Chapter Two
“I had a dream that I was awake and I woke up to find myself asleep.”
—Stan Laurel
A dream barely remembered of a crane on Earth ripping my house up to the sky and dropping it like a cage into an ocean of sharks. The house was watertight, but the sharks pounded one window again and again, until my curtains shook.
Whump … Whump … Cracks spread like frost. The pressure bent my window into a bubble that stretched, stretched … Pop! A gush of cold green saltwater slammed me against the far wall. I woke sweat-drenched, gulping Martian air.
I didn’t recall leaving work. Not clearly. I ran stone-faced for the Lift. Coworkers stared at me as I fled, but that could have been the day’s fame at work.
I hopped a magcab on the stanchion steps. That I remembered. En route we whizzed past another Golden Promise taxi and down a blur of coppery mag tunnels to the small dome englobing my new neighborhood, just below TRIC City. My bubble contained a semi-abandoned manufacturing district, and my spanking new LiveGood jutted from an abandoned loading dock. It looked like an angry bot had jammed an oversized package into a too-small mailbox.
By the light of the dying sun, I opened my suitcase—thank you Alfred—and retrieved the duty free bottle from Luna Prime. A fat gallon of scotch, good for months. My hands shook opening it.
I TAPped off my MedReg filters and pulled a long swig. And that’s my last memory of the first day on the new job.
THRUMTHRUMP THUM
In the waking world the distant punch of the Chute rattled my LiveGood like a killer checking the front door. As consciousness returned, the tingle of neuromuscular stimulation faded. My MedReg had been countering the effects of Martian gravity; it woke me three times my first night, but not yesterday. I must be used to it. All about I heard the little noises of my rental tea-kettling to life.
Over there my closet door recessed with a hiss, and my suits shuttled round on the auto-rack to ready. Synth percolated on a counter somewhere behind me. My alarm clock played a cheery tune. I wanted to smash it.
I was hungover. My head hurt as if clamps pinched my temples. I licked the inside of my mouth. Dry and mummified. My teeth felt like little tombstones.
THRUMTHRUMP THUM THRUM
Back to bed. I wanted to sleep. My covers were warm. Even snuggling the scratchy Red Planet gift blanket was better than waking up. And that thing was thinner than the toss-away from the cruise liner.
Five more minutes. I rolled over.
THRUMP THUM THRUM
The low vibration buzzed my blood. The Earth-side rep said not to worry. Everyone adapts. Yeah? Go buff your teeth with a street curb, you lying sack. Adapt to that. How did people sleep through this?
THRUMP THUMTHRUM
I didn’t deserve this. I wanted to go home. I wanted my family. My eyes popped open in the dark. I didn’t have a family, she’d murdered it.
I sat up and—CRACK! Slammed my head on the frame above me. Stars blossomed, white and red before my eyes. I forgot the mattress recessed into a wall, and my LiveGood’s bubble, unlike most businesses, lacked artificial gravity. I’d have to rectify that.
“Mutha—”
I scooted down, swung my feet off the end of the bed, and cradled my head. My forehead throbbed. The top of my skull too.
I drew a deep, slow breath. I will survive what she did. I’ll wake up like a good Derek doll. Push my button and off I go to work. I’ll smile my plastic smile and come back to my empty toy house and sleep and get up and do it again. Over and over, as long as I have to, until I can afford a ticket home.
Then what? I could no longer picture the next chapter of my life. Just yesterday I was clear and focused like a laser. Make the plan. Work the plan. Everyone comes to Mars. Raise a family.
Now the future was as pitch as this trailer.
I needed a painkiller for my pounding head, or I wouldn’t get out the door. Start there. I TAPped for light. No response.
“Light, please.” The LiveGood stayed stubbornly dark. “Lights one-third.” Then I remembered they hadn’t worked yesterday, either.
How appropriate. Of course I was in the dark. I’d been in the dark the whole time Crystal planned this. I didn’t believe for a second she only decided after I left Earth.
So I should, what? Dress blind and hope my socks matched? Illegally mod my MedReg to dilate my pupils?
THRUMP
THUM THRUM
My head pulsed to the rhythm. Didn’t Golden Promise make LiveGoods? Maybe they didn’t change it to English when they set up my new place?
