“We can’t work out these other errors?” Masozi asked warily, though she was definitely grateful for the session to end. “It seems like quite a bit of information to just dump, doesn’t it?”
“Not really,” Eve shook her head, “Benton tried to keep the dead fragments below ten thousand; anything lower than that mark is gravy.”
“And you’re sure this isn’t going to do any harm to your…well, to you?” Masozi pressed.
“Nope,” Eve said cheerfully. “And remember, Soze,” she said more seriously as she pointed toward a small, cube-shaped device embedded in the far end of the bench, “that’s my backup. The same process that lets us make these modifications automatically copies the version of me that you’re talking to at this very moment onto that storage device. If, for any reason, you think I’ve gone off the deep end or,” her eyes lowered shamefully, “if I do anything I shouldn’t then you need to understand that you owe it not to yourself, not to Benton, and not to Jericho, but you owe it to me to nuke the crazy bitch and bring this version of me back. I don’t want to say it a thousand times, but I really need you to understand: if you delete some future version of me that’s no good, you’re doing me a favor.”
“What are the chances that I might actually need to do that?” Masozi asked tightly.
“Less than one in thirteen thousand per update,” Eve replied promptly. “And those chances should go down with each successive update, but not very much unfortunately. Big Daddy Wladdy did most of the heavy lifting in that department. Of course, if I end up running a process-heavy set of calculations my program can build up errors in a hurry…so let’s just hope I don’t have to do that.”
“Ok,” Masozi drew a sharp breath, “here goes.”
She tapped the ‘Yes’ icon on the screen, and a moment later the screen was filled with a progress sphere. Masozi could only wait to see if their work had been beneficial.
Chapter VII: A Painless Breakup
“You’ve got your brief, Adjuster,” Jericho said with a curt nod to Masozi as he prepared to disembark the Tyson. The shuttle had docked with a run-down-looking courier ship—one of only a handful which remained functional following the wormhole collapse—just outside the Phase Threshold of Rationem. “Stick to the plan and we’ll meet back up at the rendezvous coordinates in Manticore in five weeks.”
“I don’t think we’re supposed to execute all of these assignments,” Masozi said dubiously. “The most clear-cut example of tyranny in my packet is a school administrator—this is a test of whether or not we can identify the ones that can legally be adjusted.”
“Correct,” Jericho agreed as Shu shouldered a duffel bag and stepped into the transfer tube connecting the Tyson with the courier ship. “This isn’t going to be simple, but I’m confident you’ll be able to work your way through it. Your career in law enforcement will likely provide a decisive advantage,” he added, knowing that despite his words, her test would likely prove simpler than his own. “Good hunting, Adjuster,” he said with a curt nod before turning his back and entering the courier ship.
“Ok, Eve,” Masozi said two days later as she pulled the Tyson into its docking slip on Rationem Prime. “Are you ready?”
“Am I ever not?” Eve quipped. “Just give me a second to launch my drone and then I’ll undock your hover-bike.”
There was a series of mechanical sounds from the stern of the Neil deGrasse Tyson, after which time Eve said, “Go ahead and remove my core unit now.”
Masozi reached down and unfastened the binders which kept the cylindrical piece of metal in place, and just as she had done a dozen times in recent weeks—repetitions made primarily for practice—she removed Eve’s core from its slot in the middle of the Tyson’s cockpit.
“My battery will let me make short-range wireless transmissions,” Eve explained as her image appeared on Masozi’s wrist-link, “but it’s best if you plug me into the drone as quickly as possible so I can go tap into the local data lines and get this party started.”
“Got it,” Masozi agreed after placing Eve’s core inside a backpack and slinging the carrier across her back. “Are you still sure about the school teacher?” she asked as she slapped the control icon near the door, prompting it to lower to the ground outside. The air, which she had been looking forward to breathing after spending so many weeks aboard the Zhuge Liang, was surprisingly stale with a decided hint of industrial cleaning chemicals snaking through her nostrils and seeming to sting the back of her skull.
