Fulcrum

by Doug Rickaway

  Letho grabbed a pack of chewing gum as he dashed out the door to make his way to the work shuttle. The door, sensing the proximity of his uCom implant, slid closed and locked behind him.

  The sterile, metallic walls of the outside corridor greeted his tired eyes. His neighbor had left a foul-smelling pile of garbage bags outside his door, its pungent odor filling the hallway. Letho had recently heard him complaining through the walls about how his garbage incinerator wasn’t working. In this level of domiciles it always seemed that everything was either operating at half efficiency, or not at all.

  At least my uCom always works. I’d have to murder everyone on the whole floor if it didn’t, Letho thought.

  Hyperbolic thoughts were on a very short list of things that brought happiness to his life.

  He made his way down the long corridor that led to the commuter shuttles, his feet clanging on the worn metal grates beneath him. Overhead-light panels blinked in erratic fashion, and display screens that hadn’t functioned since before Letho was born displayed only blackness. The metal panels that adorned the ceiling showed black gaps every few strides, and Letho could see snakes of wires and tubing as thick as a man’s wrist up there. He wondered whose job it was to repair those wires—and was glad it wasn’t his.

  The cramped confines of the tunnel leading to the commuter station began to give way to wider space, the color palette still drab industrial metal gray. As he moved farther in he found the familiar red lines and numbers that directed him to his shuttle line. In the distance Letho could see walkways in other primary colors that led to other platforms. They didn’t receive much foot traffic, for people had very little need to travel between the color-coded sectors. If you lived in the Red Sector, you worked in the Red Sector. You ate your lunch, often in silence, with Red Sector workers. And if you were the type that craved social interaction outside of your sector, there was plenty of opportunity in the entertainment and commerce sectors that dominated the entirety of the ship’s upper quadrant.

  Eventually Letho arrived at the shuttle terminal that would take him to work, his connection to shuttle tubes that ran in a convoluted arterial flow through the entire length of the station. The passageway was empty at this time; Letho preferred it that way. It saved him from the small panic attack he always suffered whenever he was forced to make small talk with passersby.

  After a short walk and a trip down a flight of stairs he was puffing his way onto the loading platform. The turnstile auto-scanned his uCom and clicked into the unlocked position.

  “Letho 0219, YOU ARE LATE AND ALMOST MISSED YOUR TRANSPORT,” barked a starchy, crackling feminine voice.

  “Tell me something I don’t know. Or how about, ‘Hey Letho, how’s your day? Looking great as always,’” he said.

  “THIS INFRACTION HAS BEEN NOTED IN YOUR EMPLOYEE FILE. HAVE A NICE DAY, LETHO 0219,” the voice said. He gave the nearby security cam a curt half-smile and wave.

  “See you later, Val.”

  Every day he came up with a new name for the disembodied voice, fantasizing that someone somewhere was watching him via closed-circuit monitor, and appreciated his good humor. Such activities kept him on an even keel, alleviating the thoughts of taking a long walk out of a short airlock.

  Sometimes he wondered if people really were capable of coping with long-term space travel. He had never actually felt real sunlight, yet he felt an itch for it somewhere in the back of his brain—an itch that the artificial lamps and holographic scenery couldn’t quite scratch.

  Oh well, that’s what the morning breakfast of serotonin adjusters and mood levelers is for, he thought as he took a small packet from his pocket.

  Red is for anxiety. Blue is for depression.

  He shook them in his palm for a moment, then swallowed them both.

  The bullet-shaped monorail came to a silent stop in front of him. Sleek and trim, the red shuttle looked like a slightly more streamlined version of the pills he had just consumed. Its nose was conical like a bullet, with boxy personnel cabins stretching behind it. The tail end of the shuttle tapered off flat and pinched as it met the surface of the tunnel. There were no tracks, for the train was somehow pulled forward, backward, up and down by a force generated by the tunnel itself. Letho didn’t know how this was accomplished, but he suspected it was some type of magnetism.

