I awoke to gunfire. Adrenaline flooded my bloodstream, sending my heartbeat racing as I jerked and fell out of the bed. Slowly my mind cleared and the gunfire resolved into the loud blaring of my morning alarm. I shouted to the network to silence the alarm and with unsteady balance I climbed to my feet.
Standing there in the previous night’s clothes, dizzy and with a pounding headache, I remembered the robbery and murder through a fog of unreality, as though it had happened to somebody else. I half expected to find everything, including Pamela, had been an elaborate dream.
As I looked back at the bed, reality cut through my mental fog. Pamela lay spread across the bed sleeping, evidently undisturbed by the alarm. Like me she still wore her clothes from the previous night. Her dress was hiked up toward her waist, exposing a pale luminous leg, and she had thrown her arms across her face, blocking the light from her eyes.
I stripped off my soiled and ruined clothing, shoved the material into the recycler, and made my way to the shower. Two hours had barely touched my exhaustion and even after a cold shower I wanted nothing more than days of deep sleep. Abandoning such fantasies, I dressed for the day and stumbled to the kitchen. I had just begun ordering breakfast from the fabricator when Pamela sidled up behind me and slipped both arms around my waist. She put her head against my back and sighed deeply.
“You need sleep,” she said.
“So do you.”
“So, let’s do it.”
“I have to work.”
She pulled at my hand, tugging me toward the bedroom, but I stood firm and finished ordering breakfast.
“You have to sleep,” she insisted.
“I wish I could.”
I turned around and took her in my arms, pulling her in close and tight. My knees threatened to buckle and my calves screamed with pain as I leaned in to her, wanting nothing more than to close my eyes.
“If anyone comes looking for me and sees you….” I paused, tired and thickheaded. “Then last night was for nothing.”
Pamela looked up into my face. Her eyes, even bleary with sleep, were still the loveliest I had ever seen. She said nothing, just nodded and let her head fall against my chest. We stood there, supporting each other through our fatigue, until the fabricator finished. I pulled back from her and retrieved breakfast. She moved to the table and sat.
After taking the plate to the table, I used a slice of toast as a small plate for myself, loading it with about half, leaving the rest for Pamela.
“Once we have Forge running we can use it to cover excess food production,” I said around the open-faced sandwich of toast and egg.
Pamela began delicately eating.
“It can,” she said around bites. “No trouble there.”
I nodded and quickly drank half of my coffee, leaving the rest for her. I knew enough to know one of the most common ways ‘degenerate cohabitation’ was discovered was from mismatched fabrication and occupancy totals. Certain that Pamela wasn’t about to make that sort of mistake, I headed out.
No one else had arrived yet but I still left my apartment with caution. I crossed the hallway and entered the office. Though it was Wednesday and no films were scheduled for that night, there remained plenty of work and I expected Brandon soon.
I tried to focus on work, readying snippets and synopses, reviewing reports, writing, editing, and revising proposals, but sleep stalked me and even with a steady supply of coffee, my attention wavered.
“You look like crap,” Brandon said.
I blinked and looked up from the interface. He sat at his desk, his coat already off and tie loosened, working. How long had he been there?
“Thanks.”
He ignored my sarcasm. “Seriously, did you sleep at all last night?”
“Not much.”
I looked over at the lobby monitors. Maria and Patrick crisscrossed the lobby, hard at work. My thoughts fogged and it looked wrong.
“Why not?”
Brandon jerked back my attention.
“Huh?”
He got up and crossed over to my desk. He pulled up a chair and sat close, peering intently into my face.
“Why didn’t you sleep, Jason?”
Befuddled, I nearly told him. Unlike others, keeping secrets did not come to me instinctively.
“Nightmares.” Well, it wasn’t really a lie, just metaphorical.
He nodded but didn’t say anything, though his face betrayed a longing to give me a long lecture.
“Coffee’s not doing the job,” he said as he stood. “We need to get you something more effective.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I mumbled. “No movie tonight. I’ll sleep like the dead.”
He stopped and gave me a long hard look. “You haven’t read your messages?”
Of course I hadn’t. I’d been working. I flipped back through the files and folders and found my messages, all unread. Too exhausted to remember exactly what I had done, I scanned them.
“Oh, Christ.”
