by G R Matthews
If I picked the right factory, the oldest, most run-down, the one at the bottom of the industrial food chain, maybe it wouldn’t be well guarded. Its intruder systems would be broken or easy to hack into and there would be water and clothes. Maybe.
Factories used robots, great machines bolted to the floor that carried out repetitive tasks all day, every day, but they still needed people to repair them. To clear up the mess, to carry out the checks, sign the sheets, see to safety and quality. The automation of factories hadn’t done away with manual labour, it had just changed the nature of the work.
On the edge of the map there was one that might fit the bill. It was connected to the city by a trackway, a moving path upon which workers stood and walked, and far enough away that, apart from the labour force, it wouldn’t be the destination of many. It was old, not as old as the dome, but not far off and despite the earmarks of grandeur about its construction it had clearly been superseded by other, newer factories. According to the map key, it made the nuts, bolts, screws and clasps that fixed one thing to another. Those things were everywhere, and this was the factory that made the things you never paid any attention to.
My kind of place.
Chapter 23
When you are in a city you can be contacted easily. A Pad or Panel will convey the message. In-Eyes, temporary or permanent, will do the same job. Anywhere you are, the person wishing to contact you can do so. Out in the ocean, it’s not so easy. Radio waves don’t travel well, a few metres at best. You can lower the frequency to enable them to travel further but it costs. Light doesn’t travel far either, but it is easier to boost the power and punch of a laser. So, within twenty to thirty metres of a city lasers are the preferred method of communication.
The best way to contact someone is through sound. It travels through water better than anything. Whale song is a fine example of this. Go to the Deep Sound Channel, the DSC, at around 700m and you’ll hear whale song from every part of the ocean.
But if you want to contact a submarine, and do it without the whole ocean knowing, you use the cables. Laid a long time ago, and still today when a new route is developed or a new city built, the cables carry the information between all the cities, factories, farms and outposts. Subs tend to follow fixed routes, most of them anyway, and along the cables are junctions. Places where the subs can pause, upload, download, or just have a conversation with the cities at either end, or anywhere else, of the cable. All the sub has to do is come into range, thirty metres for lasers or just a few for radio waves, and communication is established.
A thrilling and complicated bit of science and engineering. For me, vital. Sound travels best, so to remain hidden travel quietly. Anything within thirty metres stood a chance of picking up some form of electromagnetic signature from a sub. The emanations from a Fish-Suit were much, much lower, and could be tuned so low that a sleeping electric eel produced more.
I didn’t want to be spotted, tracked and followed to the factory so knowing the range of communications, sensors and the amount of sound I was producing was a matter of life and death. I preferred the former. I’ve seen enough death to last a lifetime.
I pushed the motors hard, clearing the airlock and getting some distance from the city structures. The hum of the engines and feel of the thrust against my shoulders and back were welcome, though I was careful to keep the rotations down. Too high, too fast and I’d get cavitation, bubbles of air forming and popping as the pressure between blade and housing fluctuated. It was also noisy.
I’d chosen a course almost directly away from my intended hideout. Not original, I preferred to think of it as tried and tested. The menus that scrolled past on the suit HUD were some that I hadn’t had to use since my military training days. Some of them more recently.
Using the suit software and maps that Rehja had kindly provided, I plotted a course and speed that would carry me through the surrounds of the city without detection. In places, if I didn’t want to spend all day out here, I’d have to slow down or even walk across the sea floor to avoid any mechanical sounds being picked up. A City-AI was always on the listen out for things that shouldn’t be there. We were at peace, but that didn’t mean others weren’t going to harm us.
# # #
It still took four hours. No food, no drink and nothing to do but follow the route on the map. Adjust the speed here, slow down for this bit, speed up now. Lights on, lights off. Boring. Boring. Boring.
I watched the little dot that represented me move slowly through the seascape towards the factory. The occasional moment of interest resulted from subs coming and going, and the sea life that I scared by tramping through their habitat. A city discarded a lot of waste and some animals had altered their behaviour over the years to scavenge directly from our detritus.
When that little dot came within a hundred metres of the factory I finally had things to do. Using the motors, I turned my face into the current and held myself steady, thinking it through. Must be a dock big enough for the transport subs which would come and pick up the nuts, bolts, screws and clamps on a regular basis. If today was one of those days, so much the better, I could piggy back my way in. However, the lack of activity registering on my HUD quashed that idea.
Which meant, I needed an airlock. In the sure and certain knowledge that the opening and closing of the doors would register somewhere. The question was how long would it take someone to come down and check it out. An old factory, mostly robots, dock hands, maintenance crew and managers. Figure someone noticed straight away. What would they think? It wasn’t a life threatening occurrence, a bit strange and annoying is all. Perhaps it was a software glitch? They happened regularly. The worker checks that out, maybe goes so far as turning the whole thing on and off again, just to be sure. Check with the regular crews, the cleaners, maintenance, those kind of people, perhaps they were working down there. Put a call in to the manager, someone higher up the chain, just to be sure it was something they should be noticing. Then, after all that, send someone down to check and, if needed, fix the broken cable, switch or other small but faulty item.
