we’re going to do.”
Chapter Eighteen
IT TOOK TWO hours for the Service Floor change-over to be completed. Each of the eight screens, not immediately involved in the Code Yellow, switched out to Service Central, and an Agent Operator relayed instructions for the following shift.
For the next
eight hours, the outgoing Operators would have an enforced Rest/Repast period, regardless of their shift-status, so that they could be back on-call as soon as possible. The eight men, who, half an hour before, had thrown the switches on the facing edges of the counters, and put on cotton-lined neoprene gloves, were dismissed. They took off their gloves, and one or two of them wished their colleagues luck, or exchanged words with their Techs. As they left, there was a small sigh of relief from the remaining Operators on the Service Floor, who finally had room to breathe; so many bodies made the place claustrophobic.
All Techs more than four hours into a shift were also put on compulsory Rest/Repast, for the same reason, which alleviated the pressure of so many bodies in the room, a little more. The remaining Techs were supplemented by the extra pair of hands that was brought in for each rack.
By the end of the first two hours, the number of bodies on the Service floor had dropped from fifty to a much more comfortable thirty. It was still almost double what it would normally have been, and the pairs of Operators at their screens had to get used to the proximity of another person very quickly.
It was one of the few situations where no one really knew who was better off: the participants, or those who had been spared the anxiety of working that particular shift. For some of the more ambitious outgoing Operators it was a missed opportunity, for others it was a relief; some of the incoming Operators were thrilled at the chance to prove themselves, while others began to doubt their abilities. It was the same for the Techs.
All of the Techs and Operators had faced precisely these circumstances in Training Simulations and Manoeuvres, but the real thing was very different. Some would sink and others would swim, but Service Central was adamant that they would prevail.
Conditions on the Service Floor were difficult. The tension in the air was palpable, and some of the Operators’ and Techs’ bodies were reacting to the stress in ways that didn’t endear them to the people they were working with.
So far as anybody knew, and nobody knew very much at all, only one Workstation was registering a Code Yellow, so monitoring ought to continue as usual for the remaining eight stations. The only difference in this shift was that every Workstation had two Operators, and Service Central was monitoring all the stations in rotation.
The Service Floor worked two eight-hour shifts, during which time nothing changed. Two hours into the first shift, when everyone had settled down, and the Techs had got the racks up to prime-spec with everything to hand, where it should be, and duplicates waiting, everyone began to relax.
The change-over to the second shift was a little tense, those incoming not knowing what to expect, and anxious to find out what had happened in the intervening time, particularly those who had switched out and been put on compulsory Rest/Repast. They had eaten and slept, and were either keen to get back into the fray, or were returning to the Service Floor anxious and reluctant.
The hand-off went slowly, but smoothly, with each Workstation being monitored, again, in turn, by Service Central. The Service Floor was too full of people again for almost an hour, which caused the room temperature to rise, and stress levels to increase.
Two hours into the second shift things had returned, once more, to something resembling normality, regardless of the fact that there were twice as many Operators as usual, and half as many Techs again as on a regular shift.
“It’s about bloody time,” said one Tech to another. The second man looked at the first as if he was insane.
“You’re enjoying this?” he asked.
“I like the fact that the racks are fully stocked, and we’ve been allowed to do our jobs, properly, for once,” said the Tech. “How long have we been under-supplied for? No hardware, no tools, no extra labour. Now, suddenly, we have all the equipment we can handle, and enough Techs to install it and run it properly.”
“You’re insane,” said his colleague.
“So sue me,” answered the Tech, running his finger along a row of lights on a brand new piece of hardware, sitting on rack 3, next to him.
Two shifts had passed, nothing had happened, and, still, no one had made a decision about the Code Yellow. The Operators began to talk to each other, in their pairs, and the Techs speculated that human error was more likely to be to blame than their beloved machinery, but that the obsolete, over-repaired machinery was more likely to be the culprit than any dangerous malfunction in the Service system.
