I’m lying on my back on the bed, my dimming eyes having caught a slow panorama of the wall at the head of the bed, and then moving up along the ceiling. The back of my neck is warm, wet. There’s no pain, at least, although I am registering quite a bit of disappointment. It was supposed to be instant. Maybe I did something wrong.
I can hear one foot drumming a spastic tattoo upon the bed. The bedroom door is opening. Someone’s screaming. I try to scream at them to go away, get away from me, but nothing comes out. The fields of my vision are grey; I can’t see anything except for the narrow tunnel which leads straight up to the roof of the condominium I used to share with my wife, May.
None of this is my fault. But it really is. I deserve what’s coming to me. None of them do; they don’t deserve this at all. But there’s nothing I can do at all to stop it.
My vision fades from pinpoints to black as a crushing weight falls on my chest, then lifts. Everything goes black.
And I wake up to the mastoid alert buzzing the inside of my head before the screaming can start. I am still drenched in sweat, though, I notice. My commlink’s off the hook, so to speak. Apparently, my boss has left fifteen messages. Something about an important job, he needs me, he’ll give me an extra week worth of vacation if I can come in to make sure this pulls off without a hitch. I’m his best operator.
Downstairs, commlink running a swift IM back; yeah sure I’ll be there and thanks for the extra vacation, I could use it. Out of the corner of my eye, I see that May’s not on the couch. Into the kitchen, getting out my jug of soymilk, and a housebot hands me a piece of digipaper, a message for me it exclaims in a warm tone.
My heart falls at reading the first two words – Dear John. I laugh bitterly. Crumple up the digipaper, toss it to the floor. The housebot sweeps it up instantly. So much for until death do you part.
My virtual assistant connects with Lunaswift, the spaceplane run I had geared up my vacation with. My departure ticket is delayed a day, and my return ticket by a week. The assistant buzzes my mastoid alert seconds later when the transaction’s complete.
Dr. Mulkavey warned me that I might be becoming too obsessed with my dreams. I stopped seeing him last week, canceling my appointments with him after picking up a few ebooks on dream interpretation at the virtual mall while May and I were shopping. I didn’t tell her; she was fairly upset when she found out about it. She, of course, agrees with the good Doctor.
But it’s not either one of them that’s F-BOMBING killing themselves in their dreams every night for some indecipherable reason.
The rest of the day’s a blur as I waste my time trashing the condo until I head into my office. I am a few minutes late, and Barney (my boss, Barney Strauss), is a little upset. I assure him I can pick up the pace, with the trademarked arrogant smile that has won me so many awards in the past. He scowls as I strap in at my desk, and slip the ‘trodes on.
First thing I notice is that the interface is censored. This sort of thing always complicates matters; working by teleoperation is not a precise science, and when there’s chunks of sensory data missing due to various kinds of sensory scramble code that could be vital to performance, it always causes issues.
Fortunately, this one looks easy. A simple lift n’ pull, loading containers from a bay into a torchship. Sometimes, especially when part of the interface is scrambled, it’s an operation that we as teleoperators aren’t privy to the details of. But eventually if you spend enough time at this job, there are subtle clues that give things away.
The fact that it’s a torchship that’s being loaded is a dead giveaway that the operation, whatever it may be, is probably in the outer belt. The bay has the look of something hacked from raw stone, maybe a little iron ore thrown in there. The torchship’s loading dock doesn’t have the customary call signs painted over it that most commercial craft have, so it’s probably military or a private industry.
A lot of damned containers, it takes over five hours to get close to done. Only a few more containers left now. If I hurry up and get done, my virtual assistant tells me, there’s still a chance to pick up one of five tickets left with Lunaswift for the Earth run which starts tonight. I haven’t been back to Earth in ten years. I put my assistant on standby, watching over the ticket distribution and ready to alert me.
I move to lift the first of the three remaining containers. My mastoid alert buzzes, a small panel pops up in my peripheral alerting me to the fact that there are four tickets left now, and their hours of departure. Everything’s okay so far. Hurry up.
The container slides into place, and I secure it. Two more containers left to load; one more alert comes in, only three tickets left. The suboptimal choice still remains, and this causes me to frown a bit, but it would still be almost worth it if I can catch that one. The best ticket is now gone.
I grasp the next container firmly, and turn to move it in through the loading dock entry. There’s no space left in the area which the containers are to be set. I shift slightly to my left to observe whether stacking the container any higher with a reasonable chance of securing it. The leg of the hardshell brushes solidly against something, but I can’t make out what it is because of the damned scramblejob.
I reach up, just a few more inches, securable and safe, but something is blocking the hardhell’s movement. Just a bit more. Two tickets left. Dammit! I push at the container in a bid to move it into place while my movement’s restricted, and it drops from the manipulators onto the floor. There’s a crash, some metallic sound, and I see a crack in the corner the container landed on. I quickly lift it and push it into position again. The hardshell’s leg pushes something out of the way to make room for my stretch.
It’s then that I notice that something’s leaking from the container. It’s some kind of thick grayish ooze. Industrial waste, maybe? Not so big a deal; I turn the container to face away from its damaged side, press it against one of its brethren, then secure it.
Last container, and still two tickets left. I scan the timeframes; the best ride is only an hour away. I grin; I can make it. I order my assistant to purchase that ticket, and queue itself for the refund of the previous ticket. And then I secure the last container.
I secure the hardshell in its bay within the loading dock, and power it down. I let my consciousness go, flowing back through The Grid and into The Operators’ systems.
And now it’s time for my vacation. I have my assistant hail up a nearby taxi, and keep it waiting for me. I grin at Barney and toss him my ‘trodes. He’s amazed; I’ve finished in record time. He shouts at me to enjoy my vacation, and I wave back at him as I rush to the elevator.
Tags: Bullet Revolver Killyourself
