by J. N. Chaney
Gil took part of the hint and lowered his voice for parts of the statement. “Not like, to death or really badly. Just something that will hurt and make him look like a chump. Like when I took that dare and ate all those chilis. I didn’t die, but I kinda felt like I might.”
I considered the possibility. “Something like food poisoning. Something that would not be traced and would give him problems.”
Gil and Manson both nodded. “Yeah, especially if he puked in class or couldn’t get excused and ruined some pants. That would be great.”
Public humiliation didn’t have the same effect or permanence as expulsion, but it might do for the short-term. Still, I wondered if such a thing was beneath me. I stood up and started into my next lap. “Let me think about it. I’ll let you know what I come up with.”
I started running and they followed. We did a few laps before Manson had to take a breather. Overall, it was good exercise.
I returned to my room and got back to work on the problem. Manson and Gil had one thing right—some low-grade food poisoning could be a good way to disrupt people without being suspicious. I checked some information on the network and discovered productivity in the workplace dropped by thirty percent when employees were ill. Even better, response times to critical tasks fell as much as forty-five percent.
Bouts of food-borne illness could last seventy-two hours with extreme symptoms not being noticed upwards of sixteen hours after exposure. If enough employees were given different tainted meals within a day of a planned job, they would be sluggish and ill-prepared to deal with emergencies. Being a Union complex, a place where highly-trained and elite workers operated, they wouldn’t fail to report to work for minor problems.
By the time they realized the problems were more than minor, the whole facility would be in a sad state.
It was a risky plan, as the behaviors of each individual would vary widely. It could also cause delays in patrols, which would make avoiding guards even harder. If there was a way to affect different groups of employees with different types of illness, that would give the best tactical advantage.
Working a series of illnesses targeted at the security monitors, maintenance staff, and guards provided far wider gaps in patrol times and repairs of crucial systems. It also bogged down the internal air and water filtration systems. As the problems became obvious, they would attempt to reinforce key areas and suspect breaches at the doors. This would make exfiltration harder.
I concluded that three distinct food-borne illnesses would create manageable havoc. This gave me options in moving other key pieces of the complex problem, but it didn’t provide a full solution. I retreated to sleep excited to be making progress but worried that I had so far yet to go.
The next day swept by less slowly since I’d had some rest. Still, the problem was not solved, and the Canton issue also needed something definitive. I hoped to gain some space to concentrate more fully on the puzzle, so I decided to visit Mr. Kurns and glean something about Canton’s financial situation. Maybe he could be exposed without taking down Mr. Kurns’s whole system.
I hurried from my final class in the history building to the maintenance building in hopes of catching Mr. Kurns before he left for the day. His schedule was idiosyncratic, either as part of his extracurricular affairs or the pressures of working an on-call job.
Fortunately, he was in his office. I knocked on the door when I saw him sitting at his desk. He waved to me and hit a button, then the door released and I entered. The door shut behind me. “You might want to catch the blinds.”
I did as suggested, pulling the blinds down over the office window and door.
Mr. Kurns put up a hand in warning and pointed to a seat. “I know why you’re here. Sit down and listen before you get in trouble.”
I took a seat. His tone was conciliatory, not angry. Whatever he was referring to had nothing to do with my own extracurricular pursuits.
He stitched his hands together beneath his salt and pepper beard. “It’s troubling what happened to Vance. Nothing to do about it. He was in over his head and dealing with people that were sloppy. I told him it was bad business, but he said he could work it out.”
I smiled. “You could remove his arms and legs and Vance would still say he had things under control.” I bit my lip and balled up a fist. “It was his best and most frustrating quality.”
Mr. Kurns laughed. “Sounds like you knew him well. So, do you have anything specific for me?”
I considered the offer. Though the scope of the tone was broad, I went for the direct approach. “I need to know what kind of deals you have with Canton. How much he’s been allotted and where he squanders it. I know that his father’s company provides his school support, but I assume he has you double-dipping on that.”
Mr. Kurns shrugged and pulled up a file on his data pad. “Right to it, then, no cat and mouse about what each of us knows. I appreciate that. Canton spends money like he has an endless supply. Mind you, with the value of his father’s company, that isn’t too far from the truth. His father tries to cut him off from time to time, but Canton is resourceful.”
“No. He’s abusive. There’s a difference.”
Mr. Kurns flipped to a spreadsheet on the pad. “True enough.” He pointed to a section of highlighted lines on the spreadsheet. “See here? These deductions happened after his last cut off. He failed a bio exam, so his father stopped the transfers. He had me lift twice as much for what he called incentive and compensation.”
I saw another set of higher-end numbers. “What about these? Those seem to be even higher.”
Mr. Kurns shook his head. “That’s why you don’t over-reward and under-punish. Soon as he passed the next exam, highest grade in the class thanks to Vance’s provided answers, his dad upped his weekly by more than he took away.”
“What would happen, do you think, if Canton failed a test bad enough to fail the term?”
