by MacGuffin, WJ; Hanrahan, Gareth; Varney, Allen; Ingber, Greg
Contents
Orientation
Rule Zero
Allen Varney
Orientation (Revised)
Market Research
Greg Ingber
Orientation (Re-revised)
Hay Fever
WJ MacGuffin
Orientation (4.0)
Action Request
Greg Ingber
Orientation (Final)
Data Exhaust
Gareth Hanrahan
About PARANOIA and Ultraviolet Books
Allen Varney
Backmatter
Contact
Acknowledgments
About the authors
More PARANOIA fiction
Changelog
FREE preview: Reality Optional
FREE preview: Stay Alert
FREE preview: Traitor Hangout
CITIZEN OF ALPHA COMPLEX! YOUR MANDATORY ORIENTATION STARTS HERE.
The Computer is happy. The Computer is crazy. The Computer wants citizens to be happy. This drives them crazy. Many traitors threaten the underground city of Alpha Complex. Who’s more dangerous—traitors or happy citizens?
THERE MAY BE A TEST, FOLLOWED BY POSSIBLE TERMINATION.
This all-new anthology introduces both new and returning citizens to the joys and rigors of PARANOIA. Five light-hearted stories feature backstabbing mutants, misprogrammed robots, and crazed firefights in the food vats.
THIS COLLECTION WILL HELP YOU BECOME LOYAL, INFORMED, AND LOYAL.
Several of these short, mayhem-filled tales feature characters from the PARANOIA novel line.
- “Rule Zero”: Heroic Troubleshooters seeking a stolen helpbot (from Stay Alert) find the legendary Bot Graveyard.
- “Hay Fever”: CPU efficiency auditor Clarence-Y meets his pet mouse, Ignatius (Traitor Hangout).
- “Data Exhaust”: Watch the head of the Department of Threat Obfuscation (Reality Optional) try to leave his suite.
STAY ALERT! TRUST NO ONE! KEEP YOUR LASER HANDY!
The Computer says so, and—
THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND
A PARANOIA anthology edited by Allen Varney
Orientation
Welcome to Alpha Complex, $NewCitizen_NAME!
You are REQUIRED to read and understand the following important data.
ALPHA COMPLEX
The Computer is happy. The Computer is crazy. The Computer will help you become happy. This will drive you crazy. Being a citizen of the underground city of Alpha Complex is fun. The Computer says so, and The Computer is your friend. The Computer wants you to have fun and be happy. Happiness is mandatory. If you are not happy, The Computer will use you as reactor shielding.
TRAITORS
Mutants and members of secret societies—threats to good order and good hygiene.
TROUBLESHOOTERS
The Computer’s elite agents, charged with hunting and apprehending traitors. Rumors the Troubleshooters themselves harbor traitors are treason.
“RULE ZERO”
Four Troubleshooters enter the wilds of the Underplex in search of the legendary Bot Graveyard. Wait, you’re not searching for the Bot Graveyard? Wait, who are you?
A prelude to PARANOIA novel T1 Stay Alert (Book 1 of The Troubleshooter Rules trilogy) by Allen Varney, available where you obtained this book.
Rule Zero
Allen Varney
Year of the Computer 214, Month 03, Day 27 (Sevenday), 07:44—JSV Sector FunFoods PLC Processing Plant JSV043 Access S014
“Get control of this situation or I’ll get control of you,” Fabian-O shouted up to Sheila-R. “Now stop hanging by your fingers and climb back onto that girder.”
“Will do.” Sheila-R-JSV-1 blew long black hair out of her eyes. Shoulder-length hair worn loose—not right for the fashionable Troubleshooter, and definitely not for hanging suspended ten meters over a bubbling 40-kiloliter vat.
Over Sheila’s headset, the Troubleshooter Dispatch bureaucrat at the other end of her call—Mabel, Melba, something like that—said, “Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” Sheila remembered to gasp away from, not into, the mike. “Talking to—Team Leader.” She tried to swing one leg up to the girder. She failed. “You said—I need—a form—”
“Three forms. First your Troubleshooter Active Duty application, of course, which technically you were supposed to complete before your first mission. Then, because you say you were recruited on an emergency basis, an Exigent Circumstances Orientation Waiver, signed by the party who recruited you—”
“Roscoe-R—our Happiness Officer.” She tried swinging back and forth to build momentum. She felt her grip loosening.
