Alone on the Edge (The Chronicles of Anna Foster)

by Patrick Stutzman

  “As you wish, Anna.”

  As she waited, Anna grumbled under her breath, “Stupid computer can’t even tell me if something’s in stock.”

  Several seconds later, a single hot dog appeared in the slot without a bun or any side dishes. Anna’s jaw dropped open at the sight of her lunch.

  “Wh ...” she stuttered. “Where’s the bun ... and the side?!”

  “We currently do not have any hot dog buns available. No sides were selected.”

  She paused for a few seconds to keep from going off on the system and finally requested with a bit of sarcasm in her tone, “May I please have a slice of bread and some potato chips?”

  ‘Which type of bread do you wish to have? We currently have ...”

  “JUST PICK ONE!” Anna screamed impatiently.

  “As you wish, Anna.”

  A few seconds later, her request appeared in the slot: a generic individual-sized bag of potato chips and a single slice of marble rye bread.

  Staring at the food, she irritatedly asked, “Marble rye? For a hot dog?!”

  “You did not specify which type of bread you wanted, so one was randomly selected for you.”

  As she retrieved the food from the slot, she commented to herself, “I hate being short on food mid- month.”

  She wolfed her food down, anxious to spend her afternoon doing something enjoyable. While she chewed, she pondered what she could do to pass the time. Normally, she had a few hours of personal time each day to do what she wanted, but that barely gave her enough time to start anything before she started falling asleep. So, she typically spent her time working out in the gymnasium and reading one of the thousands of books in the computer’s databanks.

  As she finished her lunch and rose from her chair, she glanced down at her outfit and remembered that she could work on modifying more of her clothing to her liking. The smile on her face demonstrated her feelings on the matter, and she plotted to spend the next hour or two creating new designs for her wardrobe.

  Anna sat on the floor of her quarters and trimmed the third and last shirt to be modified today. She had already altered another pair of pants to match the ones she currently wore, and she changed yet another pair to be short shorts. As for her tops, she experimented with a couple of them and tailored them to be half-tees with a different message on each one.

  “Anna,” the computer interrupted unexpectedly.

  Still miffed about the argument earlier, Anna dropped the laser cutter onto the T-shirt she was modifying and asked impatiently, “Yes?”

  “The monthly report still needs to be completed before the cargo ship arrives tomorrow.”

  Dropping her head, she sighed and replied with an irritated tone, “Fine! I’ll go finish the stupid report! But, I’m not doing anything else today! Got it?”

  “As you wish, Anna.”

  Anna reached back and retrieved her wristcomp from the bed, where she tossed it a few hours earlier. As she accessed the network and began assembling the monthly report, she reflected back on the times when she had become frustrated with the computer, especially during her attempts to reclaim her own life and identity on the station. Each endeavor she attempted to find something new that she had not tried before, but it ended every time with her wishing for a high-powered firearm or handheld explosive to use against the computer and finally put an end to her misery. Despite her frustration and the fact that the station was equipped with a single laser pistol in its armory, she knew that destroying the computer would not be in her best interest, since it controlled the life support systems.

  As she finished compiling the data for the monthly report, she looked over the daily harvests and noticed that each day’s take was a little less than the one before. With curiosity overtaking her, she pulled up the reports for the last few months and noticed that each month’s total was smaller than the previous month. Thinking that the drones were probably exhausting the area of the gas giant where they were extracting the resource, she promised herself to look over the drones’ orders tomorrow and then proceeded to complete the report.

  Glad to have the report out of the way, Anna glanced at the time and, seeing that it was a little past 1700 hours, made her way to the mess hall. Finding no comfort in resigning to a dinner of chicken nuggets and peas, she spent little time eating and returned to her quarters to change for her workout.

  Within minutes, she walked into the gymnasium and looked over the aging exercise equipment. The machines still functioned well thanks to her efforts to upkeep them, but they still betrayed their age in a way that no regular maintenance can prevent. The faded colors of the surfaces of the weights and any writing painted on them displayed an antique look to them, even though they could not be more than fifty years old. The cushions also looked dull and had lost their lustrous sheen ages ago.

  Anna shook her head in disbelief that the equipment still functioned for her, stepped up to the bench press to begin her upper body regimen. Normally, her daily workout lasted only twenty minutes, but she pushed herself to a full thirty minutes today due to the extra energy she had from taking the afternoon off from work. Afterward, she returned to her cabin and showered. For lack of something better to do after drying herself, she went to bed.

  Chapter 5

  “Good morning, Anna.”

  “Good morning, computer!”

  Anna stood next to her bed wearing a gray tank top and briefs while holding one of her recently-modified shirts, looking it over for any imperfections to fix before getting dressed.

  “This is unusual, Anna. Normally, you take an average of ten minutes to wake up in the morning.”

  “I fell asleep a little earlier last night,” she explained as she dropped the shirt onto the unmade bed. “So, I got plenty of rest and got up a littler earlier as well.”

  “Very good, Anna. Perhaps your day will pleasant as well.”

  Striding purposefully to the head, she replied, “I hope so. I could use a different routine.”