“Don’t blaspheme.” Where Seiko reprimanded me seriously, Brandon was only half-serious.
“You didn’t read them,” he continued. “We’ve got, oh, about three hours or so before Jones gets here.”
She wanted to inspect the facility and all the data files. I needed to stall this, find some excuse to put it all off for at least one day, but my numbed brain locked up like a malfunctioning interface.
“I can fabricate some pep,” Brandon offered.
I nodded, unable to conceive a counter-argument. Everyone in Nocturnia had an authorized supply of pep, and a lot of people used it. Taming an alien world for most people consumed a lot of hours, but if anyone asked why I needed it I’d have no answer.
He placed the pills in my hand along with another mug of coffee. Surrendering to the inevitable, I took them. Within moments the medication refreshed me, filling me with artificial energy. Later, there would be hell to pay. Brandon and I slaved away through the morning, readying ourselves for Jones, but my thoughts never ventured far from Pamela.
* * *
Before Jones arrived I hurried over to my apartment while Brandon finalized our reports. I closed the door quickly behind me, locked it, and went straight to the bedroom, but it was empty. I looked in the shower but she wasn’t there either. Seeing her in neither the kitchen nor dining room, I began to panic until I found her in the study with Forge set up on my personal desk, power and network cables connected. She wore one of my shirts, and only that. From the look of it she had taken it from the recycler.
“My love,” she said, her voice low and sultry.
I crossed to the desk and took her up in my arms. We kissed and embraced, our bodies pressed together. The shirt’s thin fabric concealed nothing of her figure as my hands slid around her curves. Our kissing grew passionate and before I lost all control I pulled away.
“No time,” I whispered. “Today, things are not going great.”
She gave me a puzzled look.
“Jones is coming to ‘inspect’. Of course that’s just an excuse to harass me and search for something she can hang me with.”
“Bitch.”
I nodded.
“I know you’re going to stay out of sight.” I kissed her quick on the forehead. “You’re too sharp to pop out and give the game away, but make sure everything up here is as quiet as an empty church.”
Pamela laughed and said, “I once knew this preacher, after hours his church was anything but quiet. Don’t worry, I’ll do something silent, like read.”
“That’s my girl.”
I moved to the kitchen and fabricated a quick lunch, a cover story for visiting my apartment.
“Do you think she’ll do anything with the security files?”
It took me a moment to realize Pamela meant Jones.
“She might, but I don’t think that’s much of a danger.” I gave her a smile. “All the really interesting things happened after I shut down for the night and the monitors were off.”
She moved over to me as I took the food out of the fabricator.
“After they were supposedly shut off – Jason, those could have been activated remotely.”
“If she had done that we would already be in front of a judge for moral degeneracy.”
“I guess you’re right.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“You don’t think so.”
“That bitch has been after you long before I came along, right? Maybe she’s been activating those monitors already, looking for a club to beat you with, but with everything that’s happened lately this might have been her first chance to inspect them.”
I slipped a slice of fake potato into my mouth and thought while I munched. Pamela was right and we couldn’t ignore the possibility.
“Can Forge verify that?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’m not familiar with the theater’s network. That business with the movie files was more about the Admin directories. Can you show me some of them, at least the security ones, and I’ll work on it this afternoon.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
I took out my slate and accessed the security interface and then handed it to her. After a short explanation Pamela understood it enough to direct Forge. I gave her a long, deep parting kiss.
“We’re an unbeatable team,” I said before hurrying back to the office.
I slipped through the door, my plate of food in one hand, just as Brandon sat upright at his desk.
“That took a while,” he said, though his tone was decidedly offhanded.
“I changed my mind three or four times.” I moved over to his desk. “How are we looking?”
“Not bad. The sociological uptake reports are good, and both attendance and home viewership are climbing. If Jones wants to argue we’re wasting resources the facts are on our side.”
As I ate I looked over his shoulder and scanned through the numbers. Naturally, I found nothing amiss. Brandon understood social science with an intuitive grasp I never matched. His eye for artistic style and popular appeal, however, left something to be desired, but that’s why we made a perfect team.
“I have a new slate of proposed titles,” I said, moving over to my desk.
“Hopefully they’re better than that last list. We need to calm down Jones, and socially ‘challenging’ material is not the way to go.”
“Give me some credit for brains.”
