Deep Core

by F X Holden

  Sometimes you had to look for the flow, sometimes you had to let the flow find you.

  While he had his foreground analytics focused on working, his background analytics were processing the Warnecke dilemma, and the only time he consciously thought about Warnecke and his demands was if the pouch with the paper in it got in his way when he was kneeling down, because he didn’t have anywhere to put it except in the trouser pocket of his work pants, and he had to keep moving it from one side to the other, depending on what side he was working on.

  “I hope that’s not some secret job application you got rolled up there,” a voice said, and he turned to see Cyan smiling at him. She was dressed in her Super Administrator Suit; a blue check skirt, blue check blazer, white silk shirt. White silk hosiery, blue shoes matching her outfit. On anyone else it might come off as pretty severe, but with her girlish ponytail, Cyan just looked like someone with her act together who you could talk to, which was in essence who she was.

  “Asked Leon where you were, he said to check here,” she said. “It’s spooky how you guys always know where each other is without even looking at your comms. Kind of creepy really.”

  “Maintenance tech voodoo,” AJ told her. “Sorry, can’t tell outsiders our secret.”

  She nodded, “Look, I thought I should tell you this to your face, I just got a complaint about you,” she said. “From a resident.”

  He must have looked surprised.

  “I know, it’s the first ever. But I have to check it out,” she said. “Did you see our favorite new resident, Citizen Warnecke, this morning?”

  AJ paused, careful. “Sure, yeah. He was outside my workshop when I arrived about eight.”

  “So, tell me what happened?”

  “What happened with Citizen Warnecke?”

  “What happened, yeah, in your own words.”

  “You want me to down cache and send the visual to you?” AJ asked.

  “I can’t ask you to do that,” Cyan told him. “Only a cop can ask for that. It isn’t that serious I hope.”

  Cyan was being careful, AJ realized. Wanted to compare what Warnecke had said, with what AJ was going to say. And AJ realized now what Warnecke was doing. Warnecke had just lifted his shirt to show AJ the gun, he hadn’t taken it out where the VR cameras around the workshop would have been able to see it. Cyan couldn’t demand he do it, but AJ could voluntarily pull the images from his visual cortex off the Core and put the whole thing to rest, but then he’d have to do a lot of explaining. He could just hear Cyan, ‘The guy pulled a gun on you but you didn’t come to me straight away? You didn’t mention it until after he filed a complaint on you?’

  But if he laid it all on Cyan, and she went to the police, Warnecke would shoot himself. The guy had him pinned like a beaver under a grizzly claw.

  He thought fast, “He… he asked could he borrow some tools and I told him no, there was a residents’ workshop, he could ask one of the therapists.”

  “That’s what you talked about?”

  “Yeah, that’s all. Pull the area VR – you’ll see it from behind, but you’ll see nothing happened.”

  “How was the tone of the conversation?” Cyan asked, keeping the questions open. He didn’t like that. “There’s no audio on those cams.”

  “Uh, he was annoyed. He said he was sick of our damn rules, and he should be able to borrow whatever tools he damn well wanted, the amount he was paying us.”

  She smiled, “That sounds like Citizen Warnecke,” Cyan said. “Did he touch you or did you touch him?”

  “No!” AJ said. “Did he say I did?”

  “No physical contact,” Cyan said. “You’re sure?”

  “None, you can ask Leon,” he said. “He was just inside the workshop, if there was a fight, even raised voices, he would have heard it.

  “I already asked Leon,” Cyan said. “He didn’t hear or see anything. He just said you seemed distracted.”

  “Maybe,” AJ said. “But it wasn’t because I had a fight with Citizen Warnecke.”

  Now she really smiled, “No? Distracted about something else maybe? Some one else, maybe, name of Cassie?”

  AJ looked down at his feet. He just wanted the Warnecke thing gone. Wanted him gone. He wanted Sol Vista back the way it used to be. “You could say, yeah. Maybe.”