THERE WAS NEVER any natural light on the Service Floor. Studies on variations in light levels, colours and luminosity had proven that people worked most efficiently, and calmly, at a particular bandwidth for electro-magnetic radiation, so that all Service facilities were lit to that particular bandwidth. In theory, it made it impossible to tell what time of the day or night it might be, and, at the beginning of training, some Service Operators suffered minor collapses in their circadian rhythms. These seldom lasted long, and were thought of as a necessary evil within an adjustment period. One in a thousand Operators, most of whom lived close to the tropics, never finished basic training, because they could not tolerate the light-levels they were expected to work at. Service Central considered this a statistically insignificant figure.
It was well into the night, when the Service Floor generally worked at its lowest staffing levels, yet none of the Techs had been relieved.
What the Operators and Techs on the Service Floor had not been told by Service Central was that two other College Service Floors were experiencing ramp-ups. By the last hour of the second shift, one had been in Code Green for four hours, and one had been ramped up to Code Yellow.
It was 02:30 on day four of the incident and Service Central was working with Operators in Colleges in Lima, Peru, and in Winnipeg, Canada.
Chapter Nineteen
TOBE AND METOO saw out day three. He worked on simple probability problems, almost making a game of them, while continuing to collect and collate the data, and Saintout stayed in the garden room. Once or twice, a tone sounded in the flat, but it was always Saintout relaying information, or requesting Metoo’s presence.
On one occasion, she went into the garden room to find him eating from a tray, with domed covers over the plates.
“What the...?” she began, almost laughing.
“Combat Repast,” said Saintout, “double helpings.
“How are things?” he asked her.
“That’s just it,” said Metoo, “he seems rather happier than usual. I’m telling you, there’s nothing wrong with Tobe.”
“Well, we’ll know, one way or the other, tomorrow. Are you still prepared to go through with this?”
“Absolutely.”
“In that case, someone from Medtech needs to come in.”
“Why? You can adjust my chip through Service Central, can’t you?”
“There’s a slight problem with that,” said Saintout, “which I’m not at liberty to divulge.”
“If you’re going to send in someone from Medtech to mess with my brain, you’d better find some damned liberty,” said Metoo, approaching the door. “Send me a tone when you’ve got something useful for me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Saintout. His respectful use of an honorific startled both of them.
“What did you call me?” asked Metoo, turning back to face him.
“Sorry, but you seemed terribly serious. It just came out.”
“I’m not your superior, but thank you.” Metoo left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
“Oh, I think you are,” said Saintout.
Within five minutes, the tone sounded, again, and Metoo signed in with Service.
“Yes,” said Metoo.
“Service Central has requested Medtech to perform a procedure, regarding brainwave analysis. Subject: Assistant-Companion Metoo.”
“Why can’t you make the adjustment to my chip, remotely?” asked Metoo.
“That is not possible, and all information relating to the matter is classified.”
“So,
give me specified clearance, because, without it, this isn’t going to happen. Send me a tone when you have an answer for me.” She signed out of Service.
Metoo sat, slightly anxious, but no less determined, as she waited for the tone. She would do anything for Tobe, if she had to. He was the only person on the planet that she would kill or die for, but she would not be manipulated, and she was not afraid of Service Central. As far as Metoo was concerned, they could not tell her anything about Tobe that she didn’t already know. She would not be made to betray him.
No one had ever told Metoo that Tobe was Active, and Tobe certainly wasn’t aware of it. Metoo had known that he was special the moment she first met him, and he had not even known her name for the first year she had spent as his Student. He had never previously remembered the names of any of his Students, which was why, almost immediately after Metoo moved into his flat, everyone in Tobe’s class was given the same name with the addition of a number. When none of the ‘Neda’ group proved suitable as an Assistant, the name and some of the Students were fazed out, and replaced with the designation ‘Pitu’.
Metoo lived and worked with Tobe for two years before she began to suspect that he was Active. It was nothing in particular that he said or did; it was just something about him that was different from the other Masters. Tobe was the Master that she was close to, so she told herself that she had elevated him to the status of Active, in her mind, simply because of their relationship.
The thought had drifted into her head at regular intervals ever since, but Metoo had always disregarded it. It made no difference to her. She knew that no one in College was supposed to know the identity of the resident Active, or, indeed, whether the College had one.