  Yellow caution lights came on as the doors slid open, and a few bleary-eyed folks coming off the night shift shambled out. He watched them with envy as they made their way back to the quiet and cool of their domiciles.

  Letho minded the gap between the platform and the monorail as he stepped into the cabin. He remembered the time when he had seen a man fail to watch his step while boarding the monorail. Chuckling, he found a seat and made his uCom screen appear.

  It’s okay to laugh if they don’t die, he thought.

  Letho checked for messages again: finding a funny picture of a movie character with an inappropriate and unrelated caption, but nothing else. No response from the girl who had assured him that she would totally message him back.

  He thought of her face, perfectly round, with much of the prime real estate of her smooth, olive-skinned face taken up by deep hazel eyes like limpid pools. He saw her often in the Eursan Memorabilia store that he frequented in the town center. He felt that this love of Eursan pop culture was a bond between them that could be grown into something greater; although what that would be he didn’t know. Perhaps love? He discarded the notion. He had to get the girl to notice him first. A pang hit his stomach as he remembered that she had seemed much more interested in Deacon the night before.

  Sila, he thought.

  How many times had that name been etched across his frontal lobe, emblazoned in bold crystalline strokes, and glowing like the stars?

  He scanned his mail messages as the monorail slid from a slow crawl to greasy-quick. He felt the compressing hand of gravity on his chest and face as he scrolled the display on his uCom. Music began to play through the implants in his inner ear; his selection was music by a quartet of young men, frozen in the moment that the recording was made, forever etched in zeroes and ones hidden away on old server arrays. No doubt these men were long dead, but they lived on in the gritty yowl of their voices and the insistent, staccato chug of the stringed instruments they played.

  He thought of the actual physical location of the server that was still accessible even across the void of space, the digital signal blasting through the emptiness like an unseen comet. He wondered if it was covered in dust in some forgotten basement. Or did someone maintain it, hoping that someone out there could hear the product of his maintenance?

  Though Eursus is effectively dead, the beat goes on, he mused.

  He nodded off, leaving a grease stain in the shape of his cheek on the window.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  “ARRIVING AT RED SECTOR 1: COMMUNICATIONS,” said the feminine voice. Letho gathered himself and went to face another workday. The Red Sector transit hub was bustling with activity. It had been modeled after the subterranean transit system of a great Eursan city, complete with ornate mosaics and charming street names. It was the little touches that helped one forget the cold, suffocating blanket of space, the emptiness that permeated everything in this strange home away from home.

  Nearby, a dark-skinned man with a backward cap was playing a familiar Eursan tune on a brass, tubular instrument Letho recognized as a tramblene. As he passed the musician, Letho ran his hand across a reader that sat on his music stand. The uCom implant pinged, signaling a microcredit transaction.

  “Thank you, brother,” the man said. He took a deep breath, cheeks bulging like dinner rolls, and went back to his ministrations.

  The sounds of idle conversation and the syncopated clatter of footfalls reverberated off square black and white wall tiles, creating a wave of accidental music that washed over Letho. On a nearby bench a man and woman spoke in monosyllables, tinged with varied inflections that sounded like Chinesh. Letho caught
the woman’s eye, and he attempted a noncommittal smile, but it came out more like a smirk. The woman favored him with a bemused look then went back to her conversation.

  Letho made his way over to a vendor selling breakfast wraps from a small pushcart. He held out his hand to a scanner on the counter. With the same affirmative chirp as before, credits were withdrawn from his account and deposited in the vendor’s. The man said something that resembled thank you in a grunting dialect, and began heaping synthetic eggs into a wrap, along with real beans from the hydroponics sector. Letho thanked the man and ate his breakfast as he walked.