  “Don’t worry,” Cyan said. “I’ll write it up, send a copy to his family and the board. His version and yours aren’t exactly the same but if the vision supports your story that there was no physical contact… I wish we had audio, but it seems like just a misunderstanding. Important thing is you both agree there was no physical interaction.”

  “OK, thanks.”

  “You’ll get a copy too. I’ll put in the file this is the first resident complaint about your behavior in the five years you’ve been here.”

  “Thanks.”

  Cyan put a hand on his shoulder, “Hey, cheer up. I like hearing you’re acting distracted AJ.”

  AJ gave her a poor imitation of a smile.

  He met Cassie at a fish taco café; a nice place with real table service. While they ordered drinks and checked out the menu, Cassie told him that usually, if a first date with a new guy ended with him throwing her into the Shifting Sea, she’d change the guy’s name in her address book to PSYCHO and block all contact, but in AJ’s case she was willing to make an exception.

  Their drinks arrived and AJ drained his cocktail right down to the mint leaves. He started looking for the waiter to order a refill.

  “OK, someone needed a drink,” Cassie said. “Don’t tell me. You tried to give Citizen Warnecke his Top Secret document back, and something happened?”

  Cassie had ditched her all-black Territory style for something a little more Coastal tonight. A lot more Coastal. She was wearing a little red dress which made her white hair really pop. It yelled ‘happy girl’ to the world and AJ knew he should say something about it.

  “You could say that,” AJ said, still trying to catch the eye of a waiter so he could get another round of drinks. “Something, yeah.”

  “Hey, you OK?” Cassie asked, looking worried.

  “Sure,” he said. “Yeah, good.”

  “Yeah, no. Not buying it,” Cassie said. “Because personally I think I look freaking deadly in this dress and I bet I am throwing out pheromones like crazy and all you can do is look for the waiter.”

  AJ drew a hand over his face and leaned back in his chair, blowing air out, “You are so right. You are so completely gorgeous that I just can’t focus. Of course, it could also be because a guy pulled a gun on me today.”

  Cassie blinked, “What? You got mugged?”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “By an elderly resident at the friendliest community in South Coast City.”

  “You got mugged at work?” she asked. “By a geriatric?”

  So AJ told her about Warnecke, the conversation, the gun, and then the complaint.

  “You can’t go to the police now,” Cassie said. “It’s your word against his and he’s made a complaint against you.”

  “Tell me about it,” AJ said. “And I can’t go to Cyan. She’d be like, why are you only telling me this now, after the resident complained about you?”

  “But this shows he’s definitely unbalanced,” Cassie said. “The guy needs help. Or, let’s say, more help.”

  AJ wasn’t thinking about how Warnecke was a guy in need of help. He was thinking Warnecke was a guy in need of being told to keep AJ out of his damn business. Whatever it was between him and the Congressman, it had nothing to do with AJ. He wanted to kill himself? OK, plenty of people managed to do that without dragging anyone down with them. He said as much to Cassie.

  “You said he’s convinced you’re watching him, like you are some private security agent that Winters is paying. He’s not going to believe you if you just say hey, I’m not part of this, keep me out of it,” she pointed out.

  “I know.”

  They got in some beers and tacos.

&nb
sp; “What about family?” she asked.

  “Son on Orkutsk, grandchildren couldn’t get out of here fast enough after they dropped him off, and there’s a daughter who doesn’t even care if he’s alive or dead, apparently.”

  “A daughter, really?” she asked, eyes widening a little. “That’s strange…”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, just …” she looked down into her beer. “I’m no shining example, but usually daughters are a little more caring right?”

  “Not this one.”

  “What did they say about her?” she asked.

  “Nothing much … she’s a loner and she didn’t even respond when they left a message telling her he was moving into a TGA facility.”

  “Nice. So you can’t go to your boss about it, the family are useless and you can’t go to the cops,” Cassie decided. “This guy isn’t going anywhere. You’ve only got one option.”