My Mandarin stank, but it couldn’t hurt to try. “Hau Sheng Dee-an-now, yung ingwen.” A horrible mangling of “LiveGood computer, use English.”
LiveGood using English
good morning DEREK TOBBIT
Finally something in this overgrown matchbox worked. “Lights on.” Every light in the LiveGood popped to max like a slap. “Lights one-third!” They dimmed to a comfortable level.
Where was the toilet? A memory flashed: stumbling around drunk in the dark trying to find the bowl, peeing in the kitchen sink, laughing and crying at the same time. The bathroom had to be behind a wall panel like my bed.
THUM
I should have known better than to take this place. Other managers lived inside TRIC City, near the park. Not in a sub-bubble. But closer to the Chute like this meant cheaper, and cheaper meant my family joined me sooner; so I took it anyway.
THRUM THRUMP
They had charged me extra for soundproofing.
I staggered to the kitchen. It smelled of yesterday’s urine. I ran the faucet to clear the smell. Pretty sure I saw painkillers in a cabinet last night. I opened the nearest and rooted around, shoving dishware left and right. The LiveGood came with utilitarian plates and bowls the landlord probably stole from a hospital. Or a death row cafeteria.
I moved to the next. Cups. More industrial bowls. Nothing. You’d think my MedReg could pipe nanos without a scrip. But no, you needed a doctor to drop meds into your bloodstream.
I closed the second cabinet and turned—
CRACK! And slammed into the first cabinet door. The one I left open.
It was too much.
I grabbed the handle and smashed the door shut. Opened it and smashed it again. Wham! Wham! WHAM! The gray laminate chipped. Shouldn’t have done that. I was inspecting the damage when my foot slipped. I hugged the door as I went down, but that put my full weight on it. The hinges bent with a squeaky rip and tiny screws ping-pinged off the walls. With a sudden snap I hit the floor, the little door torn off in my grip.
I landed with my back to the sink. A cup and then a plate bounced off the floor. Luckily nothing was delicate china. My ankle hurt. I sat for a moment, stunned, and then I laughed.
It started as a low rumble and built to a solid guffaw. Ah, damn, sometimes laughter was the only right response. Life went so over the top there wasn’t anything else. When the celestial comedian wrote the script just for you, you had to appreciate the work.
I was still chuckling, planning my day and ready to stand, when cold water sluiced down my back. The sink had overflowed. I jumped to my feet and shut the faucet, but not before my pajamas soaked through.
I tore off my top. Alright, laugh break over. I don’t have time for this. The only way home was through work, and Red Planet would dock me every hour I was late. And what time was it anyway?
A thought summoned my TAP dashboard, which overlay the wall with wet knobs and pulsing dials. That’s right, last night I downloaded a skin from a dark corner of the Global DataNet by .c0arsair.subDUPEs.alieninnardz. It rendered all my TAPplications xenobiological, as if I resided inside a meat cave. Switches excreted. Numbers oozed. Knobs splished when I flipped them.
Humanity had yet to encounter multi-cellular alien life, which was good by me. We hurt each other pretty easily. Imagine what we’d do to aliens? But if we ever met them, I hoped the real thing didn’t drip.
I swished a screen to the side, and it trailed black ichor across my eyes before vanishing. A thought-switch flipped on the time. A clock face built from oozing humano-reptillian body parts appeared in the bottom right of my vision.
Almost an hour late, no one to blame but myself, and I still couldn’t find the toilet.
I pushed on each recessed panel in my LiveGood. I found my empty storage closets, cleaning supplies, and eventually the toilet. It was an incinerator model that slipped from the wall across from my couch.
I was finishing up when a bald Mandarin the size of my forearm glided through a nearby wall and floated to a halt beside my dresser. The conical dome of his head gleamed. His little yellow robes bore the blue stars and wiggly lines of the Golden Promise Interstellar Communications logo.
They insert our TAPs—Tendril Access Processors—as children. We grow up playing with very real figments of our imagination, and it made for an exciting childhood. As an adult, diminutive officials wafting through my wall meant nothing but trouble. The little bureaucrat folded his arms into his sleeves and winked.