Mr. Kurns suppressed a glimmer in his eyes. “If some miracle arranged that, he’d head home for the break with no cash flow and an angry father. It might not stick, but it would be a helluva a slap to his shit-muncher ego.”
I had a thought about the shell game that Mr. Kurns ran with maintenance and supplies. “How do you deal with heavy shifts in cash flow between your two activities?”
He turned off the pad and stood up before walking to a rack of parts on the far side of the small office. “In the lean times, you make do. In the heavy times, you stock up on a few things. I’ve been doing this a long time and I know how to chart the winds, as it were.”
“And people that don’t have your experience?”
Mr. Kurns chuckled. “They start with putting in more effort to compensate for the right materials, and as it gets worse, they start blaming the supply chain. Eventually, they curse the tools that work for not being magical. They rarely notice they were the weak component in the system.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kurns. For the information, and the kind words about Vance. Please, go ahead and keep my weekly allowance.”
He shook his head and walked me to the door. “I appreciate the offer, Alphonse, but you keep what is yours and I’ll keep what’s mine. This conversation didn’t happen.” He gave me a broad wink and opened the door. “I’ll see what I can do about that hallway door,” he said as a cover.
“It has been bothering me since I arrived.”
I headed back to my room and began working on the next step for the Canton plan. I needed to get him a message that I could help him with his bio final. That would set him up for the failure I had in mind.
As for the Evelyn puzzle, Mr. Kurns had given me some insight into the maintenance world. Engineers thought they were smarter than the problems they encountered. They would be more prone to try and fix a problem with bad resources than admit they couldn’t.
If the supply of parts for the complex dried up, they would continue to operate and do work around that would lead to cascading failures. Union regulations were publicly
accessible, so I checked through them. All essential systems were required to have redundancies and parts on hand. But they only needed to have one extra of anything. Even a cautious engineer would only have two.
Tampering with the supply chain would be difficult. Either replacing the shipments headed for the facility with broken parts that the engineers would work around or freezing their budgets to order just long enough to have them bottom out of the reserves seemed like the best choices. It would be difficult to do both without it being suspicious. Still, I had another wedge to open up the facility. The plan was becoming clear, bit by bit.
17
The next day, I was removed from classes early. My previous deception about the clinic appointment needed a second phase. The doctor I had scheduled an impossible meeting with to check up on Whiles had now officially started office hours. With my general lack of sleep and stress, it seemed like it would provide me with a good baseline for creating smoke screens in the future.
I hadn’t been to many doctors in my life. I knew what to avoid and practiced careful handwashing and general cleanliness. Disease was about happenstance and nobody was immune forever, but I had expressed proper caution in the past, which had kept me safe enough.
I proceeded to the gate and was stopped by Proctor Maevik with her usual confused wave/salute greeting. “Alphonse? You’re with me, no bus for a middle of day journey.”
I should have known that. Clearly, the sleep deprivation was wearing on me more than I was able to express. “Good to see you, Proctor Maevik.”
She frowned. “What did I tell you about using my last name? Cams will do. It really is alright. I’m staff, you don’t have to be formal with me like faculty.”
She walked with me back from the gate to the maintenance shed and the transport already set to go. I didn’t see Mr. Kurns.
“I was taught to use the name appropriate to the situation, nicknames and first names being for peers. You still hold a position of authority. I would hate to negate that.”
She sighed and got in the transport. “I don’t know if I should be flattered that you think being a glorified truant officer has authority or mad that you’re using it as an excuse. Either way, we have to be at the clinic soon.”
Maevik navigated the route there as quickly as she navigated her way through crowds. Despite the traffic, we arrived early. And since it was a clinic office, even somewhat late is still early. The Union might have the transports running on time, but medicine would always be a field that takes a lot of time and never runs true to schedule.
The admitting staff took my name and confirmed the doctor’s name. “Scheduled for 1:20? Well, it’s 1:10 now, so we’ll get to you as soon as the doctor is available. Take a seat”—they checked the paperwork—“Alphonse.”
I sat down and Maevik took up a position beside me. The waiting room was, of course, packed. We took the last two seats near the general clinic door. I was quiet, studying the faces of the other patients waiting. I idly diagnosed them based on their reactions and external symptoms. Or tried. It didn’t take long before I realized I couldn’t tell who was a patient and who was a supporter. Illness has a fear effect that masks true intentions. People simply don’t know how to act like themselves when faced with fear and apprehension. Too much instinct to maintain individuality for the most part.
A technician emerged from the clinic and checked a pad and then called out a name and a time stamp. “Broadkle? 12:40?”
Maevik sighed and I met her gaze. They were three people behind. The technician also caught her sigh and looked at us. There was a flash of recognition. “Captain Maevik? Good to see you. Are you here for an adjustment? Oh my, your wig is looking excellent. I knew that they would get you a proper fit.”
Maevik concealed a mixture of rage and embarrassment. “Alphonse, I’ll be at the transport. Lydia, everything’s fine.” She pushed through the door and exited in a hurry.