He said nothing but followed me over and looked up at the office’s main display as I threw up the various listings. Finding acceptable fare for exhibition remained a challenging task. The deep digital storage aboard the Ark had preserved more than two centuries of popular mass media. The builders had preferred to err on the side of including something even if they found it objectionable. However, the Administration enforced strict guidelines, as oxymoronic as that sounds, on what constituted acceptable media that did not risk corrupting our citizens’ fragile moral character. Later period works were tagged with endless metadata that made selecting and excluding media fairly straightforward, but most of the twentieth-century films possessed only scant descriptions, and except for a few, no critical reviews and essays.
While Jones walled off entire directories based on vague genre definitions, combing through the rest of the archives was still laborious and time-consuming. My listing reflected the last few weeks’ work, but I also included projections indicating that I would soon greatly expand the number of approved titles.
Brandon looked over the list without much reaction until he reached the projections.
“There’s no way you can meet those numbers.”
“I have a new algorithm that’ll open up the process.”
He shook his head.
“If it doesn’t work, Jones will have your head.” He pointed to the screen. “Make a promise like that and fail and she’ll use that to toss you out.”
I smiled. “I won’t fail.”
With Forge sitting in the next room I knew that I could more than double my productivity while actually doing a hell of a lot less work. Of course I couldn’t share my plan with him. There was so much here he really did not want to know. I planned on neutralizing Jones and maybe even eventually replacing her.
“Trust me.”
He started to say something, but a chime alerted us to Jones’s arrival.
We proceeded to the lobby and arrived just as Jones entered. She wore a red dress, the color of fresh blood, and a matching hat. Taking her time, she made a production of removing her hat and gloves. True to her duplicity, she warmly greeted Maria and Patrick, calling each by name and inquiring about their families, leaving Brandon and me waiting. Once she finished playing the thoughtful and considerate official, she finally turned her attention to us.
“Gentlemen,” she said, a touch of ice creeping into her tone. “Shall we get started?”
Jones insisted on a physical inspection of the facilities. Of course with all the automated drone assistance there was little chance that anything would be amiss and yet we moved through every room, every space, until she pronounced herself satisfied. After that we moved to the office and the tedious network inspection.
She drank our coffee and gave us condescending looks as she studied our reports and proposals. She even engaged in work chitchat, but her tone remained cool, aloof, and formal until even Brandon’s patience wore thin. When we finished with the expected reports she demanded access to the theater’s network and data storage. We couldn’t refuse and I trusted that sweet Pamela’s work had already secured this front, but Brandon looked concerned.
Jones wasted another two hours searching fruitlessly through the playback records. Over her shoulder, and receiving her wicked evil eye as a reward, I noticed her search concentrated on the night I fell for the trap. Finally, with more than a hint of irritation, she shut down the applications and glowered at us.
“I don’t know how you altered the records, Kessler, but everyone here knows you did.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, a strong current of sarcasm coloring my voice. Brandon rolled his eyes but said nothing.
“Bullshit.”
She stood and stalked over until she was just inches from me. If she hadn’t been so short it might have been intimidating, but instead I giggled.
“Laugh while you can. I know you accessed those files. I also know there’s someone else involved in all this.”
My giggles stopped.
“There’s no way you hacked the colonial network.” She sneered and added, “You’re too stupid.”
“Chairperson,” Brandon snapped. “Personal abuse is a violation of the Administration Code of Ethics. You owe—”
“I owe him nothing!”
“Yes, ma’am, you do. Jason’s been cleared of any wrongdoing—”
“And you know that’s—”
“What I know –” Brandon put real steel into his voice, “– is that he has been cleared, and that verdict has already been entered into the record. I also know we can file a complaint against you for harassment and abuse.”
“Do it,” she dared. “Because I don’t think you will.”
She backed off from us and began gathering her things.“I’ve gotten anonymous reports that Kessler’s involved in some rather unsavory and very immoral sexual liaisons. If he’s been using Administration facilities, including the quarters we were foolish enough to provide, then he’ll be tossed over the wall.”
With her bag under her arm, she stepped close to Brandon as she approached the door. “And if he’s been using this facility, then it’s fairly certain you know about it.”
She looked at me. “Security is already searching your monitor files. What do you think they’ll find?”
Wearing a smug expression, she left.