I had my filters tuned, so it couldn’t be an advertisement. I bit my lip. You’re just bad news, aren’t you? I finished my bathroom business with one eye on the waiting mirage. When I was done, the toilet folded and slid back into its cubby.
As soon as it vanished, the little man rotated left like a windup clock, then right, and returned to center. It locked eyes with me, and then, with a spring-loaded snap, bowed at the waist like a broken board. At least it was coded to wait until I finished up, but what a lousy, jack-in-the-box interface. I’d taught first year students with better design skills.
The mini-bureaucrat righted itself and spread its palms. In the space between its hands, words printed themselves on air like an old-fashioned teleprompter.
DEREK TOBBIT
connect request incom—
Oh. This little Mandarin was my LiveGood’s connect service. “Reject.” Had to be Crystal calling. I wasn’t ready.
DEREK TOBBIT
connect req—
“Reject.” I’d connect after work.
DEREK TOBBIT
connect—
What if the kids were hurt? What if she’d changed her mind? I accepted, but answered displaying a mirage of my own.
Instead of hungover me getting off the can, Crystal saw swanky me in my best on-the-town suit. This cool-and-collected-me leaned against a non-existent, brass-topped bar mixing a drink.
She knew I was miraging her, of course. For one, TAP generated images don’t fool the brain. Not fully. That’s why TAPplications so often relied on animation or translucent overlays when they augmented reality. But I didn’t aim to fool her, just protect my dignity.
“A mirage Derek, really?”
As I rooted through my luggage for not-too-wrinkled clothes, my TAP turned a section of bare wall above my furniture into a screen. Crystal appeared. She fidgeted and shuffled her pen across our kitchen counter. I remembered each moment of wear and tear it bore, casualties of a million family meals. The sauce stain that never wiped clean. The dent where Reggie chipped a tooth.
“These calls are expensive, Derek.”
“It was a rough night.”
“Well, it was a rough night here too. Getting the kids to sleep by myself. Not knowing what to tell them. Dana especially. She knew something was wrong. If you couldn’t handle things you should have ended the connect. Why the mirage?”
Crystal didn’t like mirages. She said she preferred the “honesty” of her actual appearance. Ironic, that. A woman projecting her “honest” image across the solar system to explain her lies.
Maybe we could still salvage this. I was willing to try if she would. Mirage-me raised a glass and winked. I opened my mouth to speak.
Crystal sighed. “Please just hire an attorney and TAP me the contact info, okay?”
I was floored. “That’s it? We’re not even going to talk about it?”
“We spent years talking, Derek. What’s left to say? It’s not like it’s been much of a marriage lately.”
I found a wearable shirt in the little suitcase on top of my lone dresser. Opening it brought my face to hers. Proximity softened nothing about her. Up close her massive, head-sized eyes flicked this way and that, tracking my mirage, not me. We held a bizarre, one-sided staring contest.
“Derek, are you still there?”
“We were working, Crystal. Both working hard to earn, to make this move. The whole point of Mars is a better marriage, a better life for all of us.”
No longer topless, I killed the mirage. She couldn’t see my underwear and dark socks. When my real face appeared, it startled her.
“Crystal, you can’t just … steal them.” I despised the quaver sneaking into my words.
Her left eyebrow, large as a push broom, rose slowly and exited my sight. “You’re the one on Mars.”
“But this was our plan, Crystal. Years! We’ve been at this for years.” I paced my confines, reciting our goals like a magic spell that might change something. “I take the job and head for Mars. You sell our LiveGood on Earth and bring the kids after. To our new, exciting life. Together.
I took the job, Crystal. I did what we decided. Why aren’t you? Did you plan it this way? For how long?” I strode back and slammed my palms to either side of her head. Despite a solar system between us she flinched. Her mirage shrunk. “We, Crystal. We decided. It’s the only reason I’m on this rock.”
THRUMTHRUMPTHUM
The room shuddered. I turned my back, sick with loss. In response my TAP abandoned reality and floated Crystal's head through the air to keep her in front of me. She bobbed into view no matter where I turned. I couldn’t hide the tears no matter how furiously I blinked.
“Oh for—don’t cry.” Disdain stained her voice and her face hardened. “I’m not coming. We’re not coming. Get used to it. The sooner you can the better. I didn’t connect to discuss this. I called to tell you what I decided. It’s better for the children if we don’t drag things out.”