Lydia, the technician, looked horrified. She had broken protocol and made a terrible faux pas in drawing attention to Maevik in an open space. Not that anyone else in the space was paying attention. She fixed me with a look and then greeted Mr. Broadkle, then she escorted him down the hall and was gone for several minutes.
I returned to my deliberations on the actions of the waiting room people, but also considered what I had learned about Maevik. Lydia returned and sat beside me. “Are you a friend or relative of Camille?”
“No, I’m a student at Quintell Academy. Proctor Maevik is my escort for the clinic appointment.”
She looked chagrined. “I’m so sorry about before. I hadn’t seen her almost a year. We… knew each other before. Let her know I apologize and will accept any formal complaint she may want to file.” She stood up. “I have to get back to work.”
It was over an hour before I was finally called in. Predictably, my appointment took only the twenty allotted minutes as I explained my situation and he performed routine tests. My lack of questions and general ability to follow instruction made everything go smoothly.
Afterward, I returned to the transport to find Maevik standing outside at attention. She was visibly shaken by the experience, her usual open and jovial nature missing. She stood at attention with a cold, nearly robotic posture. I approached the transport and stopped before getting in. She watched me intently, not moving.
“The technician, Lydia, wanted me to pass along an apology. I would also like to apologize, Cams.”
She shot me a cold look then opened the door. I also entered the transport.
“Don’t give me that out of sympathy, Mr. M . . . Alphonse.” She struggled to land on a name for me. In the end, she sighed. The transport remained off and unmoving.
“I didn’t understand before how important the dynamic of authority and peer was to you,” I explained. “In there, Lydia exposed several secrets you don’t want known. I’m sorry that you had to go through that. But I will call you by the name you request, because that is respect. A formal title doesn’t define who you are, but how people should see you. An offered name says something about who you want to be. I see that now.”
She sighed and started the transport. “Apology accepted. Let’s get back to campus, Alphonse.”
As we moved out of the clinic area and onto the road, I had an idea. “We’re already out and it isn’t unreasonable for a student to request a comfort stop after a clinic visit, is it?”
She nodded. “Do you need to go somewhere? You don’t seem like the clinic bothered you.”
“No. I’m fine . . . it’s for you. I would like to buy you a cake and coffee.”
She laughed a dry chuckle. “I appreciate the offer. I’ll even take you up on it.” She turned toward the downtown area. Within minutes, we’d arrived at a hole-in-the-wall café. “This is my favorite,” she commented.
We exited the transport and put in an order, then sat down.
“Do you want to know the whole story?”
I considered what I already knew and what I didn’t, then decided it would be prudent not to blurt what I knew. “Anything you want to tell. I don’t need all of your secrets.”
She smiled, more herself in that moment. The coffee and cakes arrived. She was even a bit animated in accepting them. “This café is run by something of an expat. A former soldier living on a Union world. He’s an interesting guy. I was Union military myself. Stationed out in the rim worlds near the Deadlands.”
I nodded and enjoyed the coffee. It had a bit of spice to it.
“I was part of a search and recovery team,” she said. “Second in the chain under a tough nut of a commander, Jack Welder. He pushed us beyond what we thought we could do, which is good for a commanding officer. He also backed us when things went wrong and we lost people.” She sipped her coffee and enjoyed some cake. “Search and recovery is a difficult job. We were trained to extricate assets, usually black boxes and prototypes, occasionally pilots and VIPs, from extreme conditions—crashes on hostile worlds, accessing derelicts tha
t had lost life support. Anything could go wrong, and we could lose our target or members of the squad.” She rubbed her right arm and I heard her shuffling her feet. “We were good at what we did. Even the missions that went poorly were rarely a complete disaster.”
I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer and interjected, “You lost the arm and both legs below the knee. From what Lydia implied, you also had some skull rebuilt that left you unable to grow your own hair. It looks natural, by the way.”
She fought for a moment to scowl or smile, settling on a pained grin. “I’ve noticed you do a good job of reading people. Surprised it took you this long to say anything.”
I put down my coffee. “I’m learning. To not upset people. You were reserved about your personal history. I didn’t want to take from you, Cams. The salute/wave you do. That is a brain issue, right? A programming mistake?”
Now she was impressed. “Yes. Whenever I want to greet someone, it goes to muscle memory and that memory spent fifteen years saluting, so it fights to do both. Both gestures access the same storage in the brain, and it comes out wrong.”
“The same with your feet then, the shuffling is you fighting to be still and to be ready at the same time?”
She frowned and took a heavy sigh. “No. That one is a remnant of their last action as they jerked to get me away from the hull breach that tore me apart. No matter what I do, somewhere in my mind, they’re always in motion.”
I had nothing to say to that. The losses I had faced in life didn’t mean anything. I didn’t care enough to mourn my parents, and though I missed Vance, it was nothing in comparison.
She drained the rest of her coffee and moved around the remaining crumbs of her cake. “Alphonse. Thanks for this. It was helpful. When you close yourself off but leave a way for people to get under your skin, it just leads to disaster, you know?”