“Roscoe-R-JSV-3? The registered mutant?” Mabel (Melba?) sounded wary.
Sheila swung high. Her heel just reached the I-beam girder. “Yeahhh!” She wedged her foot between the beam’s upper and lower lips. “I mean—yes. Pulled me—out of my barracks—didn’t say why—never met him before—” He woke me from a sound sleep at 05:30, said “You’re a Troubleshooter now,” and two hours later I’m falling into a food vat.
“Well, if it’s a mutant, then you also need your Team Leader’s signature. And last, sign a Media Image Use Release, in case you do something heroic and they want to broadcast it on—Did you say something?”
“Just—strained a muscle.” Sheila spoke through gritted teeth as she hooked her chin over the beam. As she flung both arms over the far side, she felt glad she’d brought the hands-free headset.
Sheila had—umm—borrowed the headset from JSV Sector Troubleshooter Dispatch. She worked there as Deputy Assistant Logistics Coordinator, a title she liked more than “gofer.” Right now she took pride in this headset—a nice noise-canceling ergonomic unit from one of her favorite firms in Technical Services, HearMeNow Earscapes TS—lightweight, great battery life—as her only piece of mission equipment. Troubleshooter Team Adenoidal-352 had given her no armor, no weapons, and no time to prepare. She knew Troubleshooter teams lived and died by preparation.
As she scrambled onto the beam, the next thought struck hard: Troubleshooters mostly died. Every morning she saw dozens of teams leave Dispatch and head out across Alpha Complex. The Computer sent its elite service agents all over the underground city on important missions: protect this, escort that, recon over there, frontally assault those traitors—wherever there was trouble, they went to shoot it. Few teams returned intact. On his last mission, Team Leader Fabian-O had been the sole survivor.
Panting, Sheila glanced down at the bubbling, blupping vat of Intermediate Emulsion 14b, then back along the beam to the platform overlooking the vat. There stood Roscoe-R, a lanky, unshaven young man with black, straggling hair (not quite shoulder-length—that was good) and the drug-glazed expression of a dutiful Happiness Officer. Roscoe held out an upturned thumb. “You’re doin’ fine, man!” He popped another HappiPill.
Sheila remembered Roscoe had been the only survivor of his last mission, too.
Melba (Magda? Marla?) was still talking. “Submit the completed forms to the Dispatch manager-on-duty for preliminary inspection, then get approvals from the Dispatch commander and the Internal Security liaison, and copy any Central Processing Unit efficiency auditor who may be on assignment.”
“And then I’m officially a Troubleshooter?”
“No, not then.”
A crewcut head and thick neck pushed into view on the gangway at Roscoe’s feet. Though short, even stubby, Loyalty Officer Thaddeus-O was a real widebody; his broad chest and steroidal biceps barely fit between the handrails. Sheila had already noticed how Th
addeus went through doors sideways. “Newbie!” he yelled. “Back on the beam? Then get after that thief.”
“Will—” (gasp) “—do.”
“What?” said Marla (Marsha?).
“Nothing.” Sheila was starting to wonder if Thaddeus had her best interests at heart. There they were, he and Roscoe, two seasoned Troubleshooters, standing safely back on the walkway. Thaddeus had ordered her, a rank newcomer, to crawl out over this stinking vat.
Now that she thought about it—when he’d returned from his last mission, Thaddeus, too, had been the sole survivor.
Huh.
“You’re not officially a Troubleshooter until you get your license,” Marsha (Moira?) continued. “Licensing is automatic—during ordinary recruitment. But as an emergency recruit, you take care of it yourself.”
“Ah.” I seem to be taking care of lots of things.
Sheila looked around. Beyond the churning expanse of pinkish-gray murk, the FunFoods factory floor spread away as far as she could see: vat, vat-vat, vat-vat-vat.... endless lines of colossal steel megatubs like this one. They steeped, simmered, stewed, brewed, beat, blended, fermented, folded, mulled, mixed, and massaged the myriad chemical goops that would become Hot Fun, the food (well, food-ish nutrition) of the low-clearance multitudes. An all-encircling labyrinth of pipes, dense and complicated as an oil rig, stretched in all directions. The air smelled of sweat socks and perfumed garbage. She saw no workers; Fabian-O had gotten this part of the factory evacuated. But the hall still echoed with the churn of mighty machines. Somewhere nearby, tinny speakers blared a cryptic vatwork song: Can’t take time for pleasantries, / I’m pushing out my VSPs!