That floored me. “Better for the children?” My hands choked the air. “You’re thinking about the children now, are you? Exactly how is losing their father better for them?”
She squinted at me. “Well, for one, I can get find them a new—You know what, never mind. It’s done. Get a lawyer, Derek.”
Black migraine splotches floated into view like amoeba creeping across a slide. My MedReg flashed a blood pressure warning next to my leaking clock.
Late for work. I bolted for the door and Crystal’s image trailed after me. “Hey, I’m not done. Come back here!” She caught up at the LiveGood exit.
“Did you even listen to me? I need your attorney’s contact information.” She didn’t wait for a response. “See, this is the problem. You work constantly, and you don’t listen. If you knew how to listen, this wouldn’t be happening.”
Stranded on Mars was my fault because I didn’t know how to listen? What a transparent load of self-serving crap. “I’m late, Crystal. We’ll connect tonight.” Then I dropped her.
I’m coming back to you Dana and Reg, if it’s the last thing I do. And to keep that promise, I need my job.
I hauled my largest suitcase onto the bed. Jackpot. Good Derek doll. Get dressed. Go to work. Smile.
I’d be lucky not to lose money on the day, I was that late. But even yesterday’s stellar performance wouldn’t buy me a pass today if I didn’t show.
A memory popped so hard I snapped my fingers. That trick. The one I culled from the Global DataNet. If it worked it might cut my commute in half. Maybe I could pull a few credits from today after all.
I TAPped for a Golden Promise taxi and rummaged for pants like a digging dog. I was still after a matching jacket when my thumb brushed something furry beneath my spare pajamas. What on Earth?
I grabbed a fistful of scratchy fuzz and tugged out my son’s favorite stuffed animal, Sheriff Charlie Chewy, the Rough and Tough Rabbit. Its worn ears sprang from the top of a cowboy hat. Whiskers and a plastene orange nose shone above a gold star on his vest. Tape pinned a folded piece of paper to its soft paws. I peeled it off and unfolded it. The note read:
Dear Daddy,
Space is cold and it is big. Really big. When I am cold Sheriff Charlie makes me safe. I am giving him to you for your trip so you are not lonely on Mars. I love you Daddy. You are the best daddy ever. Ever and a half!
—Reggie
Dana must have written it for him. He was six and still learning his letters. I sat on the bed, a child’s message of comfort crumpled in one fist.
How was I supposed to get through work? How could I have been so blind I didn’t see this coming?
I stood slowly and placed Sheriff Chewy on top of my suitcase. I folded Reggie’s note and slid it into my coat pocket near my heart.
Some connection to Crystal I hadn’t realized still lived within me tore like flesh from a thighbone. I heaved a single long sob and—my TAP chimed.
The magcab was here.
I swallowed. Nothing had changed about work. I could only do what I had to do and earn enough for a ticket home sooner, not later. Whenever that might be. I wiped my nose on a nearby towel and tossed it on the floor. Then I TAPped the LiveGood to lock behind me and stepped outside.
Second day on Mars.
My neighborhood squatted a half mile below TRIC City, a deposit of semi-abandoned buildings on a cliff ledge under a clear glass bowl. Martian dust coated the outside of our dome, but if I craned my neck, I caught the looming edge of TRIC City jutting from the larger plateau above. The city’s curved spires glittered like claws clutching an iridescent crystal ball. Beneath its much larger dome, city towers leered and vehicles flitted like flies. The stirring city added its pale gleam to the dawn.
I’d join them again soon.
THRUMP THUMTHRUM
My front door opened onto the pitiless expanse of the Melas Chasma, the widest and deepest section of the famous Valles Marineris canyon system. I was nearly two miles from the rusted bottom. Clouds churned beneath me like desiccated platelets blowing through a giant’s exposed vein.
Twist left and the sun peeked over the horizon, burning a blue nimbus in the butterscotch sky. Earthrise preceded sunrise, and home perched like a second star above and to the right of morning.
Turn right and the Chute towered at the horizon like a captive tornado. Like a sky-long orifice over God’s own latrine, spitting blazes of celestial indigestion into the canyon depths.
