The lockdown finally ended. It still wasn’t clear whether anyone was apprehended for the rodent theft. It became a running joke. The apprentices took great joy in calling each other Rodent Thief, Rat Man, or Mouse Marauder.
At lunch on the day after the lockdown, someone asked Jayne if she were saving carrot sticks for her pet rats just because she was eating a salad. This was said only half in jest: it seemed like everyone was a suspect.
Rumor circulated that nothing had actually been stolen. The theory was that a computer glitch or a test of the security system was the real reason for the lockdown. After all, who would want to smuggle rats out of a biome? What possible motive could anyone have for stealing rats? If you wanted a rat, there were plenty of legal ways to obtain one.
Jayne mulled over the strange situation as she munched on her salad. Yes, why would anyone steal rats? An idea began to form in her mind as she chewed; what if these rats were somehow different than other rats? Her brain quickly filled in the blank. These rats would have been implanted with special biome markers.
But why rats? Jayne straightened in her seat as her mind whirled through the possibilities. Rats reproduced quickly, which was the main reason they were used in research. Reproducing rats meant reproducing biome markers. Having a steady supply of biome markers would enable someone to move anything in or out of the biomes without alerting security. The scanners on the spavator would ignore anything with the correct biome markers. She pictured the white box with the picture of a human heart on the outside, and her own heart began to beat faster. Had that box contained a heart from one of the biomes? Whose heart was it? How had it been removed? Where had the man with the missing finger taken it and why? Who would want or need a heart anyway? Would a transplant recipient want a heart from an omie? She shook her head. She had too many questions and not enough information. She would have to ask Lucky later.
Jayne stood up and was about to leave when Joseph stepped in front of her. “How are you squeaking, Mini Mouse Girl?” he asked and he squeaked a couple of times for effect. “Have any other boys been assigned to follow you around?”
“No, only you. I just realized that you must feel so special. What a pleasure it must have been, to follow me around, waiting for me while I did important stuff,” she sneered.
“Well, Mini Mouse Girl, things have changed. I got some very special orders today that you’re not going to like. In fact, you’re going to hate them ’cause you’re going for a little….” He paused as his VID began to beep loudly. He took it out, looked at the screen briefly, and quickly put it away. He turned his back to her, still speaking. “This afternoon, you get to follow me. Get used to looking at this,” he said, sticking his bum out at her.
Jayne didn’t respond. She just opened her VID to check the afternoon’s assignment. It read: Kane 37 and Wu 13 report to Section Sub D Levels 1 and Level 2 by way of the PUT pads in the East Rotunda.
“We’re just working together,” she snorted. “I’m not following you. In fact, I suspect that it’ll be the other way around once we get our assignment.”
“Nice try, Mouse Girl, but I just figured out where Section Sub D is located. It’s at the base of the spavator. We have clean-up duty,” he said. “We were shown that area on the first day. The day you were somewhere else. The day you missed all the rules about what to do and what not to do. There were a couple of second-year apprentices cleaning up and they did not look happy. You will have to follow my orders so be prepared to get dirty.”
He walked away and Jayne hurried after.
“You wish!” Jayne retorted. She slowed down, intending to show him that she wasn’t about to let him take charge. After a moment, she realized that she couldn’t see Joseph anymore, so she sped up and was relieved when she found him standing in the rotunda. He was looking back and forth between his VID and the room.
Finally he spotted Jayne. “Come on, Wu, I don’t want to be late. There will be no spots on my record. I plan to make foreman in three years. It was bad enough playing a game of GravBall with some kid that stole a grav metre. Guilt by association is sometimes worse than true guilt. You can’t even defend against it.”
“Stupidity by association is even worse,” she muttered quietly.
They both stepped on the PUT pad. Jayne sneered at Joseph, watching him trying to arrange himself onto the pad. “Now, Joey, make sure you tuck in those feet.”
A moment later they found themselves inside a small equipment room at the base of the spavator. They grabbed some dust masks and vacuums and proceeded to Section Sub D Level 1. The room was large and circular. It was the terminus of the spavator cable. At this initial point the fibers did not form a single cable as they did further up.
Each fiber bundle joined together and entered the ceiling at the edge of the room, travelled down the wall and fanned out in lines, with each successive fiber bundle reaching further and further into the room and disappearing into the floor. Under the floor, they connected to the GS array. It was designed so that a failure on any given line could not cascade. It was over built. Even a failure of 20% of the lines would have little effect on the overall spavator performance.
As they entered the room, Jayne felt the electricity in the air. Her hair began to stand up and out in all directions, but she was annoyed to see that the static had little effect on Joseph’s buzz cut. They reached down to their boots simultaneously, exposing the ground plate in their shoes to the floor. Jayne’s hair dropped as the static went to ground. The massive amount of static electricity was a byproduct of the GS array. Like a giant precipitator, it attracted any particulates in the air, creating a coat of grunge that would quickly build up if left alone. That was their first job of the day—clean all of the dust and dirt off the fiber contacts with high-powered vacuums.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Jayne smiling, “you go that way and I’ll go this way and we will meet in the middle. That way we can work together without working together. It’s a win-win.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Joseph.