“She’s the only one with sufficient precedent among publicly-recorded Tyrannis Adjustments,” Eve said with a sharp nod. “You’ve reviewed the files yourself, Sis,” she reminded her.
“I know,” Masozi sighed as she made for the stern of the Tyson, where the hover-bike sat next to Eve’s drone. When Masozi had first seen the drone—during her initial encounter with Eve, no less—it had perfectly resembled an Okavango ‘DOT’ Net delivery drone. But now it could have been one of a hundred different drones. The old markings had been removed, and a series of alpha-numerics were present on its chassis in what seemed to be a uniform pattern. “I guess I’d just wrapped my brain around dealing with more obvious forms of tyranny.”
She approached the drone, which was hovering in a stationary position beside the shuttle and quickly found where to install Eve’s core unit. She slid the cylinder into the slot, and gave a twist to secure it in place. An instant later, the cylinder’s slot recessed into the drone, and Eve’s face appeared on the hover unit’s front screen. “Perfect,” the virtual girl declared. “Well, I’m off. Remember your alias: you’re a corporate dignitary here to conduct a security assessment of the city prior to an unnamed party’s unscheduled visit. If anyone stops you, just give ‘em the old ‘do you know who I am, bitch?!’ routine; I’ll come find you before nightfall after I’ve retrieved our gear.”
With that, Eve’s drone lifted several meters off the ground before rocketing off into the sky—a sky which had significantly less traffic in it than the familiar skies of New Lincoln which she had grown up beneath.
Masozi closed the backpack, donned the helmet which had been stowed on the hover-bike’s handlebars, and fired the bike’s engines before performing a quick check of the vehicle’s systems. When everything checked out, she used a remote command to seal the Tyson’s door, and drove the bike out into the streets of Rationem’s lone spaceport.
As the sun began to set in the distance, Masozi arrived at the undeniable conclusion that while Rationem’s primary spaceport—which was called Hunter’s Prairie—was a reasonable enough locale, the planet itself was nothing like Virgin Prime.
Virgin Prime was considered by most worlds of the Chimera Sector to be the Sector Capitol world; it was among the richest in terms of economic output, and was the most centrally-located world relative to the other populated star systems which had been cut off from the Imperium following the wormhole’s collapse two centuries earlier.
Rationem had once been a competitor for the role of Sector Central. However, following Hadden Enterprises’ refusal to offer material support—or to allow their business partners to act as intermediaries for such support—the system’s economy had languished. The planet’s internet showed a total population of eighty nine million humans, along with another three million nonhumans, and while their advertised economic forecast numbers appeared strong even Masozi knew it was all bluster.
She had researched the matter prior to landing, and had discovered that Rationem’s citizenry earned only 89% of the Sector’s average, and interstellar business had all but dried up in the decades following Hadden’s withdrawal of its resources—chief among those resources, naturally, being Phase Drive units and replacement parts. Naturally there had been a mass exodus of skilled laborers and entrepreneurs, who sought citizenship on other worlds in order to emerge from the shadow of Rationem’s ill-conceived power grab involving Hadden Enterprise’s sentient resources nearly a century earlier.
Hadden’s messa
ge was as clear as the cracks in the ferro-crete buildings just a few blocks from the spaceport itself:
This is what the unchecked rule of law comes to.
Masozi, having enforced the law for all of her adult life, would argue with that statement—even though she knew that a man like Hadden would not make such a move lightly—but there was a striking example of cold, harsh reality standing all around her which made her briefly question her convictions in that regard.
Her wrist-link chimed and she pulled the hover-bike over to a designated parking area just in time to see Eve’s hover drone come swooping into view.
“Hey, Soze,” Eve’s voice declared through Masozi’s wrist-link in time with her image appearing on the drone’s front-facing screen as she waved wildly, “I got the stuff!”