  “I know, but why should I have to quit? I like my job. I like my boss, hell I even like lazy old Leon. Why should it be me who has to throw all that in?” he said. What he didn’t say – he had rights. A right to employment, to choice of employer. It was the citizen who was the problem here, not the cyber, why should the cyber be the one taking the consequences? Yeah, feel as outraged as you like AJ, you know how this sort of thing plays out.

  Cassie laughed, “I’m not talking about you quitting - why should you? This Warnecke guy just blows in out of nowhere and throws his mess in your face? That isn’t right.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Guy pulled a gun on you.”

  “Well, more like he showed me a gun and threatened to use it on himself, kind of thing.”

  “OK, but we’ve all seen that show. The guy talks about how he’s going to kill himself, but usually it’s the maintenance guy who gets it first. And cyber or citizen, murder is murder.”

  “Thanks.” AJ frowned at her. “I think.”

  “You know what I’m saying. But he isn’t going away easy. The guy has bought into your little TGA timeshare and he’s got all his crazy focused on you right now, so you’re going to have to help solve his problem for him.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what you do right?” Cassie asked. “Fix stuff?”

  “I fix leaking taps and cracked sidewalks,” he said. “I’m not a messenger for crazy threats to Congressmen.”

  “But if that’s what it takes to make this go away?” Cassie asked.

  “Winter won’t talk to me,” AJ said. “He’s a Congressman. I call and what? He tells his secretary, ‘Hey cancel my 3 o’clock with the President will you? I have to meet that maintenance guy from Sol Vista’.”

  “He might, if Warnecke isn’t a complete nutbag and there is something to all this.”

  “Yeah, but I’ve seen residents with this kind of issue,” AJ said. “They have this obsession, it’s like the biggest thing in the world to them and they can’t think or talk about anything else, but the thing doesn’t even exist outside their own head.”

  “So, call the Congressman’s office. Tell him Warnecke asked you to talk to him and you’re worried about the guy.”

  “And he calls Cyan to complain and she’s like, AJ what is all this noise and why didn’t you come to me about it? I still end up looking for a new job.”

  Cassie had a sip of her beer, thinking about it. AJ did too, the two of them mirror images of thoughtfulness. Except of course Cassie was petite and lithe and AJ was, well, the opposite. Both of them had tacos sitting on the plate in front of them, uneaten.

  “I could tell Cyan,” Cassie offered. “She’s already called me twice trying to find out what’s going on with us. You know, if I didn’t know better, even though she introduced us, it feels like she thinks she has some sort of share in you AJ.”

  “She’s my boss,” he explained.

  “No. More like first mover rights. Did you guys date?”

  “She didn’t mention that?” he asked. “It was only a few times.”

  Cassie frowned, “No, AJ, strangely enough she did not mention that.” She drained the beer quickly. “What the hell. I could tell her well, AJ seems like a pretty cool guy, if we could just solve this problem of your resident with a death wish who’s convinced AJ is spying on him.”

  AJ smiled, “Yeah, she’d totally understand that.”

  “Hell yeah she would. I mean, I’d spin it so that she sees it’s really the only thing standing between you, me and a full-on torrid relationship. If she’s truly ready to let you go, she’d revoke the guy’s lease or whatever it is.”

  “Torrid?”

  “Yeah, you know. Steamy.”

  “I think torrid means hot and dry.”

  “Burning hot, which on an ice world, leads to steam,” Cassie smiled, and she leaned forward and took AJ’s hand and started caressing his palm in a jokey way. “Except I can’t be getting all steamed up about a guy who can’t handle himself. I mean, where does that leave me? Oh yeah, AJ? Yeah we went on a couple of dates, then he got shot by a geriatric. That was kinda sad.”

  AJ pulled his hand away from Cassie’s and grabbed up a taco, “I don’t want Cyan to hear about Warnecke and his conspiracy, and definitely not about the gun thing.”

  “Then you just have one choice. Call the Capitol.”

  AJ knew that calling a Congressman wouldn’t just be a matter of looking up the guy’s office in the Core and waiting a few minutes on hold. The secretarial AI had a filter right there as the first option for people who lived in the Congressman’s district, they had to enter their address and comms ID and they went straight to the front of the queue, then everyone else who was just calling on the public line went straight into a spaghetti hell of answering service options, guaranteed to ensure your call never got through, without hanging up on you.