  Letho boarded an escalator leading up out of the tunnel network and into a large concourse. High above, digital displays rained down false sunlight and an azure sky filled with wisps of white clouds. The hive-like, cylindrical hall was adorned with faux granite panels, and the floors were utilitarian grids of gray, scuffed steel. From this section of the Fulcrum station the throngs of workers began to split off into the subsectors that made up the Communications department. He followed the familiar path to his own elevator, and arrived just as several people were piling in.

  “Coming?” a man asked.

  “No, thank you. I’ll wait for the next one.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Letho navigated the maze of cramped cubicles to find his own. He sat down, wincing at the lack of cushion and lumbar support as he steadied himself. If one didn’t balance in the chair just so, it would deposit its occupant on the floor.

  Letho’s job was to cycle through thousands of reports from other Fulcrum stations and find interesting items to post on the Centennial Fulcrum’s news site.

  Letho had been drawn to the communications sector by its rich stockpiles of Eursan information. He had an inquisitive mind, and it yearned to be fed by the vast archives of periodicals, history books, and video documentaries on the Fulcrum station’s network. He peered over the top of his workstation screen to make sure the coast was clear, then began perusing movie reviews from the twenty-first century.

  Not work-related, the voice in his mind said.

  He placated his internal copilot by promising that he would start real work in fifteen minutes. Letho sent a mental reminder to his uCom of some movies he would like to watch later.

  This information-gathering process seemed to push back the wet-blanket sensation that clogged his brain. Letho’s questions were patches of raw skin on the surface of his brain, begging to be scratched. When did the Fulcrum stations first launch? How many were there? Documents that might answer his questions were often missing from the archives, or required a higher security clearance than he possessed.

  The work that Letho was expected to do was not stimulating, an affront to his self-perceived intelligence. He thought about how he would rather be working at home today. He looked around at his co-workers, their foreheads just visible over oatmeal-colored cubicle dividers. No one looked particularly happy to be there.

  He thought about the fact that these were the only people that he had consistent interaction with, the only people with whom he was forced to speak actual words. It was a mixed blessing, he supposed, and it made him a little depressed.

  He wrote articles about watermelon festivals, displays of good citizenship, and, of course, nuptials and obituaries. He had often thought of transferring to the subsector responsible for Eursus news, so that he could have access to live feeds from Hastrom City, but security was very strict there, and he had overheard some rather intriguing stories of people getting fired for no apparent reason. Sometimes people were transferred to the bowels of the station where the machinery was heavy and the wrenches unwieldy. He shuddered at the thought of work that involved actual physical exertion. And then there were the slave bears...

  Letho scanned the latest offerings and found nothing to satisfy him. He chose a story about the birth of a set of triplets on the Radiant Fulcrum. He added a few of his own touches to the article, highlighting the rarity of multiple births on Fulcrum stations. Letho deleted the second half of the editorial, which outlined the author’s opinion on deviations from the birth cycle and how they affected hydroponic supplies. After reading over the article one more time he sent the finished product to his supervisor.

  A moment later he received a message on his workstation screen:

  Good.

  The message was from Mr. Gall.

  Probably didn’t even read it, Letho thought.

  ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

  Letho bided his time, watching the clock with heavy eyes. He felt himself sliding into the listless, waking sleep of the mid-afternoon semi-coma. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mr. Gall approaching, and with practiced ease Letho slipped into the persona of a gentleman hard at work.

  “Mr. Ferron, how are you today?” Mr. Gall said.

  Letho could see a large ring of wet spreading from underneath Gall’s armpits.

  Somebody needs to up his dosage of hormone suppressors.

  “Doing well, sir. How about you?”

  “Just fine. Listen, I really liked your article. Very tasteful. It will hit a very broad set of demographics. That’s just the kind of writing we like around here. Letho, I would love to see more of this kind of work.”

  “Appreciate that, sir,” said Letho. “In fact, Mr. Gall, I have been turning some ideas around in my head,” he said through a shy grin, his face turning a slight red. “What would you think about me writing a new editorial, I don’t know...” he said, beginning to fidget in his seat.