The drone slewed into position beside Masozi, and a storage compartment opened up on the drone’s flank to reveal a small collection of weapons and gadgets, some of which were familiar while some were not, including a handful of small pill bottles with what looked to be prescription tranquilizers inside.
“Good work, Eve,” Masozi nodded before asking, “Do I want to know how you got these?”
“Every piece was bought and paid for with legit funds,” Eve said indignantly.
“But aren’t our funds supposed to be sourced?” Masozi asked skeptically.
“Well…” Eve said sheepishly. “Ok, fine; I cashed in your death benefits back on Virgin.”
“What?!” Masozi asked, more confused and shocked than angry. She had never even considered that her death would have warranted funeral expenses to be automatically set aside.
“See, this is why I didn’t want to talk about it,” Eve said irritably, “I mean you’re already legally dead back there but, since there was no need for a fancy funeral, some of the money became…erm, ‘available’ to us.”
“They would have still held a funeral…” Masozi said as she wrapped her mind around what Eve was telling her.
“They would have,” Eve allowed pointedly, “except that yours truly might have, sort of, in a roundabout-but-perfectly-legal-fashion—since you’re not actually dead, but most certainly fearing for your life if the truth of your non-death ever got out—contacted the funeral service coordinators directly and downgraded your full-honors NLIU funeral to the minimum possible service afforded to a public servant. I saved taxpayers a third of your yearly salary in the process and managed to finagle almost as much as a cash refund to be used here,” Eve finished breathlessly—clearly a forced affectation since she had no lungs.
“So…I got a place on the memorial wall and my name listed in the weekly public obituary,” Masozi said sourly, actually a little put off by the idea that her name would be little more than a footnote in the New Lincoln statistics column of the nightly newsfeeds. Her entire career, spent in service to her fellow citizens, culminated in her name being listed one time, on a sidebar, in the nightly reports—without a photo, since that would have cost extra—along with a six inch long engraving of her name on the public servant memorial across the street from City Hall. She had actually wanted to visit her gravestone in one of the city’s public cemeteries, but it seemed that would be impossible.
“Aww, cheer up, sugar,” Eve said brightly. “You’re not actually dead, and there’s plenty of precedent for people legally drawing their death benefits in the event of false death certificates being issued on the grounds of compensation for emotional damages. Trust me: we’re good to go—and we’ll still have a few credits left over for the next stop on our little itinerary.” Eve’s mood turned indignant as she added, “I wouldn’t put your life in danger by supplying you with stolen goods or ill-gotten funds, Sis! Just think what those tribunal-ers would do if we gave them a reason to bust a cap in your—”
“Thanks, Eve,” Masozi interrupted graciously after coming to terms with what Eve had just told her, “weirdly enough, that actually does take a load off my mind.” She shook her head as if to clear her mind and looked down at the itinerary which Eve had loaded into her wrist-link prior to their arrival on Rationem, “It looks like our first stop is a city a few hundred kilometers from here. How do you want to travel?”
“My drone’s not as fast as your bike,” Eve explained, “but you shouldn’t be speeding, anyway, and I’m actually allowed to legally exceed the civilian speed limit if I’m contracted by a public official.”
Masozi shook her head as the irony of Eve’s statement hit home: she actually was a public official as an Adjuster. “I don’t think we’re in that much of a hurry,” she said, finding her ambivalence at the job before them increasing her general anxiety. “Besides, I’d like to go over the files a few more times before we do this.”
“Sure thing,” Eve nodded, “I’ll go ahead and scout out the place while you take your time. I’ve set us up for reasonably discrete long-range communications using the Zhuge Liang as our relay point up in orbit; drive safe!”
“You too, Eve,” Masozi said, lowering her helmet’s visor and accelerating down the roadway while Eve’s drone made a straight line for their target destination.