Between the vats ran wide concrete aisles laced with cracks. The floor’s weak. Great.
“Take your approved forms to the local Office of Troubleshooter Authorization in Central Processing Unit’s Licensing Division. Be careful. You don’t want the Department of Licensing in CPU’s Division of Troubleshooter Administration.”
“Wouldn’t think of it.” Crawling along the girder, Sheila finally reached a point directly above—far above—the vat’s center. Here a vertical cross-beam reached up into a shadowed webwork of support struts. Her target, a thief in yellow, was directly above.
Holding tight, she started to climb.
“You’d be surprised how many new Troubleshooters make that mistake,” said Moira (Maria?). “It can keep you off active duty, trapped behind a desk, for weeks.”
“Gosh, that would be awful.” Sheila looked up and saw, far up and receding, a thin yellow-jumpsuited butt receding fast. Where had this guy learned to climb? “So the steps are submission—approval—license?”
“That’s the procedure, except in nonstandard circumstances that probably don’t apply.”
Sheila stopped. “Friend Maria—”
“Melba! And that’s Melba-O to you, RED.”
“Sorry!” In the unbreakable hierarchy of color-coded security clearances, Sheila-R had to respect and defer to any citizen ranked ORANGE or higher. “Sorry, Melba-O. Just a little—distracted—here—” At least her hair wasn’t falling in her eyes; sweat had plastered it to her forehead. “Melba-O, let me describe my nonstandard circumstances. Just yesterday, when I was restocking manila folders and binder clips, I remember wishing for a change—something new, anything. Now I’m climbing a girder over a food vat in FunFoods factory 43, herding a traitor who stole a docbot. Okay, yes: change. But—”
“Herding?”
“Chasing. I mean I’m chasing some YELLOW-Clearance thief I’ve never met, nor heard of, nor know anything about. Except—dang!—this guy is a serious climber.” She traced the thief’s progress. Parker-Y-JSV-1 was racing at speed straight up a lattice of support struts. Something in his movements—too strong, too sure—
But whatever Parker-Y was using for his spider-climb, it didn’t matter. With breathless excitement—she lacked breath to feel any other kind—she saw she’d corralled the thief.
Above him, barely visible in the shadows, was a small, inconspicuous ceiling hatch, blocked by welded iron bars. She’d managed to push him almost under the hatch. She started to climb again.
“FunFoods 0-4-3,” Melba-O repeated, as if musing. “That’s supposed to have a route into the Underplex.”
Again Sylvia stopped, dead. For one terrifying moment she wondered if Melba could see her seeing the hatch. “Ummm— You don’t say.”
“Some Troubleshooter mission teams have looked for it. They say that part of the Underplex holds some kind of treasure trove of valuable equipment.”
“Gosh.” Just to be safe, Sheila looked away in random directions. “Uh, did anyone find this hatch—this route, do you know?”
“Not that I heard. So many teams go into the Underplex, but not many get back.”
“Great.” Sheila saw, below her, Thaddeus and Roscoe running along the catwalk to get into position. Roscoe was squinting upward, tracking both thief and hatch with his superhumanly acute senses. As she watched, Roscoe swallowed another quick pill to dull them. Even in his fog of happiness drugs, the mutant lived in a storm of high-intensity sense overload. He seemed to be perpetually wincing.
Thaddeus pointed at Sheila, then up at the thief. Thaddeus pointed a lot, as if showing off his rings. He was in Armed Forces, and wore rings as mementos of many all-out combat rehearsals. “Quick, newbie, he’s going too far!”
The thief climbed onto a high gantry way and scampered along easily on all-fours. No—wait—
Sheila gasped. Parker was crawling on the underside of the walkway. He was barefoot, and his fingers and toes were sticking like glue.
Thaddeus gawked. “Mutant.”
Still looking up, Roscoe shrugged. “Sure, man. Didn’t you see the stripe?” He pointed to the yellow stripes on his own red jumpsuit’s legs—the stigmata of the registered mutant.
“His suit is yellow, and he’s way far away. How were we supposed—?” Thaddeus broke off. He pointed at Roscoe. “You’re a mutant too. Go get him, push him back to the right spot.”
“He’s got sticky skin. I’m hypersenses. What should I do, listen him to death?”
Thaddeus sputtered. He pointed up at Sheila. “You, RED. Put him—ah, where we want him.”
