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THE GIGANTIC INSECT charged me, six horny feet clacking on the polished concrete floor, massive jaws clacking as if it were trying to bite itself, or me, or anything else for that matter. Globules of thick drool splattered on the floor and its skin was hanging in large flapping flakes. I’d faced a lot of these recently but it was the biggest and ugliest yet.
I braced myself, tightening my mask and acid-proof goggles with one hand while hefting my trusty blade with the other. It was fully inside the room now, leering down at me with those basketball-sized eyes. The door shut. It was just him and me.
“KIRRRIKKK-ITTY, KUK KUK, K-CHA-CHIT CHIT!” it clattered at me.
I waited for the translation from my belt-mounted unit. Nothing. I glanced down. It was off! How unprofessional of me! I slapped on the big red button. It lit up instantly.
“Sorry, can you say that again?”
‘CHI-KIK, KITITIK’ went my translator so loudly it vibrated my guts.
“KIRRRIKKK-ITTY, KUK KUK, K-CHA-CHIT CHIT!” the monster repeated.
“How are you today, young Human?” my translator spoke inside my head, converted via implant, “The weather is miserable again today.”
“Sorry to hear it,” I replied, setting to work at once on its closest leg. I plunged my blade under the rotten chitin and gave it a practiced twist. The thick flake peeled slowly off with a sticky sucking noise as the giant insect shuddered with pleasure.
“CHIK-I!”
I didn’t need my translator for that sound, and I deliberately had it set to VOCAL ONLY. Too many ‘CHIK-I’s and I’d be an exhausted wreck. I needed every ounce of concentration I could muster to survive the next hour. Those jaws could puncture steel, let alone a humble little human like me. I plunged again; twist ... Oh yeah, baby! One hell of a work-out!
#
WELCOME TO MY WORLD of work. It was not particularly classy; barely even ‘medicine’, but on that particular day it was my here-and-now; or as I always reframed it: My Current Point on my Perfect Professional-Development Trajectory. And as always – I was giving it 105%!
Progressively I peeled every rotten flake from the poor creature’s body. It shuddered and shuffled, nearly trampling me on several occasions, and tried to talk to me about the weather over and over again. I didn’t have a lot to say on the subject. The weather on Crush was not something I experienced on a regular basis, mainly because it would kill me slowly and horribly. (Okay, I exaggerate. It would kill me if I actually tried to breathe it, but you weren’t going to find me doing that. No sir!)
Finally done. The skittering Kirrikibat was smooth and glistening, and far less crazed. It lingered a moment, rubbing its waxy new surface with its two front legs and talking loudly (as they always do) about how good it felt. Tiredly I nodded and shut the lid on the disposal chute, then pulled off my mask. The stench of half-rotted shell flakes was still strong in the air and I took a moment to fight the urge to vomit.
“Have nice day,” I said to my client, waving my arms precisely in the way I had been taught during training. It was the Kirrikibat version of a friendly wave.
“I will now! Thanks, Doc!” It headed out happily, clicker-click-clicker on its six legs, and the door automatically shut behind it.
I didn’t bother to tell it I wasn’t yet a Doctor, and right about then it felt like I was never going to be. My focus and my optimism momentarily wavered. Fook; how was I going to survive another four months of this? It was sickening, exhausting, and utterly meaningless to a career-oriented go-getter like myself.
Why was I even there? I hear you ask. ‘Field points’. But I’ll tell you about that soon.
The vomit-inducing stench in the room had not diminished. Tiredly I searched the floor. There! A fragment of chitin the size of a dinner plate had missed the chute, and holy crap was it past its use-by date! Grabbing a pair of surgical tongs I plucked it up and flicked it down the correct chute, then banged the lid down again.
“Good work, kid,” spoke a voice behind me. Not a translated voice, nor implant-virtual, this one was live. I spun around. It was my supervisor, Doctor Panther, walking in from the observation room. (Shit! Didn't even know she was there!)
“Thank you,” I replied wearily, sliding my vibroblade into the steriliser and setting it to cycle. “All in a day’s work,” I added in what I hoped was an up-beat, cheerful tone of voice.
“I like your attitude, kid,” she replied, keeping clear of me while I sponged about five litres of Kirrikibatic drool off the floor. (They dribble a lot when they’re happy.) I flicked the sponge, plus my gloves, into yet another disposal chute and finally sat down on the only stool in the room (‘barn’ would be a better description), which left her standing. But hey: I'd been the one working my tail off and she seemed to understand this.
Something was coming, I sensed it.
“Bagel,” she said, addressing me by my surname as she always did, “I know you’re young, and you’ve only been here for ... what? Three months?”
“Ten and a half weeks, sir.” (I had finally learned that everyone here was called 'sir' whether male, female or of non-specific gender.)
“Very good.” She nodded, then said it again, “I like your attitude, Bagel.”
“Thanks,” I murmured, wondering where this was going.