Several hours later, Masozi pulled the hover-bike into a vacant industrial structure on the edges of the city where the first Adjustee lived. She had gone over the file repeatedly during the trip, and had been forced to agree with Eve: this was easily the simplest Adjustment on their docket, since there were even verified communications between Mrs. Kearcher, the school administrator, and several of her then-subordinates. The records of those communications left no room for doubt, in Masozi’s mind, that Mrs. Kearcher had willfully and overtly shunted talented children away from the places where Rationem’s society—and, indeed, the entire Chimera Sector—needed them most, and that she had done so for purely personal reasons which had no place in her publicly-granted mandate.
If the situation had been reversed, Masozi would be equally outraged at an overtly religious person having subtly denied atheistic children from those same life paths. It was a difficult position in which she found herself, but Masozi had to admit that her active wrestling with these situations for the past several days had produced several insights which she would carry forward into her life. Chief among those was that misuse of power, regardless of the motives behind it, is always contrary to the good of the people—especially when the misuser thinks that he or she knows better than the citizenry what is best for them.
The fact that religion had persisted throughout the millennia since humanity had taken to the stars was less surprising to her than it appeared to be for many. People needed something to cling to, and there was simply too much truth for the average person to discover and assimilate during his or her life. This created a permanent opportunity for institutions to consolidate clusters of ideas into their core belief systems and enter the marketplace with those ideas. It all made perfect sense to her, which was why she had chosen—at a very young age—to fill that particular void in her own life with science and reason. She had also decided early on in her life that religion—just like ethnicity or private social practices—was no reason to discriminate against people.
Her wrist-link buzzed and she looked up to see Eve’s drone approaching. “Well, she’s home,” Eve said after stopping her drone in front of Masozi’s now-parked hover-bike. “But she’s having a party,” Eve added glumly, “looks like it’s someone’s birthday.”
“Not hers,” Masozi said, knowing that Mrs. Kearcher’s listed birthday wasn’t for another half year.
“No,” Eve shook her head, “it’s for her son, who brought the grandkids for a visit from out of town.”
A few moments of silence hung between them as Masozi considered Eve’s report. “Is there a place we can set up nearby?” Masozi asked as she felt the reality of the situation set in. She could hardly believe she was actually going to wait until after a birthday party was finished before walking into the woman’s house and killing her—a death which the woman had earned by succumbing to temptations of po
wer.
“There’s a couple spots,” Eve replied, and a three dimensional view of the nearby block appeared. “Oh, and before we forget,” she said, prompting a tray to slide open on the drone’s chassis. Within that tray was a Mark of Adjustment which looked identical to the one Jericho had taken from Obunda’s body back on Virgin Prime. It was bordered with gold laurels, and the all-seeing eye was emblazoned at its center. “You’d better take this.”
“Thanks, Eve,” Masozi said as she took the small, badge-like object from the tray and stuffed it into her jacket’s left pocket.
“You’ll want to sign off on all of that,” Eve said, “but it looks like we’ll have time since her family’s staying until late morning; the birthday boy’s already arranged transportation for tomorrow just before noon.”
“Fine,” Masozi muttered, “I could use the walk, anyway.”
“Approaching the Phase Threshold,” reported the skin-tight, vinyl-clad woman at the helm of the courier ship, “we’re two minutes out, Boss.”
“Good,” the ship’s owner and commander acknowledged with a grunt as he swiveled his chair to face Jericho, “you’ll get what you paid for: a one-way trip to Virgin Prime and a ten minute window to transfer to another ship. I’ve got a schedule to keep, Jericho, and this is your last favor.”
“Understood, Tim,” Jericho nodded. “This has been a big help.”
“Just doing my part,” Tim Hogan said with a lopsided, metal-tooth-filled grin. “All traffic’s been temporarily cut off to and from the Capitol Planet after your little stunt on Philippa—unless you want to subject yourself to inspections at gun-point, that is.”
“The Mustang’s fast,” Jericho said approvingly, though he knew his old friend had ample reason to be concerned, “you can outrun anything in Virgin’s SDF.”
Sic Semper Tyrannis: The Chimera Adjustment, Book Two (Imperium Cicernus 5) Page 11
