GEORGE AND WILLIAM didn't say a word to one another during the entire shuttle commute. They had acknowledged each other's presence in the garage, each making his boundaries clear, each avoiding eye contact with the other.
George had finally shaved and showered, doing his best to present himself as clean and pressed as possible for the inevitable meeting he would be having this morning with his manager. He tried to think of what he would do if one of his associates missed two days of work due to drunken and disorderly conduct. Would he start the paperwork for position termination, or would he hear him out and consider the fact that everyone made mistakes? He didn't know his manager very well, and the man was painfully difficult to read. George had no idea what to expect, and already he sweated profusely. He looked down with deep embarrassment as he realized he had sweated through the underarms of his shirt, and he quickly buttoned up his jacket in attempt to mask the offense.
The shuttle slowed as it entered the garage. George felt his stomach go sour as the shuttle came to a halt, the passenger doors shooting open, the time to exit no longer simply a dreaded thought in the back of his mind. He watched William leave before him, waited several paces, and then began toward the stairwell that led to his floor. The thought occurred to George to turn around, get back on the shuttle, and see where it led him instead of facing whatever wrath Corporate had approved for him. He knew the penalty for refusing to report for a shift, however, and he wasn't in the mood to return to jail anytime soon, so he cast aside his dissolute thoughts and began up the stairs.
He quickly moved through the maze of cubicles, finding his manager in a closet of an office in the back. The room felt uncomfortably cramped, having barely enough room for a desk and filing cabinet. George felt claustrophobic as he stood across the desk from the tall, lanky man.
"I'm really busy, so let's try to keep this brief, okay?" the manager asked, foregoing the typical formal greeting and handshake.
"Sir, I know that I missed two more days last week, and I know I'm going to get written up for it, but I ask that you consider a few things before you decide whether or not to begin the termination process," George said, wiping the wet, beady film from his brow and upper lip, unable to stop sweating.
"You're George, right?" the manager asked, looking perturbed, but also strangely confused.
"Yes, sir."
The manager pulled George's file from the cabinet, contorting to negotiate the narrow path back around to his side of the desk.
The room suddenly felt even smaller.
The manager opened up the file, glancing over George's history first, and then last week's offense. "You have had, up until this point, an excellent attendance record. Considering the virus going around right now, the fact that you took a few days off for the flu is not going to get you terminated with your current rating. Just try to make sure it doesn't happen again."
Now just as confused as his manager, George tried to figure out how he could get the man to clarify his standing without tipping him off at the potential clerical error. At a loss for words, George knew better than to put his foot in his mouth by pressing the issue any further. He cleared his throat. "Thank you, sir."
The manager added a remark to George's file, a positive note regarding how upset George was over the time he missed, despite the serious fever he sustained throughout his absence. "I'm sure you've got work to do," the manager said, sounding annoyed that George was still there.
"Yes, sir," he said, quickly backing out of the stifling room.
He took a deep breath, feeling infinitely lighter. He loosened up his jacket as he made his way to his cubicle. No one stared at him as he passed by, and no one seemed surprised to see him there. The truth behind his absence had been expunged, although George had no idea who would have gone to such lengths to pay him such a huge favor.
At least now he knew why his Law-Corp file had been temporarily "lost." He still had a friend in this world, even if he couldn't be sure who that friend was.
He sat down at his desk and turned on his small computer. A file associate came by with a fresh stack of partially completed files for George to get started on. With a renewed feeling of complacency, George thumbed through the stack, chose his first case of the day, and got started. Never before had it felt so good to sit in a cubicle.
The report George chose charged a deviant with being caught near human Housing after dark, being out of the home without identification, and lying to a police associate. According to the report, the man tried to persuade the associate that he wasn't a deviant and he'd locked himself out of his home. He had contrived a ridiculously disturbed story in which he escaped from the hospital after the HD-1 virus transformed him, accusing the district hospital of holding him and a dozen others against their will. He even accused the hospital of killing at least half of the patients, and forcing the rest to consent to becoming human-deviant Guinea pigs.
Although the story was obviously contrived, George pushed through the report. Every time he tried to analyze another entry, however, his thoughts took him back to Virginia. Was it possible she'd died to cover up something that Corporate didn't want the population to know? How far-fetched was the deviant's story, really? If it was so far-fetched, why couldn't he stop thinking about it?
George sat back for a moment, unable to concentrate. He tried to collect a quick mental list of the little he did know in hopes that a moment of forced rational thought might help him to clear his head enough to get back work. He closed his eyes and searched his mind: Virginia had been terribly ill; deviants were the result of germ-line therapy, not retrovirus infection; deviants were notorious for lying; George had Virginia's ashes on a shelf in the bedroom. The agony returned as he considered the possibility that the deviant was not lying, and that Virginia was still alive, trapped somewhere in the district hospital.
If the deviant was lying, George wanted nothing more than to beat the man to a bloody pulp for belittling his wife's death in such a careless way. If he was telling the truth, however, George wanted to hear the story straight from its source. He decided to "lose" the deviant's file for the time being, until he had a chance to visit the man in jail. When he would find the time was beyond him, with work and other obligations taking up most of his waking hours, but he knew he needed to meet with the deviant if even just for the catharsis. He wondered how many days the man would end up missing at his job, assuming he had one, because of his arrest. George was determined to make him miss at least a few more.
Ensuring that no one was watching, George took down the deviant's name and case number on a small piece of paper and stuffed it in his pant pocket. He locked the file in a cabinet drawer and moved on to another random file on his desk. He took a deep, calming breath—he had actually gotten away with breaking one of the Corporate's strictest confidentiality rules. He had a client's personal information hidden on him, and no one was the wiser. He wondered if perhaps the practice was not as difficult and impermissible as he had been led to believe.
George worked diligently through the rest of the day, reading every file with extreme care and triple-checking his work, feeling the need to work especially hard to make up for his wrongful act against the company. He almost threw away his notes during lunch, but he knew he would only end up taking down the information again by the end of the day, so he held fast to his decision.
He needed to see the deviant for himself, to hear the lie about the HD-1 virus with his own ears. He needed to know for sure. . . .
He needed it to be a lie.