Twenty minutes, maybe twenty five, before someone got there. Plenty of time. I couldn’t afford to be spotted or found in the factory. There were a few other packages in my suit’s software that I could, should I really need to, deploy. They’d make a little noise, set off a few alarms, or just remain totally undetectable if the city software and AI hadn’t changed too much since the suit was last updated, but they’d all leave a trace somewhere.
No time like the present. Stupid saying, of course there isn’t.
I stopped the internal diatribe before it got started, realising I was procrastinating like a world champion.
Flicking the controls and menu selections, I put the suit into the stealthiest configuration I could. Enough power to run the HUD, to provide a little thrust from the motors, but nothing to the exoskeleton or assisted breathing apparatus. The slight, subtle thrum of the suit’s pumps, servos and motors vanished. A slow turn aimed my body at the factory and I started to move through the dark water, lights off and only the HUD to prevent me feeling totally isolated.
The little dot moved, slower than a sea horse, towards the outline of the factory on the map. It was tempting to kick the motors to a higher speed, but it would be detected and leave a trace. Staying hidden was key and if that took another ten minutes to cross the hundred metres or so to the factory wall, that was fine.
Stunningly tedious and nerve-wracking. I was already drowning in Oxyquid so if I was sweating it wouldn’t show.
The factory wall loomed out of the darkness like a giant monolith those apes had found in a clip I’d seen. I’m no good with titles. There is bone in it though and a spaceship.
It didn’t matter, I was at the factory. Now to find an air lock. One on the lower levels would be best, I thought. Somewhere the workers don’t go often. Probably held the emergency generators, air tanks and maybe, if I was lucky, some algae vats. They’d mask my presence,
the extra carbon dioxide I was putting out, the slight drain in oxygen, and my heat signature. Not that they would be looking for me. That was, after all, the plan.
Rehja might not know I wasn’t dead yet, but I’d bet he was just waiting for the news to hit the clips. Fish-Suit user killed in tragic airlock accident. Board promises an investigation. Human error to blame. Forgot to seal his suit properly. Oxyquid valve on suit jammed. That kind of thing. All very sad and convenient.
I dropped down the water column, my hand trailing along the outer skin of the factory wall, and followed my nose, searching for an airlock door without using my lights. Luckily, the executive branch of health and safety came to my rescue only twenty minutes later in the form of a single slow flashing light that indicated the outer door of an airlock.
Saved.
For a moment. Small victories build into big ones.
Something like that anyway.
Chapter 24
None of the maps in the suit memory showed the interior of this factory. It would have been damn useful if one had, but there you go, when you’re running for your life the first thing you forget to do is plan for it.
The one thing I will say for the factory itself, it has a lot of storage. The Fish-Suit, Oxyquid testicle full, went into a compartment not far from the airlock. It had to, there were no hoses and no reservoir to be found. They weren’t in every airlock, far from it, but most of the newer ones carried a reservoir large enough to fill them. A last ditch emergency measure. When you’re about to die from lack of air or implosion at depth, an airlock full of breathable liquid can seem like the best of the options available.
Back in my underwear again, leaving a trail of clear slime as I moved, I searched the lower corridors of the factory. So far, I’d been lucky, no cameras in evidence and I avoided the panels that could be found at every junction. There was also an absence of people, which was fine with me.
A lot of the doors were locked, but the clearly labelled ones suggested that there would be nothing behind them I wanted. A lot of the really old factories, the first ones built, had dormitories and rooms for the workers. They hadn’t been connected to the cities by anything as fancy as a walkway and the workers lived, ate, slept and passed the time in the place they worked. A capitalist’s wet dream. After the first few riots the dreams became nightmare. People just weren’t programmed to live, work, eat, sleep and reproduce in an environment of constant work. A lot of those factories were gone, though I’d heard of some still operating, through the rumour mill, in the other corporations. Cheap labour equals more profit.
NOAH had outlawed those factories early on. They’d done something right. However, commit a crime and there were the prison factories where inmates worked all day for no wages, just paying off their debts to society. So what if the corporation and governors got rich at the same time. Everyone knew it wasn’t right, but what you couldn’t see, you could ignore.
My hope, given the age of this factory, was that some rooms would have been kept in case of emergencies. A worker who stays too late to finish a job, a manager who has to oversee the latest run which has fallen behind schedule, a stock check that ran on, that sort of thing.
The corridors down here were just what you’d expect. Metal girders supporting the structure above, smooth walls of age tinted steel and floors with a dimpled metal surface. All very industrial. The drips and small pools of water on the floor alongside the moss that grew in damp corners were a break from the monotony of metal, even if their very presence hinted at a maintenance department that hadn’t caught up with all the leaks yet. Every box, city or factory had leaks. No matter what you did, water would find a way in.