The job was pretty simple. The vacuum head fit perfectly over each fiber connection point, sucking away the dust and dirt in seconds. It took them a little more than an hour to finish the dusting.
“This didn’t take as long as I thought, but we still have Level 2 to complete. It’s pretty bad down there,” said Joseph.
Jayne looked at her VID, calling up the map of the spavator. “That’s where the line-vacs terminate. The small ones ascend to 15 kilometres. As they descend they remove dirt and moisture, and reduce the weight on the cable. The larger line-vacs transport the dirt to Level 2. Most of it gets taken away on the conveyors, but a lot finds its way to the floor.” She looked up at Joseph. “I guess that’s our job today.”
They returned to the equipment room to collect the tools they needed. Carrying the large flat shovels, Jayne and Joseph trudged down the long set of stairs to Level 2 and entered a dark room. As Joseph stepped forward, the lights came on. Jayne looked back and forth, examining the long narrow room with high ceilings. A conveyer belt ran the full length of the room along the far wall. Between the conveyer and a monorail that ran parallel to it, Jayne recognized the focus of their current job. A lot of dirt and debris was strewn beside and around the monorail and in front of the conveyer belt.
“According to this,” she said, holding up her VID, “we’ll have to shovel—yes, you heard me right—shovel the garbage onto the conveyor so it can be removed.” She held her hand over her nose. “Yech, it stinks in here. I don’t believe it. I joined TEM to become a journeyman tech and here I am shoveling sh—.”
A loud klaxon horn sounded, cutting off her last word. A linevac rolled down the monorail and slowly tipped forward, dumping its contents onto the conveyor belt. Most of the debris made it to the belt but some inevitably missed, resulting in the collection spread all along the floor at the edge of the conveyor. Righting itself, the line-vac continued on its way, exiting the room at the other end. The klaxon silenced as it exit
ed.
“I didn’t think they were that big,” said Jayne. “It must hold three or four cubic metres of debris.”
“Only the ones at the lower end are that big. They collect what the smaller ones clean from higher up and dump it here. The conveyor takes it away to be processed. The majority is line dirt and vegetation. There’s even some algae that grows one to two kilometres up,” stated Joseph.
“Boy, aren’t we the expert,” she retorted sarcastically. “Let’s get this done. It really stinks in here.”
Moving to the edge of the conveyer belt, Jayne started shoveling. Joseph joined her and soon they’d cleared a small section of floor. The belt continued to run quickly past them, carrying the material away to places unknown. Jayne was leaning on her shovel when the klaxon sounded again. They both stepped back from the monorail and waited. A line-vac appeared, tipped, emptied its contents on the belt and returned to its upright position. It clanked as it continued down the line, dragging spillage along the floor and disappearing as it exited at the far end of the room. Jayne looked at the mess left behind and groaned. The entire area they’d cleared was, once again, littered with cable trash and rotting vegetation.
“You’d think they could have designed these things to be more accurate when they dump on the belt. Now we have to go back and clean that whole area again,” she said, indicating the fresh pile on the floor.
“It won’t take a sec to clear,” said Joseph, stepping over to push it all onto the moving belt.
Just as he finished, his VID beeped. He stopped and checked it. “That’s weird,” he said. “It wants us to stand right…” he moved to the center of the room, “… over… here.” He stopped and looked over at Jayne who was still standing, leaning on her shovel. “It said both of us. Get over here!”
“Since when do I have to do what your VID says? If I was supposed to move over there my VID would have—” she stopped in mid-sentence as her VID beeped. “Damn!” she said, moving to stand beside Joseph without even checking her VID.
He took her shovel, threw it down, grabbed her by the arm, spun her around so she was facing away from him and said, “Well, would you look at that.” Joseph shifted so that he was now holding her by the shoulders. Jayne was too startled to move. No klaxon sounded, but a line-vac entered on the monorail, stopping in front of Jayne. Instead of tipping trash on the moving belt, a door on the back of the line-vac slid upward. Jayne could see a clean interior with padding on all of the inner surfaces. Any curiosity as to why the inside of a linevac would be clean and padded was cut short—quickly and roughly.
Jayne staggered as she felt a very unexpected shove from behind, propelling her inside the line-vac. She didn’t even have time to raise her arms before she face planted into the far padded wall, hitting hard. The door closed behind her and she found herself enveloped in darkness. As the line-vac began to move, Jayne could hear it clanking along the monorail and out of Section Sub D Level 2. Her hands went to her face, trying to alleviate the stinging pain of the collision with the wall. Her nose hurt and a tear slid down her cheek. She wiped it away as she bit her lip. She heard a voice call out, “Sorry Wu u u u u,” then there was a hiss. Jayne smelled something strange and then she felt nothing at all.
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