Brandon looked at me as I crossed to the office sofa and collapsed. “Well?”
“She won’t find anything.”
He put his arms akimbo. “Is that because you made it vanish or because there’s nothing to find?”
“She won’t find anything,” I insisted.
Either angry or frustrated, Brandon stormed to his desk and resumed working.
* * *
We worked through the afternoon. The pep faded from my bloodstream, replaced by exhaustion. Even with my eyelids drooping and sleep calling to me I couldn’t ignore Brandon’s stern, uncompromising silence.
“Brandon.”
I rose and went over to him. “Listen, I don’t want to leave it this way.”
“You really haven’t thought it through, have you?”
I shook my sleep-deprived head. “I’m not following you.”
“Jones said she’d gotten an anonymous tip.”
The light lit up, though in my state I expected nothing more than a flickering candle over my head. “And there’s no way you did that.”
“I like my job.”
He stood up. Thanks to my slouching and desire to go horizontal, he loomed. A silent beat passed between us and then again I understood.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have accused you.”
“I wouldn’t do that.” He placed a hand on my shoulder. The extra weight almost sent me to the floor. “But someone is doing it, and they mean you no good.”
He gathered up his slate and started out. He stopped at the doorway, looked at me, then he adjusted his tie and set his hat atop his head.
“I trust you when you promise that Jones will find nothing. After that bit with the directory it’s clear you’ve got someone in your back pocket, but Jason, be careful. People like that only look out for themselves.”
He left the door open and vanished down the stairs. Unsteadily I stumbled to my apartment.
I stepped through the door to an empty living room. I closed the door behind me and collapsed against it, letting its comforting rigidity hold me upright. After a few moments Pamela poked her head out of the bedroom down the short hallway. I nodded and she rushed to me. She grabbed me by the shoulder and held me upright.
“Jason, are you okay?”
I nodded, too tired for speech.
“What’s wrong?” Panic edged her voice.
“Tired,” I mumbled. “I need sleep.”
“My poor man.”
She threw one arm under mine as she half carried and half led me back to the bedroom. I fell face-first into the bed and slept.
* * *
I awoke hungry, thirsty, and with a modicum of energy. I leveraged myself upright and changed from my rumpled suit into something more casual. Feeling modestly human, I searched for Pamela.
As I approached the study I heard her voice very softly commanding Forge. I couldn’t untangle her complex and detailed orders before I arrived.
“The dead walk,” she said as I entered.
“Not feeling anywhere nearly as dead.”
I asked the time and the network advised me it was just nearing 10 in the evening, not as late as I had feared. I stepped over to her. She was now fully clothed in an off-white dress but with scandalously bare shoulders and a plunging neckline. Taking her in my arms, I kissed her deeply and she enthusiastically participated. We continued for several moments until my stomach growled loud enough to shatter our mood.
“I didn’t know the Ark brought lion embryos,” she said.
She pulled away and turned her attention back to Forge.
“If I don’t get fed soon I’ll be eating you.”
She smiled, her black hair falling and half concealing her face. “Promises.”
I moved next to her and studied Forge’s main display filled with files, folders, and directories. I waved my fingers questioningly toward the device.
“While you slept I worked,” she said, adding, “Typical man.”
I didn’t rise to her baiting and let her continue.
“Eddie Nguyen used this for everything, but I only know maybe a tenth of what he was up to. I’m too scared to delete at random, so one by one I’ve been working out his scams and businesses.”
I laughed under my breath when she mentioned his full name. She looked at me with incomprehension.
“You haven’t watched as many movies as I have.”
I quickly explained how back on Old Earth names were tied very closely to ethnic heritage and that our Eddie was about as far-flung from the ancestry of that surname as one could be and still be from the same planet. The mention of Eddie did spark another curiosity in me.
“We should see if Eddie’s turned up.”
“Dead, hopefully.”
I didn’t join her in the sentiment, but I didn’t contradict her either.
“Forge, can you search all the databases, public and secure, to see if Eddie’s been reported at any hospital or doctor’s office.”
“That task would take 354 seconds for public databases, including all private postings and communications. To intercept colonial security communication no deeper than a ‘classified’ level will require 3,798 seconds. For all classifications of secret or above the time factors increase to—”
“Classified will do,” I said. “Alert me when you’re ready.”
