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Joe closed the door of his lab quietly behind him, clutching a bulky folder of paper files in one hand and a mug of water in the other. He walked down the corridor of the food development facility just as the Research Director came out of her office, swiped her security card and laid her handprint on the scanner glass to lock her door. He stepped aside for her, dropped the files and watched in dismay as paper spewed across the worn grey carpet.
“Oh, sorry. Here, hold this a minute, I’ll pick it up.” Flustered, he held out the mug of water, noticing her irritated expression as she grasped it on reflex.
He hastily took it back again. “I’m... I’m sorry. You must be in a hurry to get home. I can manage.” He stooped to put the mug on the floor, wedged against the base of the wall out of harm’s way, then stood up awkwardly, knocking her bag off her shoulder just as she replaced her card in it. He stooped again to pick it up and clumsily spilled the contents onto the carpet, hurriedly kneeling back down to retrieve the scattered items.
“Oh dear, sorry again.”
She fixed him with a frosty stare.
“Joe! If you don’t get yourself those new glasses I’ll do it for you and take it out of your salary.”
“Sorry!”
“I heard you the first couple of times.”
Joe scrambled to his feet and handed her bag back to her. He watched as she stalked off down the corridor, then glanced surreptitiously at her security key, amazed that he had managed to conceal it in his palm in spite of his hand shaking almost uncontrollably.
He slipped the dull square of circuit-imprinted plastic into his pocket, gathered his papers, picked up the mug carefully by the handle and walked back the way he had come. It was an effort of will to conceal his agitation as he left the building and walked home, but no one stopped him.
He reached his tiny apartment to find Devi waiting anxiously for him. She threw her arms around him, fraught with waiting, worry edging her voice.
“Joe... thank the stars you’re back! I kept thinking they would catch you going back into your archives, that there would be internal checks and alarms in the system––”
She stepped back, as if sensing his tension. Joe took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt, annoyed at how quickly they had steamed up from his hurried journey home.
“I went through all my recorded results for the latest formula and nobody seemed to notice. It still looks like regular biochemistry, no links with those plans you suspect for citizen control. But I only worked on a small part of it. I need to see the whole dataset.”
“Can you access that without losing your job?”
He frowned. “If I get caught I’ll lose more than that. Still, I have to do it. I have to know if I’ve been part of something that could harm our child sometime in the future.”
“But how? That information must be stored somewhere secure?”
“I break into the boss’s office and access her computer files.” Joe carefully took the mug and card out of his shoulder bag and laid them on the table. “Can your mysterious friends copy her security handprint in a hurry? I need to get the card back outside her door before she arrives at work tomorrow morning.”
Devi stared at the incriminating swag he had brought back with him.
“Joe... are you sure you want to do this?”
He saw her face go pale as she steadied herself against the table.
“Devi! Are you all right?” He cleared a pile of folders from the nearest chair and helped her sit down.
She propped her elbows on the table’s plastic surface and leaned her face on her hands. “It’s just the reality of my dear, brilliant, unimaginative, naïve Joe dealing with the kind of shadowy facts I’ve grown so used to, these last few years of undercover work. It’s my problem to deal with, not yours.”
He gave her a wry grin, searching for a way to defuse the fears. “I know. The world’s worst secret sleuth about to become the world’s worst burglar.”
Devi stared at the mug and card. “What about her password?”
“I went in to her office as soon as I reported for work, asked for some details I didn’t need and watched her keystrokes. She doesn’t know I have a photographic memory. It’s something I try to keep quiet. I am aware of the risks of being seen as too intelligent, you know.”
Devi sighed, walked to the corner of the kitchen and plugged her unregistered handset into the concealed hotspot.
“Beau, can you get over here and copy a security handprint key?” She turned to Joe. “He says he’s on his way.”
“Devi? What is that thing you just used, behind the counter light?”
“Um, it’s a link into the old analogue network. I need it to contact the Resistance without having the conversation monitored. Their technicians connected it as soon as I told them about your path report.”
It was Joe’s turn to need the support of a chair under his backside.
“A direct line to the Resistance... I didn’t think it had gone quite that far. It’s my fault. I’ve been too absorbed in my research, I haven’t spent enough time with you, didn’t even see what was happening in my own kitchen––”
“Joe! It isn’t anything you’ve done or not done. It’s because after I trained I looked at the way the law has been systematically changed over the years. Before the chaos, people assumed it was a continuous trajectory, gradually making justice equal for everyone. But then I saw how Avarit has been steadily taking it the other way. We can’t assume anything good for the future unless we make the effort ourselves, to make it happen.”
She relaxed into that smile he found so irresistible.
“Joe. Think about it. How many people make a point of contorting themselves backwards over their kitchen worktop every day to check out what might be lurking behind the counter-lights?”
Joe couldn’t help laughing. She always managed to find the ridiculous in a situation if it started to get too heavy.
“Never mind the Resistance. If your team of lawyers suspects the regime is planning to mess with the entire food system then I have to find out if my research is part of it.”
“What could you do about it if it’s true?”
He shivered. “I don’t know. I’ve seen what happens to whistleblowers.”
‘No. Definitely don’t try going public with your name on it. Gives them too much leverage to discredit the message. Apart from what they would do to you. I lost a colleague in my legal team that way a few years ago.”
Joe’s sense of indignation at the injustice of it all was beginning to surface again.
“How does Avarit get away with it? I mean, if one of us went around tampering with everyone’s food, they’d be arrested!”
“They make the laws as well as making the profits. It’s the link with a clause in the leaked draft of the Fourth Directive that alerted me. Innovative Foods. Innocuous on its own...”
He frowned. “Until it’s linked to data from the actual research. I’m starting to follow where this is going. So I have to access the rest of the evidence.”
It was a long nervous twenty minutes before the door buzzer sounded twice and Devi let Beau into the room. He held out his hand.
“Hi, you must be Joe! Heard great things about you while your wife was trying to solve my hassle with a civil forfeiture notice. My people already picked up a wild story or two about this food issue but we couldn’t get any details. If you can uncover a few facts it might make all the difference.”
Beau dumped his bag on a chair, pulled out a handprinting device and slipped the security card into the slot.
“You did well to bring the mug as well as the card. The embossing on the card’s surface messes up fingerprints too much to be any use.”
He lifted the research director’s handprint from the mug, fed it into the device and waited while the synth-skin plastic glove slowly emerged into the blue led-light of the apartment.