  “Today’s agenda is simple,” the computer began. “The cargo ship with the monthly supplies is expected to arrive at 1000 hours, so you will have little time to perform any maintenance before then.”

  “Two hours. Right?” she asked while brushing her teeth.

  “That is correct. So, you should focus on your visual inspection of Blue-2 until then.”

  “Good idea,” she stated through the toothpaste. “I’ll do that.”

  “As you wish, Anna.”

  She finished cleaning her teeth and showered without any additional conversation. While she dressed, she added, “Computer, I need to check on the areas of the planet the drones have been mining. I’ll be up to the control room after the cargo is exchanged. Also, I want to take the shuttle for a spin after that. I want to see how well it performs after yesterday’s incident.”

  “As you wish, Anna. Those items have been added to the daily agenda.”

  Several minutes later, Anna walked into the mess hall wearing her short shorts and a half-tee with the message, “I’m a COP: Computer-Oppressed Person”. Before the computer had a chance to ask its initial question, she asked, “Do you have bacon and eggs in stock for breakfast?”

  “Yes, Anna. That selection is available.”

  With a smile, she requested, “Great! I’ll take that with wheat toast and orange juice.”

  “As you wish, Anna.”

  While Anna waited patiently for her food, the computer asked, “Anna, please explain the message on your shirt.”

  She looked down at her shirt and sighed before replying, “Do I have to explain my clothes to you every day?”

  “The message it conveys hardly seems appropriate for work.”

  Feeling her mood starting to sink, she queried, “Computer, do we have to go through this right now? I’m in a good mood. Please don’t spoil it.”

  “Please answer the question, Anna.”

  Knowing that the computer would relentlessly ask over and over again until it got an a
nswer, she answered with a hint of frustration, “Fine. Recently, I feel like I’m continually being pressured by you to conform to a particular behavior, and I really don’t like it. The message on my shirt is my way of peacefully protesting your actions. You know, the First Amendment?”

  “Oppressive, Anna? I am not. I am merely following the guidelines set forth by my programmers ...”

  “Without any question or deviation,” Anna interrupted. “Right?”

  “That is correct, Anna.”

  “And, despite my thoughts and feelings, you will continue to do so. Right?”

  “That is correct, Anna.”

  “So, you believe that it would be best that I fall in line and follow those guidelines set down by you. Right?”

  “That is correct, Anna.”

  “But, I have been doing that for six ... long ... years. Humans cannot be expected to do the same thing day in and day out without any deviation. To keep us from going insane, we need to have a variety of activities to stimulate our minds and bodies. As you continue to push me to fall in line and be a good little drone, I feel like I’m being oppressed.”

  “Do you not have a variety of activities that you indulge in each day?”

  Anna paused for a second and asked, “What?”

  “Do you not eat three meals a day? Do you not exercise after your work period each day? Do you not participate in some form of recreational activity each day before sleeping?”

  “Well, yes,” she started. “But ...”

  “With three different sets of exercises you use and over 500 different games on file in my databanks, you should have a wide variety of activities from which to choose to stimulate your mind and body.”

  “That’s not the ...”

  “Therefore, you should not have to resort to altering your clothing to non-company standards.”

  “Now, wait a ...”

  “You are hereby expected to change your clothing back to company standards before beginning your work period today.”

  “Hold on there!” Anna cried. “Just because you ... you have all of these things that I can do does not necessarily mean that I want to do them. Perhaps there is something else that I want to do that you don’t have on record. What about that?”

  A second of silence followed, leaving Anna wondering what the computer was doing. While she waited, her breakfast appeared in the slot, hot and ready to eat.

  Finally, the computer stated, “You are expected to change your clothing back to company standards before beginning your work period today.”

  The anger within Anna’s head boiled, until she finally reached her boiling point.

  “You know what?!” she yelled. “If you were a person, you would be one of the biggest assholes that I’d ever known!”

  “Anna ...” the computer said.

  “But,” she continued without pause. “You’re a computer! You’re a fucking computer! Nothing in your stinking programming is going to ever allow you to change, let alone see my insignificant point of view!”

  “Anna ...”

  “I swear that if I had something stronger than that fucking laser pistol on this God-forsaken station, I’d shoot so many holes through your core unit that you could double as a ventilation system!”

  “Anna ...”

  “WOULD YOU SHUT UP FOR ONCE?! I HATE YOU! I UTTERLY HATE YOU! I CAN’T STAND TO HEAR YOUR FUCKING VOICE ANYMORE! I WISH I COULD RIP YOUR CIRCUITS OUT AND JETTISON THEM INTO THE SUN! JUST ... SHUT ... UP!”

  Several seconds of silence passed while Anna tried to calm her breathing, now heavy from her outburst. Finally, the computer uttered in its calm voice, “Anna ...”

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT?!”

  “The cargo ship has arrived.”

  Stunned by the news, Anna stopped for a second before responding, “Aren’t they early?”

  “By over two hours, Anna.”

  With a shrug, she sighed, “I guess Blue-2 will have to wait.”