  Letho felt like someone was shining a white-hot light on him. Then a surge from inside his gut steeled his resolve.

  “…Something more hard hitting… Some real news for once!” he exclaimed, surprising both of them. He was becoming more animated as he continued his pitch. He glanced up to check Mr. Gall’s reaction, and what he saw caused him to stop mid-sentence. Mr. Gall placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a patronizing smile.

  “Letho, that sounds great, but it’s just not right for what we do here. People need light reading, articles that don’t make them upset. We don’t want people getting upset, do we Letho?”

  “Uh, I guess not,” he sighed.

  “Hey buddy, I appreciate your enthusiasm. Keep up the good work!”

  “You got it, boss!” Letho said, giving Mr. Gall a thumbs-up that he immediately regretted, especially when his boss returned the gesture. There was a moment of infinite awkwardness, and Mr. Gall grunted something like yep, and with a dip of his head, turned and walked away. Letho gave his boss’s turned back a mock salute, then went back to scrolling through the new items in his data feed. He willed an interesting story to appear, and prayed for the final hours of the workday to go by quickly.

  TWO – “Commutication”

  Letho took the elevator back down and made his way to the entrance hall. He felt the usual discomfort as people stood shoulder to shoulder, moving a few steps at a time as they trudged toward the traffic jam at the down escalators. The primitive part of his brain began issuing panicked warnings as he found himself encircled by the mass five-o’clock exodus.

  The wait was for the shuttle was long, made especially so by the press of other bodies against his. The tramblene man was nowhere to be found, and the breakfast vendor had long since packed up shop and gone home. No one spoke above a whisper, and no one made eye contact, for they were all enthralled with their uComs. All around Letho, Fulcrum citizens sorted out the day’s news, went through electrotexts, and watched videos. Letho wasn’t surprised to see that no one in his vicinity appeared to be reading the news site that his sector produced.

  It was eerie the way the tiny glowing rectangles lit up people’s faces. It always made Letho think of funerals for some reason, of people inside LED-lit caskets, their bottom-lit faces visible through the viewing window. Letho noticed a pretty girl from his office, and felt an urge to reach out, to make a connection. It was overridden by his desire to avoid embarrassment.

  Way out of your league, bro, said the voi
ce in his mind.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?” said the man nearest to Letho.

  “Uh, hurry up, I said. I hate waiting for these shuttles, right?” he said.

  “Yeah, right,” the man said.

  He attempted to take a step away from Letho but couldn’t because of the tight pack of people around them.

  The quiet roar of the approaching shuttle provided an exit from the awkward situation. People began to nudge one another in the not-quite-confrontational body press of the exhausted office worker who just wants to go home. Letho found a seat and settled in for the short ride, placing his music on shuffle.

  The shuttle made several stops, and people exited in groups of three and four. Soon he was alone, a little unusual for a Monday afternoon. At the third-to-last stop before his own, a large figure wearing a hooded overcoat stepped onto the train. Letho noticed that the shuttle car rocked a little as the figure stepped from the loading platform and entered the train. Letho’s heart leapt as he realized what he was seeing.

  A slave bear! The creature appeared even larger than what he’d seen in the images on his computer screen. Though Letho was terrified, the scene struck him as comical. Why the hooded overcoat? Was the creature attempting to blend in?

  The ridiculous clothing only served to draw more attention, for the coat was large enough to cover three full-grown men. And what was it doing here? As a rule, slave bears did not fraternize with Eursans. Most people lived their entire lives on the Fulcrum station without ever seeing one.

  Well, they wouldn’t be called slave bears if they didn’t keep them pretty busy.

  The creature’s hood was pulled down low; only a short snout protruded from the cowl’s shadow. Letho noticed a set of square teeth peeking out from behind the creature’s muzzle. He couldn’t tell if the slave bear was smiling or grimacing.