“You get stuck in, you develop a relationship with your clients, you work efficiently. That one,” she pointed to the big door, “was a really tough case. Very advanced shedding. It would have taken most of my staff two or even three hours to finish.”
“Thanks,” I murmured again, not telling her why I preferred to work so fast. “It’s nothing really.”
“Now, now, no need to be so modest, Bagel. You’re already the best damn flaker I’ve ever had on staff!”
I glanced up, accepting her approval this time.
“Come on, she said, moving to the door. “I want to put a proposal to you.”
Orders are orders, but even so I glanced up at the client board. No lights. It was 4 p.m. Done for the day. I followed her out, crossed through the prep-room and paused briefly to punch myself in the chest. Not really a punch, just a firm tap always did it. Hit the tab just right and, in less than a second, your scrubs would shrink-wrap themselves. I loved that whooshing noise they made, and the feeling like you’d just had a whole lot of sunburn suddenly peeled off. Fantastic!
Then I remembered that I’d stripped to the waist before the op. Shit! I did not normally display my half-naked body to a stranger. (Peculiar family trait; it’s called ‘modesty’.)
I hastily plucked the tight green ball from my chest and lobbed it into the disposer with one hand while I grabbed for a towel with the other. I saw Panther’s eyes surreptitiously feast upon my pecs, and she had plenty to feast upon. It’s a physical job, I used to work out, and Mum and Dad purchased some pretty pricey genes just before I was conceived. (And, of course, a guy always looks his best at 19). But I didn’t want her attentions right then because:
1) I stank of chitin rot.
2) She was not my idea of romance. Although she looked 23, my professional eye knew she’d already had at least one rejoov. (More like 50?)
3) I was not into the idea of shagging my way to the top. Another peculiar family thing; it’s called morals. Sorry to dash your hopes of reading a lot of steamy sex but I wanted romance, and real love, and a big white wedding first. Then the steamy sex.
“So,” I said, after I’d put on a decent amount of clothing and reached her office, “What’s this proposal?” I was trying for ‘calm/professional’, but was uncomfortably aware that the word ‘proposal’ has at least two meanings. She had my file deployed and was reading it.
“I think you’ll like it,” she said smoothly, closing my file with that familiar gesture we all use. Her eyes nailed me, “How'd you like to get a bit closer to the action?”
I shifted nervously on my chair. “What action?”
“I mean a bit closer to The Edge.”
I relaxed a little. She was not trying to get into my pants after all. What a relief!
“You see,” she continued, using calm/professional with a subtle hint of 'I'm-your-boss', “The Authority maintains a Regional Flaking Facility out west and I’m having a little bit of difficulty keeping up the staff ratio there at the moment.”
Ah: a transfer! And it didn’t sound like I was going to get a lot of choice in the matter. After all, I was virtually her slave; a fresh-faced intern from the Inner Clusters, here to clock up my field-service points however I could. But I’d heard a few rumours about the Edge so I quickly tried to think of a reason not to go. “I, ah, I’d love to help you out but, ah, this is a teaching facility, and I really do have to maintain my studies...”
“Not a problem,” she intercepted swiftly, “There’s a Virtu-R unit right in the clinic, right in your office in fact, so you’ll have no problem attending lectures during your down-time.”
‘My office’? That sounded good. Then, just as I opened my mouth to express another reservation, she intercepted again, “And I’ll see to it that your field-point ratio is increased. You’ll graduate twenty percent sooner than anyone else.”
That sounded good. Really good! I nodded, getting more interested.
Then she hit me with the big tempter. “In fact, if you sign up to do six straight months I’ll get you back here actually running the Flaker course. That’ll be lecturer’s rates, by the way. What do you say to that?”
I really wanted it, I really did, but there was one thing I wasn’t sure of.
“But isn’t The Edge sort of ... dangerous? I mean, I’ve heard that implants can actually explode because of the radiation surges...”
She laughed aloud. “Oh good heavens no, Bagel. Merely one of those rumours to frighten the tourists. Although it is true that some implants have failed here on Crush, for precisely that reason. What do you know about Crush biology, by the way?”
“Not much, I must admit.”
“You should know more, Bagel. After all, we live on her back like so many fleas.”
“‘Her’?”
“Just an expression. Anyway it’s terribly interesting. She’s got the equivalent of a nervous system composed of metal-rich cells; a lot like underground power cables, and they put out a lot of static. It’s worse on the fringes where She’s more active, hence the exploding implant myth. But that was fifty years ago. They’ve really improved our shielding since then. However, if you’re still worried I’ll upgrade your insurance at no cost to you. Sound alright?”
I must have been smiling like a doofus by then. I mean, this deal sounded fantastic! What a boost to my career! Okay; it was not exactly according to my visualisations, but still!
“So exactly where is this clinic?” I asked.
“Oh it’s a wonderful place; very historic; lots of character. You’ll love it!”
“Right,” I said with all the confidence I could muster (which is quite a lot, I’ll have you know), “I’ll do it!”
She beamed at me. “Excellent! Let’s do up a contract right now.”