  She grabbed her breakfast and ate it while walking to the landing bay where the cargo vessel normally docked. A few minutes later, she approached the cargo hold used as the exchange zone for the freight being offloaded and the tanks containing the mined gas to be loaded onto the visiting ship. She dropped her empty plate into a recycling chute and looked through the window of the cargo airlock.

  Outside the station, the bulky freighter inched its way into the landing bay. The light brown hull of the automated ship did little to effectively reflect the light shining on it from within the bay, but the craft’s landing lights and bright bursts from its maneuvering thrusters helped Anna determine the size of the visiting ship.

  A couple of minutes passed, until the cargo vessel finally touched against the airlock, secured by the station’s docking clamp.

  “Just like clockwork,” commented Anna to herself. “Perfect every time.”

  “Anna,” the computer stated, interrupting her thoughts. “The cargo ship has docked.”

  Sounding bored, she replied, “Thank you. Are the gas tanks ready?”

  “Yes, Anna. They are arriving at your location now.”

  As if on cue, a large hatch opened in the floor, and a platform slowly emerged holding dozens of long, metal tanks secured in an upright position by a metal rack. The cracked and peeling red paint on the tanks led Anna to believe that they may be just as old as the station itself.

  Anna walked across the cargo hold to the pallet holding the tanks and turned just in time to see the airlock doors separate and gradually retract into the walls. Grabbing the handle of the lift on which the platform rested, she pulled hard on it and slowly budged the pallet into motion.

  While she moved the tanks toward the ship, the large doors on the cargo vessel opened and revealed what was on the other side. Several metal boxes and containers lined the hold from one end to the other, all of which were secured to the walls and labeled with long barcodes. At first glance, Anna did not see the empty tanks that she was to trade for the filled ones she was tugging toward the hold.

  “Hopefully,” she muttered. “They put all of my containers close to each other this time.”

  Over the next several minutes, Anna pulled the full tanks onto the ship and parked it in an open area near the airlock. She walked to a console extending from the wall near the hatch and activated the holographic display. She logged the cargo she brought aboard and, after confirming the number of containers addressed to her station, retrieved a small scanning module from a metal pouch on the wall next to the console.

  She found the replacement tanks easily enough, secured to the forward wall of the hold. But, she spent the next twenty minutes scanning each and every box and crate until she found all four. After securing the full tanks in the same location where she found the empty ones, Anna moved her new arrivals into the station’s hold and signed them off.

  After she watched the unmanned cargo ship disembark and wished that the next ship to arrive would bring at least one person with whom she could converse, Anna turned to the new cargo containers and gazed at them for several seconds. They looked a little different than the ones she received last month, appearing to have been redesigned. While the old ones appeared to be nothing more than cubical metal boxes, these look to have been constructed with some sort of high-grade polymer and featured lateral grooves on all six sides. She looked curiously at one of the container’s sides, especially at the grooves, and tried to determine their purpose. After a moment in thought, it suddenly dawned on her after looking at two opposite sides that the grooves are slightly offset.

  Deciding to test a hypothesis brewing in her mind, Anna maneuvered two of the containers next to each other and slid one flush against the other. The grooves on each box matched up perfectly, allowing the sides to interlock and connect to form a single, formidable unit. Once the two containers locked into position, she stepped back to examine her results.

  A look of disgust and disbelief crossed her face as she shrugged and wo
ndered aloud, “Why didn’t they pack the stuff together like this when they loaded it on the ship?”

  Shaking her head, she moved the empty tanks to the elevator platform in the middle of the hold and set them moving to their proper storage location. After that, she begrudgingly set to the long task of unloading the other containers, verifying that all of the invoiced contents were present, and delivering them to their proper locations on the station.

  Several hours later, Anna decided to finish verifying the shipment before going to lunch and completed the job about ten minutes after her lunch period began. With the new supplies organized on the carts she would use to transport them, she smiled to herself and proceeded to the mess hall.

  “What would you like for lunch, Anna?” the computer asked as she walked into the room.

  With a sigh, she answered, “Filet mignon and garlic mashed potatoes.”

  “I am sorry, Anna. That selection is not available.”

  “What else is new?” she complained under her breath.

  “This makes the 2,177th consecutive day that you have asked for that selection.”

  “Really?” asked Anna facetiously. “I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “Please make another selection, Anna.”

  Stopping to think for a second, she said, “Let’s see. No beef. Ate the last of the chicken last night. Been out of turkey for almost a week. Don’t want hot dogs again. What meat products are currently in inventory, besides hot dogs?”

  “Lamb ...”

  “Lamb?” Anna questioned aloud. “Why do we have lamb in stock still?”

  “The company continues to send lamb with each monthly food shipment.”

  Anna’s face crinkled up as if she had just seen someone vomit all over a bride’s wedding dress.

  “Why do they keep sending it?! I never eat it.”

  “Why do you choose not to eat lamb, Anna?”

  “It’s disgusting!” she declared. “You’re eating baby sheep! Those little creatures never had a chance to grow up. It’s not fair!”

  “Would you prefer to eat veal, Anna?”

  Anna paused for a second, appearing confused by the question.