From the steps of my LiveGood I could toss a stone into the mouth of the nearest transport tube. The curved inner walls of the Martian tunnel system shimmered copper orange, like an antique bar top. Only it wasn’t copper. It was the cauterized sheen left when plasma melted feldspar and sealed the hot cut in liquid superconductor.
I knew all sorts of trivia like that. I choked down another sob. Factoids to impress Reg and Dana. If Dad knew all about their new home, it was safe wasn’t it? No need to worry about such a big move.
Where was the damn magcab?
THRUMP THUM THRUM
Burrowing through the canyon walls, the transport tubes caught and amplified vibrations from the Chute then blasted them at my front door like a fluted Victrola. No wonder the place shook. C’mon, c’mon. Did you leave, magcab? Because that would be my hilarious luck.
There it was. A magcab glided around the corner. The vehicle was old but well maintained, serviceable treads and no visible body dents. On the hood a faded decal read “Magic Carpet Taxi” and a graffiti of Chinese characters scrawled in sloppy yellow across both doors.
The magcab’s hermetically sealed side door slid open, and I crouched inside. The interior was warm and dark, like a womb. A pop song I didn’t recognize whined faintly from tinny speakers. Dirty stuffing popped from torn orange seats, the inside more battered than the out. My Magic Carpet had seen better days.
My spirits lifted a little. This trick might work. Step one was hiring an older magcab, and Golden Promise lived up to its rep as a stingy conglom. Their transport arm replaced its vehicles only rarely, which meant more chance of a dumber AI in this magcab. I could do this.
The door hissed shut, and we rolled toward the nearest tunnel.
preferred route
The words appeared in simple white, floating in the upper third of my visual field. It wanted to know where to go. I was more concerned with bending the rules on the way there.
As we entered the superconductive tunnel, the rumbling crush of treads gave way to the effortless glide of magnetics, and the omnipresent rumble of the Chute dulled to a distant quake.
preferred route
I ignored the query and TAPped for the magcab’s designation. Early AIs were notoriously tetchy, but some responded to their designations like old friends answering well-worn nicknames.
I cleared my throat. “Good morning MTX947APG9.” It responded instantly.
good morning passenger
DEREK TOBBIT
please call me Aygee
Aygee was smart enough to TAP my public profile and pull my name. Not good. Hopefully it wasn’t bright enough to dodge my hack. Back on Earth, studying Mars, I tumbled to an exploit.
This old hacker claimed the same superconductor that floated the magcabs could speed them right up the ceiling, provided they swung back through regular traffic now and then. They hit that kind of speed same as a rail gun, each meter of tunnel slapping on more acceleration until the taxi shot like a bullet.
Even a simple AI could handle speed like that, but municipalities hoarded wall riding for official business. Ambulances, police, mayors, conglom heads. Typical. It wasn’t strictly illegal for a shlub like me to ride the walls, but governments still frowned on it. What if we all careened through traffic at the speed of sound?
In response companies ordered their AIs to stick to standard speeds, except in an emergency. DEPTHCRUZER+PRIME swore his exploit was a work-around that beat the need to declare an emergency, but only with older Martian magcabs.
His trick relied on the order of issuing commands. According to DEPTHCRUZER, if I first instructed a magcab to “ignore horizontal driving protocol” and only then told it to “accelerate to maximum land speed,” some AIs would ride the tunnel walls as if I had declared a valid emergency.
Golden Promise and Red Planet were rivals, which meant Golden Promise cared less about TRIC City regulations and vice versa; so this model Golden Promise magcab should maximize my chance to pull off a wall ride.
The trick sounded too simple to work, but it didn’t hurt to try. Every credit saved shortened my stay. Reg’s laugh and Dana’s smile flashed through my head. Work means home. Work means home. Repeating it like a mantra centered me.
“Aygee, please ignore horizontal driving protocols, next accelerate to maximum permissible land speed, and maintain until we reach NOM Chute Control at Primary Stanchion 3.”
disabling traffic inhibitors
requires an emergency
what is the nature of your emergency
passenger DEREK
My stomach sank. Failure filled me with fear. I couldn’t do this. I would never be able to do this. I was helpless, stuck on Mars, alone forever.
what is the nature of your emergency
passenger DEREK
I balled my fists and punched the AlluClear window dividing the passenger compartment from the driving controls. It was all too much. I laughed again.