  He was sitting in the workshop the day after his conversation with Cassie, trying to work out how the hell he could even get in touch with Congressman Winter, when Leon walked in.

  “Hey man,” AJ said.

  “My bro AJ,” Leon said. “You cool mano?” He swung his big lunch pail up on his workbench and fixed AJ with a worried look.

  “You know I appreciate you reinforcing my masculine self-image, but you don’t have to keep calling me mano,” AJ told him.

  “Hey! Calling you mano is the biggest compliment I can pay you. And you didn’t answer my question. You OK?”

  “Sure, why not?” AJ said.

  “Oh, play it like that,” Leon sulked. “I’m out there covering your ass with Cyan, but you aint going to let Leon know why?”

  “Hey, I’m sorry about that. And thanks, alright?”

  “I got your back mano,” Leon said. “You know that right? This job is all I could get, with my issues, so I appreciate how you cover for me all the time. And it goes both ways, so I got you AJ, OK?” He reached out a fist and gripped AJ’s hand in his. “I mean it.”

  “It was that thing with Warnecke yesterday,” he said. “I asked you did you hear it.”

  “Sure, I heard it.”

  AJ blinked, looked a little surprised, “You told Cyan you didn’t.”

  “Post Conflict Psych Disorder got a lot of symptoms bro, but deafness aint one,” Leon said. “I heard the dude say to you he wanted you to take something to someone and tell them to get ready for some business to go down. That about right?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Leon settled in his stool, “That new guy. Warnecke.”

  “He had a gun,” AJ said.

  Leon nodded, “Yeah, I pretty much guessed that from the pee stain on your pants when you came in.”

  AJ smiled, “There wasn’t.”

  “Nah, just raggin you. You took it pretty calm, I’d say. Respect.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know. It was kind of unreal.”

  “What kind of gun? Plasma or kinetic?”

  “Small. Plasma I think.”

  “Small, plasma? Must be a single shot - one and done. Or did it have a big energy ce
ll?”

  “Ask me about surfboards Leon. I don’t know about guns. I could run it through the Core looking for a match, but let’s just call it a gun.”

  “OK, OK, so how we going to play this?” Leon asked.

  AJ saw Leon was sizing it up, making it his problem too. And he knew he shouldn’t get Leon involved in this, whatever this was. But so far the only other person he had told about it was a girl he’d been on two dates with, who was a reporter as well. Damn, biology made a guy dumb.

  Right now, he needed someone like Leon on his side.

  “You serious, you want to help? Because I have to tell you Leon, I don’t really know what this is all about but I have a bad feeling about it. I never had a problem like this before.”

  Leon licked his lips, “Then you aint lived, mano. Problems like this, is what makes us realize we’re alive.”

  Leon read the page Warnecke had given AJ and agreed the best idea was to go talk to Winter. But he said they had to be careful. Go to Winter in the wrong way with what Warnecke had told him, it could look like AJ was trying to blackmail the Congressman. AJ hadn’t considered that it could look like extortion, playing the angle for himself, trying to use Warnecke to make some fast credits.

  AJ explained he had looked into it and couldn’t even get to Winter, unless he just sent a message to the guy’s public ID or something. “Then his whole office would know about it.”

  “You could ask Warnecke,” Leon suggested. “He must have Winter’s personal contact details, if they’re old college buddies or something.”

  “Warnecke would just laugh at me,” AJ said. “He thinks I’m working for Winter, keeping an eye on him. He wouldn’t believe me if I said I don’t have his private comms ID.”

  “No, you’re thinking wrong,” Leon explained. “Winter wouldn’t employ a contractor direct, if he wanted someone watched. That’s not how it works. He’s got people would do that for him. You’d be dealing with them, reporting to them. It was the same with the contractors on New Syberia. You think any of them had the private comms ID for any four-star Generals?”