“Thaddeus-O, I wonder—excuse me, Melba-O, be right with you—I wonder if this is the right guy? Our guy stole a docbot, right? I don’t see a bot with him.”
“Troubleshooter Rule Number 1, Sheila-R—” With each phrase, Thaddeus-O pointed at her, rat-a-tat. He’d been pointing at her so often, she wondered if there was some other “Sheila” around, and he was just making sure. “Do what I tell you.”
“I thought you said Rule 1 was ‘Don’t annoy me.’”
Roscoe looked confused—not a big change for Roscoe. “Wait, on the transbot you said Rule 1 was ‘The Loyalty Officer gets the best seat.’”
“I heard that,” Melba said. “The real Troubleshooter rules are, ‘Stay alert, trust no one, keep your laser handy.’”
Sheila sighed, though it sounded like ragged gasping. “I don’t have a laser. I wasn’t issued one in my ‘emergency recruitment.’”
“A Troubleshooter without a laser pistol? Wow, that’s pretty—I mean—well, good luck.”
When one has climbed halfway up a tall girder above a 2.5-megaliter food vat, one inevitably feels, simply through circumstances, a certain unease. Melba’s tone stirred greater doubt. Sheila was chasing—herding—a mutant with unknown abilities and weaponry, and she carried nothing deadlier than a head full of hair that would somehow, some way, get her killed.
But she was game. Sheila resolved to try, at least until things got worse.
Immediately things got worse. The mutant started throwing blobs at her—gobs of sticky exudation from his adhesive skin. One gloppy bolus stuck on the cross-beam near Sheila’s head; it smelled like sweaty hair, though right now everything in Sheila’s world smelled like that. Another batch landed in the vat below, blup-p-p.
&
nbsp; Sheila watched it sink. “Melba-O, as Hygiene Officer, am I responsible for cleaning up—?”
A chime. The chime—the cheery handbell ring intended to induce calm and a sense of warm welcome. At the chime, everyone in the factory, from the cracked floor to the shadowed ceiling, froze in place and assumed a fixed grin. Many began to sweat.
From every speaker rose the honeyed voice of The Computer.
ATTENTION, TROUBLESHOOTER TEAM ADENOIDAL-352.
For an endless moment the Troubleshooters waited for their Team Leader to speak. Funereal silence. At some point in Sheila’s climb Fabian-O had vanished. This meant the second in command, the Loyalty Officer, was now in charge. Uh-oh.
“Yes, Friend Computer!” said Thaddeus. “Everything’s fine, Friend Computer!”
YOUR TEAM HAS ALLOWED A TRAITOR TO SPILL A CURRENTLY UNDEFINED AMOUNT OF INEDIBLE CONTAMINANT INTO FOOD VAT JSV043-255-J. EACH TEAM MEMBER IS FINED 5 CREDITS FOR FAILURE TO PREVENT UNHYGIENIC CONTAMINATION. PLEASE PREVENT FUTURE CONTAMINATION.
“Will do, Friend Computer!”
YOU MAY NOW RESUME APPREHENDING THE TRAITOR.
The speakers clicked off. Everyone breathed. Overhead, the contaminating traitor started crawling again.
“Yes,” said Melba.
Sheila waited. “Oh. Responsibility. Right, roger that. So it sounds like I have quite an adventure ahead, getting this emergency recruitment through.”
Parker-Y reached some kind of impasse, hesitated, then turned and retraced his crawl. Sheila watched him, meter by meter. Any moment....
Melba-O spoke with evident reluctance. “If you haven’t been issued proper equipment, technically you could be considered not a Troubleshooter at all. After this mission you’d go back to Dispatch and join in the usual way.”
“But if it’s easier to just join when I get back, can we just say this emergency recruitment never happened?”
“Well, obviously you want to follow the rules.”
The traitor crossed just under the barred hatch. Beyond that hatchway, the Underplex. Sheila signaled to Thaddeus.
For the benefit of nearby microphones Thaddeus loudly announced, “I’m targeting the thief!” He pulled his laser pistol. Then, to Sheila’s surprise, he popped the orange barrel off his pistol and attached a fresh barrel. She panicked as she saw the barrel’s color: vivid purple. The weapon was VIOLET Clearance, well above Thaddeus-O’s rank and lethally powerful. And by targeting the hatch, he was aiming right at the intervening mutant—and, by unhappy coincidence, at her.