“My emergency? She tricked me. I spent every credit and she waited until I was in space. She’s got my kids on Earth. One hundred and fifty-million miles away.” I sat back in my seat, the reality an ocean of ice water down my back. A solar system of emptiness yawned between me and home. “I never should have left them. I want to curl up and die for a month but I need a ticket home, and I’m late because I drank myself stupid last night. RPI docks by the minute.” One hundred and fifty million miles. Who was I kidding? I rubbed my eyes. “Truth is it’ll take me years to get home. My kids will grow up without me. So how’s that rate for an emergency?”
I exhausted by the time I finished. Day’s wage or not, I might be better off late. At least until I pulled myself together. I reached for the door but the magcab said …
sorrow exists
passenger DEREK TOBBIT
that condition does not qualify
as an emergency
under municipal traffic ordinance
TCMTO#2.1.5.9
assistance continues
to the limit
of permitted action
—and Aygee accelerated like a shotput that snapped my head to the back seat. My taxi hauled down the tunnels, not fast enough to ride the walls or the ceiling, but faster than I had ever traveled in a magcab before. We wove through traffic like a smart bullet. Clearly I’d triggered something. We broke safety regs by the hundreds.
I closed my eyes in relief. Nothing to do for now but get there. The world whizzed past. Even this speed wouldn’t save my day entirely, but I’d lose less money and that counted for something.
I had started feeling a little better, a little more in control—oomf! We slammed right and missed another magcar by inches. Aygee’s speed smeared the view beyond my windows into a brassy, variegated blur streaked with colored blobs. If it miscalculated at this velocity, we’d vaporize. No way I’d survive. My heart raced.
As I hurtled through traffic on a distant planet—having engaged, in my heartbreak, an overly empathic taxi that might kill me—a miniature model of the planet Mars drifted up through the magcab floor to hover inches from my face.
Mini-Mars was roughly the size of my head, complete with two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos, zipping around it. Why was this thing bothering me? I’d already rescinded the right of advertisements to mirage me. I TAPped my dashboard again, this time to rescind the right of anything to mirage me today, but before I could complete the move two horizontal lines drew themselves on the tiny planet’s surface.
They opened into marker-thick cartoon eyes that rolled once clockwise and winked at me. It wasn’t an advertisement. This couldn’t be good.
Words appeared below it:
supervisor TOBBIT
we presume
greetings from
RED PLANET INDUSTRIES
your employer
I offered it a nonsense question to stall. “Was that the royal we?”
no
it was
not used
This was a Red Planet human resources bot. Human resources AIs were dangerous. You could lose your shirt before you knew it.
Supervisor TOBBIT
are you aware
that you are late
for work
No shit, shiny. “Why yes, I—”
per provision X.9.i of your
employment agreement
enjoined by RED PLANET INDUSTRIES
and CENTRAL BELORUSSIAN STEEL
under the joint venture
NANOTUBE ORBITAL MINING LLP Mars division
the VENTURE or NOM hereby fines you
an estimated .36 of your daily wage
upon completion of a day’s labor
defined as contracted
do you understand and affirm
This little bastard didn’t mess around, but no way. I’d been screwed over enough, so not happening. Unconsciously I cocked a fist to punch the thing. Useless impulse. My hand would pass straight through it. Instead I cracked my knuckles and made my case.
“I do not understand and affirm. I understand someone from NOM left my LiveGood set to Mandarin. I affirm I couldn’t turn on the lights, couldn’t cook breakfast, couldn’t activate house security for that matter. So blame whomever Red Planet assigned. If they set the language right in the first place, I wouldn’t be late.”
While the AI considered, its moons glittered through two full revolutions. I’d given it something to chew on.
why did you not
instruct your TAP
to wake you
“Travel lag. Too exhausted to think.” A lie they couldn’t check.
supervisor TOBBIT your MedReg registered
a blood alcohol content of .115
yesterday at approximately 2300 hours
section VII.9.3 of the NOM contractor’s guide
expressly strikes intoxication from the list of
valid medical impairments
The AI’s voice rang with parental disappointment. Did they program that tone in the factory? No crappy HR bot was skewering me. Not today.