A clank and thump from the junction ahead had me diving for the nearest door, which thankfully opened without a struggle. I didn’t look, just jumped in and closed the door, remembering at the last moment to leave it open a tiny amount so I could peek out. There was probably a light switch somewhere near the door, but even I’m not that stupid.
I tried to calm my breathing and ignore the thumping of my heart. If they caught me, they’d start asking questions. Then they’d contact the city security forces and some nice officer, probably accompanied by a few friends, would visit and use their specially trained skills to work out who I was and what I knew. Retina or DNA scan for the first part and a savage, ‘he fell down the stairs, Chief’, beating to discover the rest.
Two figures passed by the tiny crack in the door. A man and woman dressed in blue overalls, tool belts swinging from their hips.
“Airlock bloody nineteen again,” the man said.
“Surprised it hasn’t been shut down,” she said.
“Health and Safety,” he answered.
“Fuck off,” she laughed. “Bloody thing auto-cycles every couple of days. Sooner or later the door’s going to jam and the whole level will flood.”
“Must have two airlocks every level.” The last of his words were lost to distance as they turned the corner.
I checked my clock, forty one minutes to get here. Slow. That was a good sign. Security was lax and lazy. Who’d break into a factory that made nuts and bolts? Certainly not to steal anything, there was nothing worth taking, and not to blow it up. Why bother? Industrial espionage was also low on the agenda unless some genius developed a self-turning, unbreakable nut and bolt combo that could be made cheaper than the ones turned by a spanner holding a tool.
When I was as sure as I could be that they were gone I turned the light on and took a look around. Every other door had led to a storeroom full of broken junk, smelly crap, rotting garbage and the skittering feet of rats. This one was the jackpot. A medical bay. Not a large one. Two gurney beds, a basin, some cupboards, cabinets and those curtain things on wheels. At the back was another door labelled toilet. Home, sweet home.
I dealt with the biological necessities first. Bladder empty and hands washed, I drank a litre or so of water straight out of the tap. It was cold and sweet, clearing the taste of Oxyquid from my mouth and throat. Next job, check the cupboards and cabinets. Most of the medicine bottles had names I didn’t recognise though I found some headache tablets and popped two. Just a precaution.
In one of the cupboards I found some towels, always worth holding on to, and a few sets of scrubs. I dragged one set over my still damp underwear because being dressed is a confidence booster every time. There were a few pairs of flimsy shoes, thin soles and elasticated uppers, which I put on.
A place to sleep, water to drink, a toilet and some clothes. Almost everything a man could want from life. Apart from food. I needed something to eat. The other storerooms had contained food once. Now it was so old that evolution had taken hold and new lifeforms had been emerging from the piles of festering gunk that lined the shelves. If I wanted food, it would be up a few levels. There was bound to be a staff canteen.
Cities stuck to a regular twelve hour day and twelve hour night cycle, just like our surface dwelling ancestors had done. It fit, so I understand, with just a few minor adjustments, the rotation of the earth around its axis. Light still had meaning to the many cities which sat in the shallower photic waters. Even deep, farmers and fishers needed to know the day and night cycle. During the day, squid, for instance, stayed deep and at night they rose higher in the oceans. There were other things to, but none that really impacted on my life in the city. Still, sometimes, a little information was useful to know.
It meant, in the current situation, that come the night, the day shift would leave and the night shift would take over. Typically, and I’d worked a shift or two when I was younger, the night shift was lighter. Fewer people tended the machines, fixing and cleaning up the day shift’s work. If a big order was on, and that’s when I’d been hired, the night shift was brought up to strength.
Now though, tonight, there would be fewer people in the factory. In my fetching scrub attire, I could venture higher, like the squid, in search of food.
A quick inspection of the door showed it could be
locked from the inside, which I did, and I fortified it with a cabinet jammed under the handle. It paid to be careful. My clock said three hours till night, add another hour to be sure, and I had time to catch some sleep. A few hours of shut-eye and I’d be more awake for the hunt.
I slipped out of the scrubs and underwear, hanging both over the curtains on wheels device, and took another drink of water.
The last precaution I took was to remove the suits Pad, a small computer that contained a copy of much of the software, hacks, maps and other useful electronic tricks the full Fish-Suit could deploy, and set the suit’s alarm. We’d been trained to get close to a city, effect entry, do some damage and get out, if we could. Sometimes, we were told and practiced, that might mean leaving the Fish-Suit behind. The fact that some targets contained a few tens of thousands civilians was never really mentioned. Soldiers die in war, but civilians suffer alongside, even those who didn’t want anything to do with the conflict.
Collateral damage. An ugly term for an ugly job.
Chapter 25
I woke, splashed some water on my face and drank some more. The door was closed and the cabinet still jammed against it. Time to find some food to fill my belly.
The room had stayed warm, the joy of constantly recycled air and the insulation that was needed in the outer walls of the factory. As a result my undergarments, the skin tight leggings and t-shirt were dry. Very little beats putting on clean clothes, except maybe slipping into clean sheets, and whilst these weren’t clean they were dry. The scrubs, a little creased, went on top and the thin almost-shoes completed the outfit.