“You are not authorized to initiate tasks.”
I looked over at Pamela.
She held up a hand and ordered, “Forge, you are to give Jason Kessler identical access privileges to my own, confirm.”
“Confirmed.”
I repeated the order and this time Forge began working.
“Now,” I said, taking her by the hand, “we eat.”
We ate in the dining room. I ordered the lights lowered for a soft romantic atmosphere. Pamela told me that Forge had already been at work on my fabricator’s reporting, covering all our excess production of food and clothing.
“Where did Eddie get that thing?” I asked.
“I always assumed he made it.”
In the soft lighting her skin shimmered like pearl and her dark hair nearly vanished into the shadows, highlighting her lovely face.
“Really? Was he an engineer?”
“Before he was a criminal?” She shrugged. “I don’t know what he was. He never talked about his past, even though he loved talking about himself.”
“He just didn’t strike me as someone, well, smart enough to build Forge. And how do you build it without the Admin knowing you built it?”
“I don’t care.” She reached across to my hand and took it in her own. Warm, soft, and firm, her touch soothed me.
“Forge brought me to you. That’s all that matters.” She squeezed tight. “Even when I get a place, you’ll always be mine.”
A place. Of course Pamela couldn’t stay here, not even under normal circumstances, but with Jones butting in and looking for degeneracy, living with me would be idiotic. I explained to her about Jones and the anonymous tips.
“I already have Forge working on the security files,” she said. “We’ll make sure that bitch finds nothing.”
An idea popped into my head.
“Maybe Forge can even tell us who the snitch is.”
Pamela smiled and said, “If there is a snitch. Jones might have lied to panic you into giving yourself away.” She leaned over and kissed me. “But we’re too smart for her.”
After dinner we returned to the study.
* * *
Forge continued working in the study and I put the question to it, “Forge, who created you?”
“That information is beyond your access classification.”
I looked to Pamela and she tried, but Forge shut her out as well.
“There are still a lot of applications that Eddie created,” she suggested. “Maybe I’ll unlock it once I’ve gotten them cleared out.”
I shrugged. Finding out who made it didn’t strike me as terribly important. All the danger lay behind us.
“Results on network search for Eddie Nguyen,” Forge announced. “No reports.”
“What do you think that means?” Pamela asked.
“I know it means he didn’t make it to a hospital or doctor. Without Forge there’s no way to hide that sort of treatment.”
She cracked a sly smile. “He’s dead.”
“It’s a good bet.”
“I don’t feel sorry,” she confessed. “I know that makes me a bad person, but I don’t.”
I came around the desk and took her in my arms. “No, you’re not a bad person. After what you’ve been through no one can blame you.”
We worked sifting through Eddie’s files. Drugs, unregistered residences, prostitution, sexual orgies, there didn’t seem to be a moral crime that he didn’t manage without Forge. Pamela was right about his paranoia. I found a lot of applications devoted to keeping an eye on the security forces and their communications. There was even a program for tracking every car’s course, with alarms for any movement toward his home.
And one other transportation-related alarm.
“What’s this?”
Pamela stepped over next to me.
“I don’t know.”
I looked again but the map coordinates didn’t make any sense. I threw them into a mapping application and studied them on the room’s main display. The map showed a spot 500 kilometers – Forge didn’t seem to be set up at all to use miles but performed everything in scientific measurements – north of the city, well beyond even the farthest work crews.
“What did you find?” she asked, slipping her hand into mine.
“He was concerned.” I looked back at the program and its authority to override whatever else he had directed Forge to perform. “Really concerned about anyone traveling to or from that spot.” I turned my attention to her. “What’s there?”
“I don’t know.”
“The man of mystery,” I said softly.
“Not to me.” Pamela moved over and slid into my arms.“There’s nothing more for us to do tonight. Not here.”
I took the hint and we retired to the bedroom, where she reminded me why I had risked so much.
* * *
Much later I slipped out of the bed, leaving Pamela sleeping, and returned to the study. Forge sat on my desk, its display a constant scroll of tasks underway. I toyed with the idea of trying to probe further, but decided to leave it alone and I opened my desk’s personal interface.
Highlighted in red, a message from Seiko waited for me. I could imagine what she wanted – more useless and fruitless dates, chaperoned into deadly dull conformity. I ignored it and went back to bed.