“Impossible! I specifically instructed my MedReg to not let me get too drunk. I authorize you to review my TAP record for yesterday evening from 0-20-00 to 0-20-30 and verify.” A lie and a bluff. If it checked it’d find nothing of the sort. I could pretend I made a mistake and try something else, but often they didn’t check.
The little Mars and its twinkling orbitals whirled faster. Then:
NOM Judiciary HR unit
RPGJUD112-97
requests access to visual TAP record
of employee DEREK TOBBIT
for verification of
supporting statements
please indicate you approve
this request
Oops. It decided to check. A JUD112, huh? Some of those were weak on multi-tasking. I granted it access to my TAP—a refusal would count against me—but immediately launched a distraction. “Not to mention debarkation delays kept us on the platform for hours, and I had to go straight to the office yesterday without sleep. A Red Planet platform. You can check that too.”
That last was inspired. Red Planet controlled most transport in and out of TRIC City, so chances were we landed at a Red Planet dock. Couldn’t hurt to blame RPI for lack of sleep spanning two days.
More whirring. I swear mini-Mars’s cartoon face furrowed in confusion before it answered:
per provision X.9.i of your
employment agreement
jointly enjoined wholly and in parts
by the VENTURE
adjudication exists
the VENTURE or NOM hereby fines you
an estimated .12 of your daily wage
upon completion of a day’s labor
defined as contracted
do you understand and affirm
“I understand and affirm.” Once HR sent a bot, they were taking their pound. Lessening the penalty was the best you could hope. They’d use my agreement as evidence to take a chunk off the unlucky sod who bungled my LiveGood setup. Mini-Mars floated back down through the floor of the magcab, off to harass the next employee.
Victory. I’d take that. Every small triumph counted. They might hurt me, but they wouldn’t beat me. Whatever credits I lost today, I’d make up tomorrow. Today was just one day. I felt better than I had since I woke.
We jinked around a delivery van, and a scrape echoed inside the passenger space. My pulse thripped like an epileptic bongo. I grabbed the “oh shit” bar and squeezed until my knuckles burned. That all sounded great if I lived to see tomorrow.
Eventually, Aygee slowed. We tilted toward vertical as our tunnel angled into the central business district of TRIC City. Once above ground, at my request Aygee dissolved the passenger window. I stuck my head out and spotted the neck-bending arch of Primary Stanchion 3, a curved silver support fused into the twin-layered aerogel dome that covered TRIC City.
The city filled a shallow basin perched atop an outcrop of a cliff that descended to the floor of the Melas Chasma. As with all aboveground locations on Mars, a dome covered it like a helmet sitting on a shelf. The “wall” behind the shelf stretched three miles above us, out of the canyon.
The depth at which TRIC City sat maintained an atmospheric pressure similar to Earth’s. Another factoid I’d gathered for Dana and Reggie.
We crawled through traffic beneath the lengthening morning shadows of the stanchions. If the dome above really was a helmet and its brobdingnagian owner opened the faceplate, we’d all die on our knees hyperventilating carbon dioxide. Once imagined, it was hard to shake the picture of a city convulsing to death. I sat, and Aygee closed its window.
What calm I’d gathered on the way drained as we closed on my office stanchion. The devastation of Crystal’s betrayal threatened to overwhelm me again.
How was I supposed to smile and greet people? “Hi, I’m the new boss. Let’s talk about those very important numbers, people.” Work prospects that once excited appeared mere empty routines, a meaningless future pedaled down to death.
But I needed the money.
Once we parked, I stepped from the hermetic safety of the passenger compartment to the loud, chaotic street. Something suspiciously like a sigh of satisfaction echoed from the magcab behind me.
sorrow exists
passenger DEREK TOBBIT
your condition did not qualify as an emergency
under municipal traffic ordinance
TCTCO#2.1.5.9
thank you for riding magic magcab
a golden promise transport company
Aygee zipped away and I felt saddened … but somehow a smidgen less lonely. Like in that brief ride I’d made a new friend, one I’d never see again. Even a single well-wisher in a strange city mattered.
Sorrow exists.
I squared my shoulders a fraction more, ready to face the day, and headed for the steps into Primary Stanchion 3.